BK XBLA not intact, missing few Nintendo aspects
Outrage, or just plain common sense? You decide
An incredibly lucky person has gotten his hands on Banjo-Kazooie for the Xbox Live Arcade, and for the moment has only one video up on his YouTube channel, which you can see below.
If you’ve played the original, the main difference should be smacking you in the face like an enraged and hurt significant other after a drunken night. The N64 logo has disappeared, and instead of the blue and gold Rareware logo, all you see is the shortened current logo. Earlier comments in interviews have explicitly mentioned that the Nintendo logo on Mumbo’s Xylophone has changed to a Microsoft Game Studios logo, yet the player pressed Start before we had the opportunity to see it within the intro.
As for the clip itself, besides the graphical changes in the honeycombs, Banjo and Kazooie’s debatable and dislikable faces near the health bar, and the faces of some of the speaking characters changing (like the Jinjo, for instance), not much has changed from the port. It looks very pretty, however.
As for the logos not being there, it makes a lot of sense in the long run. Yes, it was on the Nintendo 64. Yes, it was published by Nintendo. But Rare/Nintendo diehards, face it: this isn’t on a Nintendo console. It wouldn’t make any sense to have it intact, especially when the company logo has changed as well as the company they’re owned by different than it was ten years ago. No one seemed to complain back in 2005 when Conker didn’t symmetrically cut the N64 in half in the BFD port/remake of Live & Reloaded. Those who kept up with the biggest loss of gamers in recent times known as Goldeneye XBLA will probably remember that the Nintendo logo wasn’t going to appear for, once again, reasons of common sense. Besides, it’s not like they completely did away with the references; Banjo can still be seen playing his brick Game Boy in the third file.
In the end, those veterans and Banjo virgins itching to play the games, ask yourself: will your enjoyment of the game decrease knowing that the old logos aren’t there anymore? For most of us, having Stop ‘n’ Swop and Achievements will make up for a sequence we can easily see online and on our old Nintendo 64 systems.
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5 Comments
I like the slightly improved graphics and totally understand why they removed the Nintendo references but I can’t understand why they’ve changed the faces on the Health bar. They look really weird and don’t look that much like the renders of the characters from the original. Please 4J Studios, change them back.
Comment by Tom Bradbrook — 26.Sep.08 @ 6:58 pm
Meh, the walking N gave me nightmares anyway.
Comment by Hudson — 27.Sep.08 @ 12:26 am
Who cares about logos? Isn’t it the actual game that matters?
Comment by Erik Schröder — 26.Sep.08 @ 5:59 pm