Banjo-Kazooie XBLA footage and Achievements list revealed
Several new countries join the "get BK XBLA for free" promotion
Starting yesterday, the Banjo-Kazooie XBLA hype train came back almost after a month stationed at the train depot. IGN continues this by posting the very first hands-on impressions and some video footage of this port.
As you can see, the game now runs smoothly in HD and Widescreen, but all the textures have been kept from the original. Everything looks fine and polished… except for a tiny -but slightly annoying- detail: some of collectables icons in the screen (notes, feathers, life…) and the faces and letters for dialogues seem to have been stretched, instead of adapted to the Widescreen ratio. Hopefully, somebody will correct that before the game hits the Xbox Live Marketplace next November.
If this first overall glimpse to the game wasn’t enough, Rare themselves have also updated today their official site to remind eveyone that if you pre-order Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts you’ll be able to play BK XBLA for free (otherwise it would cost you 1200 MS Points) and a couple of weeks before its official release date (which we remind you that was set on November 26th). This promotion has officially been extended to Europe and Oceania, with especific details of participating retailers:
- UK: Amazon, Play.com, Game and Gamestation
- USA: Amazon, EBGames, GameStop and GameCrazy
- FRANCE: Micromania and Game
- SPAIN: Game
- ITALY: GameStop
- SCANDINAVIA: Game and GameStop
- Other countries known to be running the promotion but with no specific retailer info as yet: CANADA, JAPAN, IRELAND, GERMANY, AUSTRIA, BENELUX, SWITZERLAND, AUSTRALIA and NEW ZEALAND.
Confirmed by Rare today are also the definitive American and European release dates for Nuts & Bolts. While the Old Continent will still get the game on November 14th, Americans will be able to play it starting November 11th, which is three days before the previously confirmed date (lucky guys!).
To finish with this new Banjo day, IGN has offered the mandatory list of 200 Achievement points that you can earn on BK XBLA, which are copied, pasted and coded for your viewing pleasure below.
- Get Jiggy - (10G) – Collect 2 Jiggies
- Mumbo Jumbo - (10G) – Transformed by Mumbo for the first time
- Knock out Nipper - (15G) – Come out on top in a dust-up with Nipper the crab. Watch out, he’s called Nipper for a reason
- Free Clanker - (15G) – Liberate Clanker, Gruntilda’s rusty and recalcitrant garbage grinder
- Chomp Chomp! - (15G) – They’re red and no less than 30 of them need chomping. Nuff said
- Move Master - (15G) – Discover and master all Banjo’s moves… and Kazooie’s… but nobody else’s. Unless you insist
- Show me the honey! - (15G) – Collect all 24 of the extra honeycomb pieces. Yes! Every single one! It’s character-building
- The Quiz Master - (20G) – Complete Grunty’s Furnace Fun quiz show and win the Star Prize. Been paying attention?
- Jinjonatored - (20G) – Fear the Jinjonator. If you’re a witch, that is. The Jinjonator lays the smack down on witches
- Jigsaw maker - (20G) – Bet you thought jigsaws were boring! Bottles disagrees, and has seven of them to be solved
- Cheating Cheato - (20G) – Bump into Grunty’s disowned spellbook three times as it hops around the place dishing out cheats
- Music Maestro - (25G) – There are 900 musical notes out there in the world of Banjo-Kazooie. Real gamers collect them all…
If it sounds familiar or easy, chances are you’re right. While I mourn a lack of “You’ve completed Rusty Bucket Bay without throwing your controller through a window” Achievement, I’d say that it’s an extremely fair and balanced list. If you beat the game a decade ago, this’ll be a welcome trip down memory lane plus Achievements and Stop ‘n’ Swop. We’ll wake you up when October ends.
Somehow related news
- Achievements for Trouble in Paradise Revealed ()
- Six worlds become five in Nuts & Bolts ()
- Banjo-Kazooie XBLA delayed to December 3rd ()
- BK XBLA not intact, missing few Nintendo aspects ()
- Dinosaur Planet originally was Diddy Kong Racing 2 ()
6 Comments
Does anyone knows if the pre-order promotion will be aviable in Mexico and Latin America? It would be really unfair if not…
Comment by Alfonso Díaz — 25.Sep.08 @ 8:07 pm
And none of the icons really look stretched, they look fine.
Comment by x — 25.Sep.08 @ 8:11 pm
“The letters for the dialogue weren’t stretched, they got rid of Comic Sans MS and replaced it with a different font”
“And none of the icons really look stretched, they look fine”
BK64 never used Comic Sans. It was only used early stages of Nuts & Bolts but it was later replaced. And as for the deformed elements… well, they look REALLY stretched if you make a simple comparison:
· Life bar (N64-left / XBLA-right)
· Notes icon (N64-left / XBLA-right)
Comment by Xmooth — 25.Sep.08 @ 11:08 pm Okay, you got me there, but as I said, they look fine anyway.
As for the font, it may not be Comic Sans, but they definitely changed the font that was on the original.
Sorry, I always thought that the font that Rare used in nearly all their games N64-and-upwards was Comic Sans, but I guess it’s a different one.
Comment by x — 27.Sep.08 @ 3:39 am
The letters for the dialogue weren’t stretched, they got rid of Comic Sans MS and replaced it with a different font.
Comment by x — 25.Sep.08 @ 8:07 pm