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Remember 64
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1 year ago

Level 66 - Banjo Pilot and Grunty's Revenge - The Bear and Bird go Handheld

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All right, on with the show,
everyone.

Welcome to Remember 64, where
this week we're taking a bit of a handheld detour on our way up
Spiral Mountain.

Hello everyone, and welcome to
the show.

Hello again if you are a
returning listener or viewer and welcome if this is your first
time joining us here on Remember 64.
We are going through the Good,

The Bad, the Ugly.
Had everything in between of the

Nintendo 64's library.
My name is David Petrangelo and

I am #3 of Mumbo Jumbo's number
5 in this Banjo Kazooie franchise.
Also #4 in here as well.

We got lots to talk about.
We're talking about the Game Boy

Advance and the two Banjo
Kazooie games that came out for that.
We'll get to that in just a moment.
Jiggy, look back.

How are you buddy?
I'm fantastic.

I'm happy to be a part of this
episode of Remember GBA.

Let's do it.
I once again, once again I messed it up.
Once again I messed it up.

Thank you for correcting me.
That's pretty much what it is.

We have two people joining us
for this.

We have two games and two people
joining us.

So Josh from Still Loading
podcast is here.

Josh, welcome back buddy.
We just chatted a little while ago.
Yeah, you can't get rid of me.

Doesn't matter how much your
listeners throw fits about.

They hate me.
I'm back again.

Well, well, we want you back,
OK, And that's.

What?
I've actually never read anything, I'm just assuming.
No, no, it's all love buddy, it's all love and first time
joining the show Thrac from the 3D O experiences with us.
How are you?

Hi.
Hi.

I'm great.
Thanks.

Thanks for having me on this
podcast about a console that I hate.
It's great.

No problem.
That's why we're talking GBA.

Yeah, yeah.
A console that I love, that I love I'm.
I'm just kidding.

I don't hate this N64.
I just think it's funny to make jokes about it.
Hey.

You can joke all you want, it's
all good.

Hey hey, I defend the Sega
Saturn so I I defend the Sega

Sat.
I know the 3D O sucks but.

It's fucking interesting.
OK, but like, hey, I defend like the Sega Saturn and all that so.
That's that's that's one of those consoles I have like next
to 0 experience.

That and 3D O are probably
actually 2.

And we were talking about this
in the before we started hitting record for the episode that the
3D O and the Virtual Boy are probably the three things I've
probably had less than 10 minutes on in my entire life,
maybe collectively so.

Well, you come come on my show
and and we'll get you a 3D OD up.
I want to, dude, I want to.

I will play I, and it's the same
thing with this show.

If it's something I've never
heard of, never played, Even more interested.
Even more interested, honestly, before we get into talking about
Banjo Kazooie, Grunty's Revenge and Banjo pilot on the Game Boy
Advance, Thrac, I just want to ask you, I guess we can kind of
all kind of go around around the the table here.
But Thrac, I want to start with you first because just briefly
and you can joke, you can make fun of you can cut into whatever
you want your experience with the N64.
And then we can all kind of riff a little bit on our experience
of the GBA since that's pretty much what we're covering in this
episode.

So Thrac, what's coming into the
into this year as of as of us sitting here and stuff, What's
what's been your experience with the 64?
Did you have it growing up?

Was it later?
All that kind of stuff.

So my experience with the N64
starts many, many, many years ago.
So growing up, I had an NES in the second Genesis.
That's what I played, right?

And then a while after that,
early 2000s, I got a GameCube and I still have that GameCube
that that's the console I grew up on, played a bunch.
And then around the time I got into like high school, like late
middle school or high school, I was watching a lot of say, Angry
Video Game Nerd and other gaming content on YouTube.
So I was learning about gaming history and, you know, the N64
and Super Nintendo completely passed me by and and I was
starting to get some money at the time.
So I was like, oh, there's a little game store behind by me.
Let me go check it out.

And I went in and they had a
Nintendo 64 and I was like, I want it, I want to play that
one.

I want to see what the big deal
is.

I think I paid 40 bucks for it.
This was back when BB game collecting was cheap.
So I got it in six.

Yeah, exactly.
So yeah.

This was about yeah, 2008, 2009.
I bought it in 64 and bought quite a few games for it.
Like I got Mario, I got

Goldeneye, I got all the
wrestling games.

I'm a big wrestling guy.
Indiana Jones and the Infernal

Machine.
I had that complete inbox.

I paid like 20 bucks for it.
Crazy.

Yeah.
And, and a handful of other just kind of ran.
I had the Blues Brothers game, which I actually don't hate.
And so I, I remember I, I played it quite a bit and I even, I
even tried buying Superman 64, but my console wouldn't play it.
It just wouldn't play the thing.

So I was spared Superman 64 and
it was so weird because when I bought it, it wouldn't work in
my N64.

I took it back to the store,
they popped in their N64 and it worked and I took it back.
Still didn't work.

Interesting.
You were determined.

You were determined, and yet.
I wanted, I wanted to know how bad it was.
I, I still haven't actually really played that game, but so
I played the N64 for quite a while, played a bunch of games
on it and just the more I went,

I was just like, it's a fine
console, but I don't get what the big deal is.
You know, there's some good games on it, you know, some
great games, But I, I always found myself going back to say
my GameCube or my 360 or even my

Game Boy Advance.
You know, those are more interesting consoles for me.
So I eventually got rid of all of it.
And so, you know, in the last few years, getting into this
like podcasting sphere that we're all in, hearing all this
stuff about people like in the

N64 has always made me go like,
I mean, it was good, but I don't think it was like that great.
But, you know, there's, there's definitely good stuff there, you
know, but.

Everyone's got their own thing
that that sticks with them.

Like for me it was the Super
Nintendo, like you say.

Oh, I still have my Game Cube.
I still have my original SNES.

And I and I had AI had a Super
Nintendo for a while as well.

It's actually the and it's the
only time I've beaten Super

Mario World was on the Super
Nintendo, Yeah.

The GBA version's really good.
All, all those GBA versions are are are great.
Oh yeah, that's.

Right.
I'm more of a I'm more of.

A.
I'm more of a Mario Three guy, so I've beaten every version of
Mario Three that there is.

Yeah, I just said accept the
music on the GBA version.

Music on it is a little rough
for Super Mario World compared to the.
For Super Mario World, yeah, I like, I like the Mario 3
soundtrack on there, though.

Oh.
OK, I got to hear the difference.
It's been a while.

It's a different style, yeah,
but the Mario 3 soundtrack is amazing, so yeah, yeah, yeah,
yeah.

So I mean, do you want me to
segue into?

The the GBA.
Well, I was gonna say I I was gonna just hop in myself for a
second and just say the GB AI have this behind me over here
there we go I got my direction still there we go that's my
original GBA still that still works the lights on the on it is
not great.

That's the only thing that
doesn't really work is the fact that it's really getting very
dim.

Was it?
Was it ESP or the original?

No, the original, it's a silver.
Oh, I mean it's not backlit so that.
Also, it's not backlit no, but it's still like darker than it
was.

You know what I mean?
So like there's there's like a a difference there.
So, but it still works.

The the cartridges I still have
still work.

If I'm gonna play a Game Boy
Color game, I put it in that.

I played Banjo Pilot on that
this week because I have woo a boxed.
It's actually in really good shape.
I at the time I was like oh I don't know if I want to pay that
much for this thing but like it's actually really hard to
find and it's quote UN quote gone up in value in the last
like 3 years since I've got it.

They all have I.
Don't know what the fuck that means anymore, but.
More people want it, so it's just cost more money, that's
all.

But yeah, and I love my GB AI.
It's been great.

I love going back and playing so
many of the games that I, I grew up with playing and stuff that
like a lot of people are very, very attached to, like the
Switch experience and, and that being their sort of mobile
gaming and stuff.

Partially because of age,
partially because of nostalgia.

The GBA is the first thing I
think of when I think of any kind of handheld gaming of any
at any time.

It's that specific one.
I never had an SP had a friend who did, but so I don't really
have any experience really playing it other than like
sharing his.

But I do know that when I, you
know, when I've played ones since then as as an adult, I
don't like the form factor on it.
So I think the form factor, the

GBA itself works for even
slightly larger hands.

I I think because it's not just
a square essentially.

So I don't know.
I love my GBA.

Oh, if you hate the SP form
factor, what do you see the Game

Boy micro?
Oh my God, that thing is so.

That's ridiculous.
It's a ridiculous idea.

Ridiculous idea.
I I kind of defend it, but I can get to that later.
That's just, that's just my I don't know, I get it.
I don't want to strain my eyes more than I have to, you know?
That's fair.

Yeah.
Jiggy, what about you, buddy?

Cause we've talked a lot about,
you know, through episodes, obviously the 64, but we've
talked about your experience with Dreamcast and PlayStation
and obviously Switch and stuff too.
But like you're, you know, did you, do you have AGBA?
Did you, What's the deal with that for you?
Oh, absolutely.

I had a let me go back, OK?
I had a Game Boy Pocket first.

I had a red Game Boy Pocket.
I never got the first generation of Game Boy.
I was a little too young for that, Yeah.
I had a red all of them.

It's ridiculous.
Didn't I have that?

I had a red Game Boy Pocket with
Pokémon Blue, and that was epic.

And then I upgraded to the
purple Game Boy Color.

That was the atomic purple
translucent.

Yeah.
And then I got the translucent light blue Game Boy Advance,
which I think it's somewhere in a box here.
I don't have it on display because it's broken.
It does not work anymore unfortunately.
I do have my SP sitting on the shelf back here at a blue SP
Sort of similar story.

The reason why my old Game Boy
Advance doesn't work is because hand me downs to little brothers
and little brothers destroy everything.
He destroyed the DS.

He just shout out to my brother.
Thank you.

Thank you for ruining my value.
I do have a really cool, I bought this from a guy who had
it custom built or whatever, or it's just like a IPS screen.
Well, he bought it for himself and I was just like, sure, I'll
buy it from you when he wanted to get rid of it.
So it's pretty cool, Really nice looking screen.
Love reliving some of the GBA classics on it.
But yeah, I this convenient silver case here.
I did not treat my Game Boy games well, and to this day I
still do not treat them well.

So you're not gonna see any good
complete Inbox copies.

And this is how I stored all my
Game Boy games.

And this is not all of them.
Some of them my brother has.

For anyone who's not seeing
this, it's just he's opening a briefcase as if it's a stack of
cash from the fucking Sopranos or something.
I was gonna say that.

No, that, that's the that's the
briefcase from Pulp Fiction or

Pulp.
Fiction.

The one that Travolta opens and
the light shines, it's 'cause he was seeing that value of Game
Boy games.

Oh yeah, with cheese in here.
That's a lot of games, too.

That thing's got some depth to
it, that box.

Oh yeah, it's stacked.
And there's some games like floating around, like on the
back.

Shelf and stuff to you.
So nice.

They're hard.
They are hard to store.

It's it's a, it's a problem.
Yeah.

A. 100%, especially the GBA
ones, they're so they're so tiny.
Like, yeah, like I before the switch was an issue, it was
this, you know for sure.

Josh, let's go to you buddy.
What's the What's the GBA experience for you?
Sure.

So I didn't have much of an
experience back when it was a contemporary.
When it, when it was contemporary, excuse me, the GBA
was a weird one for me because

I, I don't think this perception
is correct, but my perception of it growing up was that it was
kind of the handheld that people forgot about because the Game
Boy was huge and right.

And then what was it?
The GBA came out in 2001 and then three years later the DS
was out.

So like you have this very short
span of time that the GBA was a thing, relatively speaking.
And if you think about it, because what was it?
The 3DS came out what, 2000 and 2011?
2011, So you had so there.

That's a seven-year gap between
the DS and 3DS.

The original Game Boy if you
count the Game Boy Color and

Pocket in the different
iterations, even though the color is a little bit of a step
up from the original.

Either way, came out in 89 and
you're looking at it like a 12 year gap between the original
Game Boy and it's technically it's full on successor, not the
half step which was the GB.

Which was the color.
So it's the Game Boy Advance to me always felt like the handheld
that people just for that time forgot, right?
That people just don't remember.

When you look at it on a
calendar like that, it completely makes sense.
Like, I get what you mean, yeah.

Because by the time I like I, I
was aware of it.

I had friends that had it, I had
friends that play had like the

Final Fantasy Origins collection
that you could get for it.

Yeah, what?
Donna Souls 1 and 2.

Yep, Donna Souls and they also
obviously Golden Sun which shout out to later on this year.
I have to cover that game for my backlog month.
So there you go, I've been.

Playing through gold, the first
Golden Sun game.

Thank God for.
I mean, I actually do have the original Game Boy Advance copy
of it, but I'm playing it on the

Switch, so that way I can it's a
little, it's backlit and I can put headphones in because I only
have an SP.

So the SP does not have a
headphone Jack.

Yeah, dumb.
Feature that is so stupid, so stupid it's even at that time.
Considering when it came out, yeah.
And just since Jiggy had a visual prop, I It's not a Game
Boy Advance game.

I wish I had one within reach.
I have a Game Boy Color game made by a buddy of mine that
keep it came.

Out amazing that.
Looks that looks really cool.

Bobo Escape for the Game Boy
Color.

Shout out to my buddy Gabe Swore
who made this game.

Nice.
Is that like a puzzle game?

Yeah, it's like a it's like a
puzzle, that platformer.

It's basically you play as this
little cannon named Bobo.

He shoots bubbles.
The puzzle of it is that he is always, he, he is always
shooting no matter what.

And you only have a certain
number of bubbles in each level.

So you have to look at the level
and then figure out where to move bubbles.
So that way when did the when the shot comes next?
Because it it comes on at a the same rhythm, same interval every
single, you know, every second or so.
Then you have to take out the full enemy.
It's actually really it's really fun.
It's almost like an actual tiger in a way.
That's kind of cool.

Yeah, I'm looking at it.
It's it's on itch dot IO and it's 5 bucks.
Oh shit.

Beauty.
Yeah.

James, a good dude, he's been
on, he's been on my podcast before, Really nice guy.
He also, just to give him some more cred that he he already
shipped a game, which is cool, but he was the executive
producer of the Animaniacs reboot that came out on Hulu a
couple years ago.

Nice.
Yeah, anything Animaniacs I.

Completely forgot about that.
I watched it.

It's actually really good.
It is good.

I'm digressing.
So I just figured I'd share that as a visual prop.
Also give my buddy Gabe some much needed love.
He actually had another game in the Bobo series come out called
Oh my gosh, I'm I'm blanking on the name.
I'll look it up while I'm finishing my story of the GBA.
But yeah, so my experience with the GBA was pretty much non
existent and it's Bobo Burst that is the newest scheme that
just came out just earlier this year anyway.
So yeah, the GB AI didn't really have too much of and in general,
handhelds for me have been a blind spot until the last like
four or five years.

Like I owned a lot.
I owned a Game Boy Advance.

Not none of it was actually
contemporary.

I always bought them used well
after they were released.

Right.
Game Boy I got after its life cycle is over.
GBA.

Same thing the DSI got during
its life cycle, but I never fucking played it until after
its life cycle.

The only handheld that I
actually played during their actual life cycle were the Vita
and the 3DS, and even then I barely touched it and it wasn't
until I started podcasting that

I really sat down.
I'm like, OK, let me dive into this.
And I've been enjoying it ever since.
So the GB AII when you said like, hey, we're looking for
guests to talk about GBA game.

I'm like, that is one of the
consoles I've played the least.

So I will look for any excuse to
dive in and try out some new things.
Though I guess full Full disclosure, I did not play any
Banjo pilot mean because I didn't have time and honestly
I'm not a cart racing fan so I will I will keep my opinions a
little bit lower on that one.

I have lots to say though, about
Grunty's Revenge, which we'll get to Nice.
It's not a racing game, it's a flying game.
Yeah, it's, it's not a cart game, it's a plane game.
Yeah, cart games are for babies.

This is the.
Same how?

This is a cart in the sky.
And somehow your plane still goes slower over grass.
I was going to say that.

Really long grass, OK, really
long grass it.

And there's a turbulence on this
grass here.

Calling someone to cut your
grass in this economy?

Come on.
Can I ask the price of grass?

Can I ask what has everyone
given their GBA history?

Thrac has not.
Thrac has not yet.

Thrac has not.
OK, can I add just what are some of your favorite games?
Josh, before we move forward,

I'd love to hear everyone's
favorite, like if you have like a top GBA game, if you have one
that you just like.

I love this.
Typically.

Do you have any?
Barely client on these.

Yeah, I.
Barely put.

I can't even say what my
favorite would be.

So Banjo's grunty's revenge?
Grunty's Revenge.

Out of the ones I've beaten,
yes, because it's the only one I think I've fully beaten.
Right.

Yeah, well, happy to help, man.
Happy to help.

That's the title of this
episode, Josh's favorite GBA game.
Yeah.

I fucking hate grass it's so
coarse and turbulency.

Turbulent turbulency I like gets
everywhere.

It gets everywhere.
It gets everywhere.

All these things clipping.
Thrack, let's let's go to you then let's let's talk about your
experience and then those like games that might be your.
Favorite so so I fucking love the Game Boy Advance.
I'm a big GBA guy.

I got AGBA again early 2000s
when it was new 'cause back back when I was growing up, there was
this kid who always used to, so my mom would like babysit for
like random kids.

So there's always like a group
of us hanging out.

And one of them, she brought her
like original GBA and she had like Mario Advance and I think
there was some like Tom and

Jerry game, The Infernal Escape.
We played those a bunch and I was like, this Game Boy Advance
thing's pretty fucking cool 'cause I had a Game Boy, I had a
Game Boy Pocket, I had like

Tetris plus Kirby's Dreamland 2
Solar Striker.

So I had Pokémon Red, but I've
never really been a big Pokémon guy.
So even though I I played Red a bunch, it just never made me
like a Pokémon guy.

But so I had the pocket, I still
have my yellow Game Boy pocket around here somewhere.
And then I got a GB ASP with, I know I got Kingdom Hearts Chain
of Memories and there's like an

Incredible Hulk game and some
other stuff.

And I played the shit out of
that GBA and so much that when the DS came out I was pissed.
I was like, how dare you

Nintendo, drop my favorite
handheld for this new bullshit thing.
Exactly.

That was just a kid.
So I never got ADS until many years later out of protest.
I was one of the only people I think, in the world that never
had ADS.

Ever.
I have never.

I really, I eventually got one.
I eventually got one many years later and messed around with it
and it's really fun, yeah.

I did 3DS a few years after it
came out, but I never had a DS.

Yeah.
Well you can play DS games on the 3DS so and if you homebrew
your 3DS you can just load DS games on an SD card and which is
what I do but but yeah.

But The thing is they were still
making GBA games well past the

DS launch.
Like even up to like I think it was like 2008 they were still
making GBA games like Minish Cap came out like when the DS was a
thing.

So because Nintendo was smart
dropping the DS as early as it did because had the DS flopped,
they could have sold it as AGBA because it had the GBA slot and
could have kept supporting the

GBA.
So really it was like they were in a no lose situation.
So that helped.

But quite a few years ago I
started collecting for the GBA.

So there's like these three tubs
here that are basically full of

GBA games.
There's like hundreds of them in there.
Like I have I have some complete inbox.
I have some with the the the retro game cases.
If you guys have seen that for like handheld games, those are
really cool.

And also I have every model of
the Game Boy Advance.

So we'll we'll do some visuals.
Hey.

Yeah, that's what I have.
Yeah, yeah, it, it's still, I believe it still works.
Let me turn the thing on.

Yeah, it's.
It still works.

The beautiful color of the.
Screen console but the screen like we put up with this.
Yeah, it's so dark.

People need to talk about this
because versus even the gay boy color, it was darker.
Darker, yeah.

It was hard, like you'd hold it
against the light.

And that's why so many early
games have like a really washed out color palette so you could
see them, but they did the the

SP This is the SP001.
Mine is dead at the moment.

I just need to charge it.
So there are two different versions of the SP.
There's the the 001 AGS and then there's this one which is the
AGS one O 1, which is a so.

So basically what it is is the O
1 is a front lit screen and the one O 1 is a back lit screen.
So the.

Front lit.
That's right.

Basically the way to describe
it, it's like the square is like a light ring.
It's like they built a worm light into it so you could see
it and it's it's perfect.

Like along the frame like a.
Yeah, yeah.

And it and it works.
It's not amazing but it works and you can get these for like
pretty cheap.

Even the original models you can
get for pretty cheap and mod them but the one O ones have
like a complete backup screen.

Mine actually is still working.
You can see even through the camera.
That looks nice.

Yeah.
Oh, it just died immediately, these things.
Do, but even just the Game Boy

Woo.
Well they don't hold charges anymore.
I bought like a new battery for this.
It's still as a whole charge, but yeah.
So the one O 1 is pretty good.

I see why people don't care for
the form factor, but I'm used to it and I have kind of tiny
hands, so it's fine.

And Speaking of tiny hands, I do
have a Game Boy micro.

Don't ask how, don't ask what I
paid for this too much money.

But honestly, like it.
It is small, but the screen is really nice.
Like it's small, but it's like the brightness and the
definition is really good.

You can, it has like 10
different levels of adjustment, adjustment.
And if you have tiny, Yeah.

And if you have tiny hands like
me, it goes for the OG form factor.
And it's actually not terrible.

I've messed around with it
enough and it's mine doesn't work any.
The R button is broken so.

Does it have a headphone Jack?
Yes, it does.

What?
A What a great.

Idea.
You can't play Game Boy or Game

Boy Color games on this guy.
You can only play advanced.

But I mean if you see if you
have to see how small this thing is to to.
It's so.

It's.
So I do have Agba cart with me, not to show off, but it's a Oreo
Sorrow, one of my favorite

Castlevania games.
And yeah, like that's the size of it compared to the console.
Exactly.

It's the size of two games.
Yeah, basically, in fact, In fact, that guy was sitting in
this little guy, the GB Operator by Epilogue, which is basically
a little epilogue epilogue.

So basically it's a little Game
Boy, Game Boy Color, Game Boy

Advance thing that you can just
plug it into your PC via USB and you can just play games, Game
Boy games on your computer.

You can like backup saves,
download saves.

It even can check to see if your
games are like, you know, fake or not, which is really cool.
In fact, I have a fake GBA game right here, Doom, Doom 'cause I,
yeah, though I did get my money back on it.
The guy was nice about it 'cause

I, I've learned how to detect
fakes.

But yeah, there's that.
And then also I have an analog pocket, so and that's, that's a
nice way to play them as well.

Like people usually complain
about how shallow the cartridge slot is, and it is, but for GBA
games, it's not too bad.

I mean, it's so small, but like
if you put something else in there, it'll be a little iffy.
Like like I have the Game Gear adapter 'cause I'm also a game
Gear collector.

That's another story.
Yeah, I'm trying to get all the game gear, the Game Gear
library.

I'm like 42%.
Is the game?

Is the Game Gear library made-up
of 17,000 batteries or is it actually games?
Well, I play it on this guy just because my Game Gear quit out on
me.

But yeah, yeah, the Game Gear's
a whole nother thing, but.

There's a has the most half,
yeah.

But there's a lot of really cool
Game Gear games, so bring me back on.
We talk Game Gear.

I don't F man forget we get get
some Sega crossovers there we.

Go, but I also have the e-reader
for the GBA.

Oh, I had a buddy.
Out of those.

Yeah, and I and I have a set, I
have a set of the Mario Advance for Mario 3 cards.
And I've done the thing where you put this guy in the in the
SP, you put the game in the other SP, you link cable to
them, you swipe the card.

Really stupid, but I did it just
to make myself happy.

So so on my gravestone it'll say
I did the thing.

And then I also have the the
little wireless adapter thing.

Yeah I found one for like 5
bucks so I've been meaning to get the.
Never owned, but I've like used at some point because of a
friend.

So it's like kind of cool.
It's like a little trip down memory lane.
I'll be like, Oh yeah, I remember that.
Yeah.

And So what I want to do it, and
what I want to do at some point is find a way to display all the
GBA models just to be like a three.
D Printed, sort of like little shelf or whatever, yeah.
But yeah, favorite GBA games.

I could go on, but Metroid
Fusion, my favorite Metroid game, the Advanced Wars games,
Mario Advance 4.

Let's see, there's a game called
Medal of Honor.

What's the medal?
Infiltrator.

Yes, that game is really fucking
cool.

Final Fantasy Tactics.
Which one's Mario Advance 40?

That's Mario Brothers.
That's Mario Three.

Yeah.
I'm just, I'm just looking at my game, Mother Mother Three.
I do have a physical of Mother 3.
It's funny I I forgot this might be on your list, Toothrack.
I did actually play one other

Game Boy Advance game and I feel
like an idiot because I literally just covered it for
Mario Month this year.

Mario and Luigi Superstar
soccer.

Oh.
Yeah, that's a That is a great game.
I've beaten it.

I hate the final boss battle,
but the rest of the game is fantastic.
Oh yeah, it's all.

If anyone is curious, you can
listen to my episode.

I was.
Pissed.

Yeah, yeah.
Minish Cap, Golden Sun, all the

Final Fantasy ports are great.
The Tony Hockey games are really good on GBA.
Yeah, I have two.

I think.
I think I have.

I have Tony act two.
Yeah, it's good.

It is.
Warioland 4, one of my greatest achievements the the the first
two Warioware games 'cause you have the original, then you have
twisted, which is like the weird, like they put a gyroscope
in the in the cartridge so you like turn it around.
It's really cool.

I do have it all the Castlevania
games for it, the Fire Emblem games for it, the Sonic Advance
trilogy.

Well, the first two Sonic
Advance 3 is kind of but Astro

Boy Omega factor that is a
fantastic game.

Oh, I heard that was good.
I've never.

It's made by treasure and it is.
It's pretty fucking good.

I, I, I could, I could go, I
could go on and on about GBA.

Yeah, that was a pretty
extensive list.

I I.
And also Clinoa.

OK, that's what I was.
Waiting I have.

A what?
A segue.

Empire dreams, that's the one.
Two favorite Game Boy titles arguably or GBA titles are
Clinoa, Empire Dreams.

I played that game tons, loved
it.

I also really enjoyed Mega Man
Battle Network as a series.

I loved 4 Red Sun in particular.
I remember getting it for

Christmas.
I just freaking loved it. 5 was also very good.
Wasn't super into 6 but four and five were like my favorite.
Yeah, I wasn't into those games.

I wasn't.
I had to really get into Mega

Man till like a couple years
ago, so those completely passed me by.
I was always more of a

Castlevania guy.
I like him but I'm so bad.

At them Battle Network, if you
haven't played it, it's like a it's like an RPG with like a
weird like.

That's what I heard.
I.

Don't even know how to describe
the battle system.

It's it's like you move on like
6 tactical squares.

Is it?
Turn based?

I don't even know if it's not
turn based.

It's not turn based, OK.
It's kind of a really weird battle system, but it focuses on
like chips and powering up your character.
And then like, it's, it's, I like that Cool.
It's unique.

It's different.
Yeah, it's fun.

The problem was they made way
too many of them way too fast.

They made like 6 of them in like
3 years.

Yeah, you just like list it off.
Yeah, 456 were great.

I was like, wait, there was a
there was a 123.

Like what the fuck?
Honestly, they could have kept making them into.
Like the three DFS if they spaced them out correctly,
right?

Yeah.
Right.

They could have kept.
They'd probably still be making them.
They are.

They are making them.
I think they are.

No, they did the collection.
Oh collection which?

The DS had #5 it had it did like
basically so they made they tried to do like a Pokémon thing
or they did like 2 versions and then the DS made the IT just
skipped 6/6 was only GBA and then they put 5 on DS and they
made it like a double pack.

So it was like 1 cartridge that
had both games, Team Proto man,

Team Colonel.
And the DS version was actually pretty dope, I'm not going to
lie.

But that was like the last raw
of Battle Network, yeah.

They're really cool doing
everything mega band they could.

Now they're like Mega Who?
Who who's that?

Yeah, really.
I know my on that.

Legends Collection.
My my top ones actually two of them I actually really only
played fairly recently or at least within the last decade,
which for me is recent considering when I got the GBA
like you said thrack when it came out, that's when I had a 2
and I never owned these games growing up.
But Minish Cap became one of my favorite Zelda games of all time
when I played that it's.

One of my.
Favorites too.

Yeah, it's fantastic.
And that's a quintessential sort of, for me anyway, GBA art
style.

There's something special about
the way that the sprites look on the GBA and stuff, and that is
like exactly the feel and the look that I've I always think of
when I think of the GBA.

It just captured it in such a
great way in a Zelda title, which is awesome.
I like how I like how they took the Wind Waker.
Like yes.

Character designs and made them
2D.

Aesthetic.
That's pretty much.

What I love the Wind Waker
aesthetic so making it in 2D like perfect fit.
Yeah, exactly.

You mentioned fusion.
I actually prefer 0 mission over fusion.
Maybe that's just. 0 mission is great yeah, I love me some 0
mission, but Fusion I I play that game like once a year.
It's just it's a very special game for.
Me, well, it's, it's great.

And I, I didn't play either of
those until, until recently, like I think I played Minish
Cap, 0 Mission and Fusion all probably within the same year,
like about two, maybe three years ago.
So and 0 Mission, for some reason, I don't know, whatever,
just click with me better.

And then one of my favorite
games.

Yeah.
And then one of my favorite games of all time, which I've
mentioned numerous, numerous times here.
And I do think the Game Boy

Color version is better because
it's simpler, but like the simplification of it is almost
better.

But that's the Mario Golf games.
So Mario Golf Advance tour is amazing.
I think the the sort of one for

Game Boy Color is just like the
the the dial down just a touch and that sort of hits that sweet
spot in my opinion for just for me.
So and those those like you say you, you played Fusion like
every year at both Mario Golf games I could pick up and.
Here here here it custom game cases.
Sorry, I got it wrong.

Yeah, I I have the manual in it.
It's really nice there.

You go, yeah.
So those, those are it for me.

So.
But but the the GBA Mario golf game you can you can golf with
Golden Sun characters.

Golf with golden Sun characters
well.

Because Camelot made it, and
they're the exact same character model.
They're also the same character models that are used in Shining
Force Three 'cause they made that for the.
Oh, are they really?

Yes, it's don't let me start on
shining force.

Not this time.
There's a really good GBA remake of the first game of the first
Shining Force though.

Yeah, it's very expensive.
Don't buy it.

I will not, don't worry, I will
not.

That's all I had to hear.
OK, let's get to 1 of the two games.
What are we talking about again?

One of the two games that we're
going to be talking about.

Let's start with it's playing
here for the last several minutes since we've been talking
about the GBA, let's talk about

Banjo Kazooie, Grunty's revenge,
who wants to put their hand up first for their experience if
they had any previous and how it went this last couple weeks for
them.

I'm going to wait a little bit
'cause I'm very curious to see what, what people thought of
this.

So Josh, let's go with you
buddy, because you, you said you made your way all the way
through it and don't have a ton of GBA experience, which is a
little bit of a, a, a unique sort of approach.
I think like when it comes to these games, 'cause I just
honestly, I just automatically assume that people have played
the GBA forever, so.

You know, I, I, yeah.
So those, this is my first time playing it.
I will say I'm overall like if, if, if I had to give my overall
vibe to it, overall feeling to it.
I enjoyed my time with the game.

I thought overall it was a
pretty fun experience.

It was a really good, like
Dylan, not delineation, but a really good porting of the Banjo
Kazooie 3D Platformer

Collectathon to a 2D world and a
2D view viewpoint, kind of isometric ish, a little bit too,
a little bit, because you do play with that, you do play with
height a little bit with this.

So I thought it was a pretty
good distillation.

That's the word I.
Was looking for.

Big words.
Like that.

I like that.
That was, that was.

Today's word is distillation.
Today's letter is D.

Installation.
D baby no, it's it's a good distillation of a 3D formula
that we that for those who like the original Banjo Kazooie and
Banjo Tubi games, it's a pretty good distillation of that.
It it they honestly do a really good job of taking a lot of
mechanics from 3D and finding a way to make them work on a 2D
game pad, you know, with just AD pad A&B buttons and then the
bumpers and or the LNR.

Where it kind of falls apart is
I think when they start adding the different egg types because
as kazoo you can get like fire eggs and ice eggs and that kind
of stuff.

And that's a little tedious,
especially considering there is a segment of the final boss
where you have to cycle through depending on what type of enemy
you're facing determines what type of eggs you need to defeat
the little sub enemies.

And that's a pain in the butt to
cycle through those in the game, it's not so much of a problem
because they don't make you do stuff with a really intensive
time limit.

Like these guys are bearing down
on you in the in the boss fight.

So you don't have a lot of time.
You have to cycle through quickly and hope that you don't
get hit just or and hope that you do it fast enough or you
have to stop, run away from them and then just continue to cycle.
And that's a bit of a pain in the butt.
So overall it was a good distillation.
Where I think it falters the most is its perspective.
It's 2 1/2 D isometric perspective.
It is God damn impossible to see like height on this because of
the way they designed the pixel art, specifically the pixel art.
Excuse me, the especially you had it up on the screen a little
bit ago, Dave, the underwater segments, it is like there is no
visual indication that you're supposed to really swim through
holes in the coral.

You you figure it out like you
are able to figure it out.

So I will give them that, but I
don't think it's really well broadcasted.
It's not intuitive.

It's not intuitive.
It's not.

Yeah, that's the better.
Yeah, It's not intuitive.

Distillation, intuition.
There we go.

Yeah.
So it it's not intuitive in the slightest.
And they also make it because of that same issue with how they
design the world.

The world on in this 2D plane,
there's some jumps that you make that you think you're going to
make but you don't because of the perspective.
So it's biggest issues for me were that perspective.
And I don't know if you want me to go off on a 20 minute rant,
but I can.

The final boss is fucking
bullshit.

We'll we'll get there cuz I
think there's lots, there's lots to talk about.
We'll get there.

Yeah, yeah.
Threats.

Go ahead, buddy.
What's your?

What's your or?
Sorry, Josh.

I used a save state.
The last thing I was gonna say it's the only time I used a save
state in the entire playthrough was literally I used a save
state.

I literally used a save state
right before right after you climb up the tower and right
before you enter into the boss because to put out those fucking
fires to shoot a fucking egg and trying to fucking hole so you
can fucking and fucking jump up the fucking thing.
And I just.

Fucking hate.
So yeah, sorry, just go.

On.
Oh man, and then the boss itself was a pain, which we'll get to,
but I that's the only time I used to save state and then I
died so many times to the boss anyway.
Then I started save stating in the middle of it 'cause I just
didn't care anymore.

I'm like, I've already proven I
can get to this with this level and actually relatively
consistently.

I don't feel like doing this
again and again and again when

I've already proven I can get to
this.

So I normally I don't count save
stating as like like oh I beat the game if I did it like no no
issue if someone else does.

I just can't do it for myself.
This time I did because I thought this was more of just
wasting my time than actually testing me on something.
But.

That's fair.
Anyway, that's fair.

And a mini rant.
I will re rant when we get to the boss.
Thrac, go for it buddy.

What was your sort of, was this
the first time you played it and so.
IIA 100% of this game a couple years ago.
Yeah, I I did everything.

I, I don't know what propelled
me to do it, but I did.

And so yeah, I messed around
with it a little bit again just to re familiarize myself and,
and yeah, I was, I was surprised at how well they were able to
take like a, a 3D platformer and convert it to a quasi like 2.5.
It's like the top down Zelda perspective.
But they're still using like, you know, 3D character models
for Banjo and all that.

And they look really good.
And yeah, they were somehow able to make a platforming game from
that perspective, which kind of worried me.
And there are definitely some depth reception issues,
especially if you're trying to jump up onto something.
But I found when I was playing it, the more I played it, the
more I got used to it and kind of learned how they judge
height, you know, so you can just kind of adapt your brain a
little bit.

And yeah, there's like a lot of
mini games in this as well.

Like arguably too many, like all
the fishing and like the quiz answering and all that other
stuff, but I found myself enjoying the game overall.
You know, it it, it was a pretty solid and interesting experience
as a way of converting Banjo

Kazooie to the Game Boy Advance.
Well, I was saying, yeah, it's the only Banjo game I've beaten,
so I have limited.

I've never played Banjo Tooie
ever.

I've been I've played a bit of
Banjo Kazooie off and on on N64 and I like it.
In some ways I like it more than

Mario 64, but other ways I
don't.

And then Nuts and Bolts I do not
like at all.

It's I I have very, very little.
Experience with that?

Yeah, yeah, it's really.
Like it I I know people who love that game.
I got to, I got to give it another shot.
They love it for like specific reasons, you know, reasons that
I understand.

But like when I played it, I'm
like, this isn't what I wanted.

Right, right.
That's, I think that's that.

I think that's largely that's
the issue.

I think that's like the overall,
like disappointment with it.

It's like, oh, this is not what
I wanted or needed or expected or whatever at the time.
So, yeah, Jiggy, I feel like I,

I don't know if you're going to
say this is this is awesome or you're going to say, or if
you've played this before before now, or if you're going to say
this is the worst decision they could have ever done and bring
you back to the 64.

I really don't know where you're
going to sit with this.

So what?
What do you think?

Well, First off, I just want to
say like nuts and bolts is fine.

I don't think it's fantastic,
but I, I, I feel like I've been,

I've been going through like
it's not that bad guys.

But you're right, it's not Banjo
3.

But I also thought it was
interesting that you said that after you said you never played
Dewey.

So I'm like, OK, I love the
banjo series.

Obviously I did play this one
growing up.

I did not beat it growing up.
I found it really hard and like kid me struggled to get through
it.

Yeah, there's some tough spots
with this in terms of like puzzles and whatnot.
Sorry to cut you off but I could see how totally like I could see
I I had to use a a walkthrough in some spots just cuz I'm like
I don't feel like aimlessly wandering for like 20 minutes
just to find another goddamn piece of a puzzle.
I remember Banjo Kazooie.

Oh my gosh, that's another
thing.

We'll talk about that some other
time, then we.

Can.
Talk about it.

Yeah.
There you go.

Yeah, yeah, let's do it.
It.

It plays good.
I think, like what they were saying.
I thought it translated pretty well.
The game mechanics that I'm familiar with, you know, Banjo
felt like Banjo the world feels very Banjo Yi.
Honestly, if I was going to play it for something though, I'd be
playing it for like the little lore and like just one point,
the story, like 1.5.

I think that's pretty cool.
This takes place in between

Banjo Kazooie and Banjo Tooie.
What I can't stand about it is the fact that you have moves
like the drill PEC and I'm just like, OK, that's the move we
learned in Tui, but we get in

Grunty's Revenge and Banjo just
doesn't know it and you need it in TUI like it to save your like
Goldfish Royston.

It's like, I don't know, it's
like little things like that.

It's sort of like kind of broke
up consistency between the games, which it's not that big
of a deal.

It's a lore thing.
It's a lore thing I get.

It it's a lore.
Thing and it came out after TUI, didn't it?
Yes.

Yeah, OK.
Both these both these GBA games said yeah.
They probably just forgot.

Yeah, Prayer does that
sometimes.

It's it's cool.
I like it.

It's not my favorite Banjo game.
Obviously.

There's some things I like.
I like how you can go to Mumbo because Mumbo's happening right
now.

I like you can go to Mumbo and
you can actually pick what transformation you want.
I thought that was a really cool mechanic.
So it's like, I do like that you could, you could be a different
transformation in a different level and you know, you need to
do that.

I think that's really neat.
I love just how all the characters and everything looks.
I think like looks wise, I'm really impressed with this GBA
title.

I think it's really cool.
I did have the same depth perception issues like it was,
it was frustrating.

At some points you really have
to rely on your shadow, so you kind of gauge 1 landing on
something, which is nothing new to 3D platformers, but in a 2D
platformer?

Weird.
I'll.

Give them credit, they tried to
make the the shadow as dynamic as possible when you're going up
and down like they tried to make up for.
It that's true, it's not just like a flat always the same
shape or whatever.

Yeah, that's true.
They tried, yeah.

Yeah, yeah.
So I sit, I sit somewhere in the middle.
I I, I don't think it's bad.

I don't think it's great.
I think it's it's OK to good and it's a fun experience, but I
definitely like I'm probably not going to replay it.
That's where I'm at, yeah.

I also think that the voice
acting gets under my skin very easily if I have to hear like
like I know that in Banjo

Kazooie and Tui and even like
DK64, they kind of have that same type of like voice cadence
like the the the voice sounds for some reason that doesn't.
Bother me as much, thank.

You on the N64 as it does on
this This one really like graded my nerves.
Like, real bad.

Yeah, I like it.
I like that.

Probably.
That's probably the sound or the lack of AGBA sound, yeah, which
I can understand, yeah.

And I, I think there's also a
memory thing.

So like, there's fewer
iterations of the gibberish.

Yeah.
So they're working with less.

And I think they're also like,
just, I mean, that's no stranger to the banjo series, just like
pitching slightly different versions of the same.
I honestly, I turn on the music just to hear the stage like one
or two times and then I play it on mute.
That's how.

I played so did did Grant Kirko
work on this?

I I doubt he.
Did no, I don't think so.

I don't not neither of these
titles.

He was he was a part of it was
this was that's fair.

So what's interesting too about
this is that it's right at the time and and I think it was this
one specifically or was it pilot?
I don't remember.

I think it was this one
specifically where it was supposed to come out a year
before and it just took kind of a while to get going.
And then what happened was it was right.
This got released right when

Microsoft bought Rare.
So there was a lot of internal and external sort of bullshit
going on that.

Yeah, probably.
Published a lot of.

Changes.
Yeah, this was published by THQ.

THQ.
And there's a handful of GBA games that Rare made that are
published by THQ because

Microsoft allowed that because
they weren't going to publish on

Nintendo systems, at least not
yet.

Not yet.
Yeah.

So there was.
Yeah, that there was the Sabre

Wolf remake.
The banjo pilot is also THQ so.

And it's Mr. Pants, which
people, a lot of people forget, is a rare game.
Yeah.

Exactly.
Yeah.

So this this actually started as
a GB color title, Yes.

And it sort of trans
transitioned into it and banjo pilot just to like piggyback
into that was actually supposed to be Diddy Kong racing.
I don't know if it was supposed to be Diddy Kong Racing 2 and I
got.

Pilots.
It's just what?

They call it Transition.
I thought it started off as

Diddy Kong Racing 2 and then
Transition did pilot and then they switched to Banjo and I.
Switched don't remember the

Yeah, they I have a couple notes
written down about they switched the banjo because I thought that
it was Microsoft, that they didn't have the rights to the
Nintendo characters, so they had to find another way to
Microsoft, Microsoft.

Was like, totally for them
making GBA titles, by the way.

Yeah, because they were just,
they just didn't have a handheld.
And they're like, sure.

Yeah.
Like, great.

Why wouldn't you take take
advantage of that chance when you have it right?
Because they.

Didn't have another I think.
I think they flirted with the idea of making a handheld in the
360 era but it never really came to be.
But there is that one that's supposedly coming either this
year or sometime next year.

Sometime in the next couple
years, I'll, I'll, yeah, I'm interested.
Nah.

I'm too Nah.
I I'm curious how about this?

I'm curious how.
About this, I'm curious too.

I mean I'm an Xbox guy so I'm
curious.

I love my game Pass.
That's that.

So I'm curious just because of
that alone.

So I.
Like your controller.

I have game pass as well.
Yeah, but I would just put game pass on a Switch too.
Let's just do it.

Or just steam back.
They tried.

They tried it.
Didn't work out what was I going to say oh I was going to say I I
am pretty much I think we're all kind of in agreement with with
how this game is is it amazing no.
Do they do a decent job yes.

Is it does it feel the best that
every point and all the puzzles and the depth perception no,
there's some issues with that and it's there's a lot of that's
just limitation of the hardware.

It's hard to sort of translate
that I do think that I didn't have that much of a problem with
the depth stuff, but it's only certain points where I was like
this is ridiculous like this.

This Cliff above me looks
exactly the same as what I'm standing on.
How would I how could I possibly know that this is above me or
below me?

This is this is stupid.
The the difference of where it works no problem is like what
we're seeing right now on the screen with like spiral mountain
and stuff.

It's easy to see because you
know, the walls are brown and the ground is green for grass
and it's just you just know, right?
And that's totally fine.

But otherwise, there's a lot of
points where you just run into it and you're just like, well, I
don't understand how you could have possibly done that so.
It's funny because the the, the level that's on screen right now
is one of the levels with, with the worst instances of that,
with the freaking in the Bayou with the docks and stuff.
Like there's a section down in the southern part of the dock
that like you can't.

I genuinely could not tell that
I was going to be able to jump high enough to reach it, but you
can.

But it just, it doesn't, it
feels like when you do your, your, you know, your crouching
high jump, it doesn't feel like

I would be able to reach it, but
you can.

And it's it's very hard to
really kind of gauge that, which is frustrating.
Yeah.

The interesting part is that
like the shadow thing that we were talking about is present
for you, but it's often not present for the platforms.
So you.

Yes, you.
Can't really like there's some sometimes you'll see the, you
know, the, the legs of whatever you're you're trying to jump on
or off in front of you and that's fine.
But if you're kind of at the at the back of it, you can't really
tell.

So it yeah, it looks like you
can just walk right onto it.

No, but no.
Instead I'm just walking into like, you know, poison.
Essentially, and you know, one that one thing I when you're
talking about how like, you know, this game's not great, but
it's it's solid.

It's good, but not bad, but not
great.

It it I've been seeing the
discourse a little bit more recently on blue sky and other
things like that.

But like what is a perfect like
7 out of 10 game?

To me, this is a 7 out of 10
game where it's like it doesn't do anything great, but it's like
it's solid.

It's a real I I'd even give it
like a 7.5 if I was actually grading it on like a out of 10
scale.

But I also usually grade things
a little more lenient than other people.
So like, I don't know, to me this is like a 7 out of 10 game.
Like it's got a lot of solid stuff going for it, but it's
just there.

There's some really weird things
that even like right now, like the mini games are very odd.
Yeah, so if anyone can't see.

It that's what we see on screen.
Just like yeah, the.

Mini games, there's so many of
them I feel like, and I feel like it's excessive.
I think it's just trying to pack because the game's not super
long anyways, so I think it's trying to pack out the
experience and they're just two hours for the yeah and for the
most part, like the mini games just I don't they're not great.
I have.

A question for the four of you
or the three of you.

I have a question for the three
of you in I only saw this one mini game on the final boss.
I don't know if I would have.

I don't think I saw it anywhere
else.

So the mini game that we're
seeing on screen right now, there are no listeners won't be
able to see it.

But essentially you Banjo has a
fishing line.

He casts it at the however long
you hold the cast button determines how far to the bottom
of the screen the line goes.

And then you have to time it
with fishes going across.

But you can't catch crabs
because that'll hurt you.

No, I mean like a real life.
Crabs hurt.

You don't catch crabs.
Kids don't catch crabs.

Don't catch crabs kids, it's not
great.

So I'll give.
You crabs.

Not from any experience or
anything, I'm just it's just a it's just a general knowledge
type thing that's all.

My wife and I have a but no so
the the one mini game though in the final boss they did the same
thing where it was it was like fishes and like crabs but they
were all underground.

You couldn't.
You can't tell.

So I was like already down to
like, so little health.

And I'm like, I want to make
sure.

Was there any visual indication
that you could tell the difference between crabs and
fish when they were fucking under the sand?
So yeah, so this is like sort of like a classic sort of old
school fishing type mechanic where where you just where you
just you, you cast the line like you said.
And there's different sort of like, you know, power to your
cast, I guess for how far you can throw it or something.
Normally you can see, oh, there's the redfish, there's the
green crab catch the redfish, that's the mini game.
But in that in that boss one, they're all underwater and all
you see is like shadows essentially.
There's no difference.

And I look this up and I was
like, is does one move differently?
Is that how you can tell or whatever?
I thought, I thought it was movement stuff.
It's not apparently.

Apparently it is randomized and
that is.

I mean, I'm sure I don't know
this for sure, but I wouldn't be surprised if certain ones are
always a crab, Certain ones are always a fish.
Like you go through it a second time and they're always in the
exact same place.

I don't know that.
And I feel like it gives you more fish than crabs anyways.
It does, but the problem is.

The crabs.
I got 1 fish and like 5 fucking crabs and that must be my life
before I did the save state on the final boss.
So then I had to go and do the whole goddamn thing over again.
Fucking goddamn.

Crab that is maybe it is one of
the that is one of the points that I ended up playing this not
on on the actual GBA and stuff.

That's one of the points where
actually I could be.

The only point is that is that
exact fishing spot where I was like I have to use a safe safe
'cause I have one hit left, one fucking hit left.
So I make one mistake when it's like 5050 chance essentially.
How the fuck am I like it was it's it's a stupid, stupid idea
that that part specifically was so stupid.
Just imagine if that video game was in a 3D Banjo game.
Just imagine.

It's like the big the catfishing
game.

Yeah, yeah.
It's probably it's probably better on mobile phone.
Oh yeah, there.

Is a.
See that?

Version There's a mobile phone
version of this of this.

I didn't know that.
I didn't see.

That my guess is.
My guess is it's.

The same.
My guess is it's the same game but like like engage screen.
Yeah.

Sonic and I was.
Going to say if they I could totally.
It's very like move in a line, collect all the notes in a line.
Like, look it up, it's very interesting.
No thanks.

The fact that it exists is kind
of cool.

Yeah, do that right now.
The other thing that's a little bit of a mini game, which I
thought was a really dumb decision in my mind is some of
the honeycombs that you pick up are a mini game for how much
health you have.

And I thought that was so I
thought it was so stupid.

Like when you pick up one, OK,
it gives you health.

I get that.
That's that's the way it is.

When you pick up the one with a
2O, it gives you two.

OK, cool, that's not bad.
But then there's one where there's a a 10 second timer and
it is randomized across your whole health bar.
And sometimes you can lose health just because you happen
to press A at the exact moment that you weren't quote UN quote
supposed to.

I thought that part of it was
stupid.

The other part where it's like,
you know, it gives you a couple at a time fine, OK, every once
in a while they give you a little extra health great.
Why do why?

And it stops the game.
The whole game just stalls and.

I'll tell you why.
I'll tell you why.

It's a TUI mechanic that should
not have been translated to this game.
I know I I I forgot that that was even a thing.
That was in TUI, yeah.

Yeah, it's in TUI.
Yeah.

Oh no, yeah, I totally.
Forgot it works in TUI though.

It works in TUI because a you
know that it's.

It's a honeycomb that you can
avoid if you don't want to do it, but it seems it's a lot
faster.

It's easier to land on that like
Max health thing.

So if you're in a level where
you're like losing health, it can really help you out.
But it's like totally optional, right?
I feel like in this one you're you need health all the time.
That's true.

Constantly.
Yeah, you are.

You are struggling a lot more
with your health because there's a there's a few points that I
ran into and I don't know, maybe maybe it was just, I couldn't
quite figure it out, but some enemies knock off more health
than others and there's really no way to tell why.
Maybe because they're like different elements or something.
I don't, I don't know what the deal is, but I didn't love that
either.

And then all of a sudden I'm
doing, you know, I'm, I'm just scraping by to get by a stage
that actually really shouldn't be that difficult, right?
Just because of that.

So.
They're also.

Like see, I didn't really
struggle until like the final boss, which is.
Where it gets yeah, I wouldn't say it's just unfair.
It it is pretty unfair.

Yeah, it is pretty unfair.
I I don't know if if struggle's the right word or more just like
an annoyance I think is probably

I could see.
That I mean, I could see that.

When you try to move as fast as
possible and just go collect everything right And you have a
game like what's it called it the level that's like the this,
the oil like spillage, like harbour level.
It's like spill something, right?
No, no, no, not in the original.

That's Rusty Buck Bay.
Don't test my knowledge.

I was gonna say I know that one.
I was like, no.

This.
One spill harbor, maybe that's coming to mind.
It's it's this level that he's like walking up to.
There's a section.

The name bees Spiller's harbor
section with.

Bees.
Yeah, Spiller's Harbor.

There it is.
And the bees take away 2 honeycomb per hit.
And you wanna just quickly, like, run through, hit the
switch that you need to switch, and then there's a timer and you
gotta run, do these shock pad to jump up.
But the bees are hyper aggressive and they come at you
so fast.

You're intended to have the
golden feathers at that point, right?
And they're like, yeah, I walk.

Through them I definitely did
not.

But who's gonna do that?
I can make it right, But you run through and they're just like,
like super fast.

Like way too fast.
There's no way.

There's no way to avoid them.
It's it's impossible.

When Thrack said he 100% and I
was like God damn, he actually did because this is the one.
There's two jiggy pieces that I did not get and that was one of
them.

Because in order to get it, you
have to get the invulnerability feather go over, take out the
bees.

Once the bees are gone then
you're fine until you walk too far off.
Oh, I did.

I did it with them and then they
respond.

So then you then you hit the
switch and then you have to

Sprint over to the gazebo to
like have Tui or sorry, Kazooie, excuse me, do it there long,
like jump to get up top there and then you have the switch
again up there to that.

That'll spawn the jiggy, But
then you have to get over to the spot fast enough.
Yes, and I just couldn't get over to the spot fast enough.
And I didn't feel like doing that same thing over and over
and over.

Again, just.
For a.

That I that I didn't need anyway
because I was already ahead on the jiggy count.
So I just kind of like, I just didn't care.
At some point I just didn't.

Care that that's fine.
I so, So what got me going with with like doing things like that
is I wasn't necessarily trying to 100% it because I mean, we'll
talk about this when we actually talk about Banjo Kazooie itself.
But as of this recording, we have not talked about it yet.
I tried to 100% that game.

And I think I've said this on a
previous episode already.

Maybe it was the Rayman when we
were talking about it where I was only off by like 4 or five
notes and.

I got everything.
Yeah, everything else in the game.
And I was like, I can't, I can't fuck, I can't, I can't.
I don't have time to find this.

It was in the final world and I
was like, there's Four Seasons to go through all these changes,
all this up and I was like, I can't do it.
And this, it was a smaller game and I'm like, I think, I feel
like I could pull it off.

And again, I was only short by
like 3 or 4 notes and I was like, I don't know where the
fuck any of these are.

So I didn't do it.
But I came so close.

I had everything else every
other collectible I had in this game except for that I missed
that.

I have no idea.
Yeah, I.

Have no idea.
Where 100% in this game is a tedious exercise that you should
not have to do.

And don't feel compelled.
Yeah, I did it 'cause I was like, by the time I beat the
game I had I I didn't have that much left 'cause I just just
like to try to get everything I can.
So I was like, and let me just go find it.
And I used to walk through 'cause there was, again, a
couple notes I was missing and like one GPS.
So I got them and I was like sweet and I yeah.
But but to really like hammer home and do it and stuff, you're
right.

I I it's not, you know, you
don't really have to and you don't need it necessarily to
beat the game, right?

Like it, like you just said,
Josh, like you can get to the end doing I don't know what it
is.

Maybe probably 8085% of the
jiggies probably get you there.

And it's probably a similar
number for the notes because the notes you need things for the
moves that you have to give old man Groundhog or whatever.
So old.

Maasai, Maasai.
Yeah, that that's it that that's that's pretty much all you have
to do.

But I, you know what for for a
game that I think could have been like a honestly probably
like a complete disaster, they could have really botched this.
This could have been really messy, really ugly, you know,
because on a handheld, on a, on a system that doesn't quite have
what it needs to do what the original does or the one both
that came before it, this could be really half assed.
That could be something that's really slow, really mucky,
doesn't include all the moves or very many of them at all because
it's easier not to and it's hard to get the sort of depth things
going and the height and all those types of things.
I to me, I think it's still pretty impressive that they
managed to pull it off, largely able to pull it off.
Well, honestly, I think the GBA is a console that has a lot of
like surprisingly competent games like this.
Because I think by the time the

GBA came out, it was people
viewed it as a portable Super

Nintendo so you could have those
quality of games.

Even growing up I thought it was
that because I was like, oh, these are all the games I used
to have for the SNES.

Cool like.
Yeah, and, and also it's also a little bit more powerful as
well, because there's a lot of games that try to do 3D stuff
with varying degrees of success.

There's even PlayStation one
ports on this thing that's range and quality wild.
Yeah.

But but yeah, I think the GBA
was was up for the task and and credit to the the devs for for
making it work, you know, like.

I think so.
It would have been interesting if it was like a side scroller,
but if it was like a side scroller it would probably just
be more linear because a non linear side scroller like this
probably would have been kind of lame, you know, so.
Well, and then like, you know, we talk about like, oh, what's
the expectations of nuts and bolts and stuff at this time,
especially so close to when Tui and and the original came out.
I think if you just did a, a 2D side scroller of this franchise,
it would be like, this is definitely not what I want.
You know, this is definitely not what I expected and it's kind of
disappointing.

So they, they went for it and I,
I agree like you, like you just said, it's, it's impressive.
Yeah, it was a fantastic example of that exact scenario because
Crash Bandicoot had two 2D side scrollers on the GPA and.
They're fantastic, I loved them.

Yeah, like they're great, but
but.

Crash is a more linear game than
Banjo is.

Yes, because, because if you
think about it, the Crash trilogy on PS1, they're just 2D
platformers with a different camera angle.
Yeah, that's.

Right, someone made a joke a
while ago that Crash Bandicoot is what Sonic should have been
for a while.

Like Crash Bandicoot is like a
slowed down version of what

Sonic 3D should have been.
Not 3D Adventure, not Adventure, but like if you think about it
like like what Sonic what I what like the 2D Sonic games thrive
at Crash Bandicoot kind of did first in 3D, not not excuse me,
not before this 2D games.

Obviously I'm just talking about
I'm talking about, but so since

Crash already did it and then I
don't know what they were trying to do with the 3D Sonic games,
dude, I'm not trying to take away from that.
I know a lot of people love them, but like they are not
anything like in terms of tone.

What 2D Sonic games are right,
They're completely different.

For better or worse, whether you
love it or hate it, they're completely different.
Yeah, that's true. 3D Sonic, it went in a different direction,
but I think it was it was trying to evolve the series and kind of
give it.

Its own Oh yeah, no, the the T
it's not a this is not a criticism of any or by any
stretch.

It's literally.
But if you think about like

Crash, it's more of an
observation that I can't even take credit for.
I heard it on Retronauts and I kind of agree with their take
where if you just think about

Crash Bandicoot, they just took
2D Sonic, move the camera behind

Sonic and then there you go.
That's and slowed it down.

It's much slower than a Sonic.
Yeah, I was gonna say my only contention is that game does not
really have an emphasis on speed, and it definitely wants
you to collect things more where

Sonic isn't necessarily about.
Using.

I think it's trying to be fast.
I think it's trying to be low.

To be fair, neither does to be
Sonic 2D Sonic.

Their early levels have an
emphasis on speed, but you when you get farther into those
games, you you should not run fast.
You will be killed unless.

It's hard to in my opinion.
Well, it, it could just be my bias, but like, I know those
games so well, I can whip through them pretty quickly
because they're just, they're trial and error.
Like the more you play it and the more you learn the routes
and everything you you have to earn the speed, which I think a
lot of people forget about with

Sonic because they just want to
hit the boost button.

It's hard.
It's hard to.

Do but you have to earn it but.
There's a.

Discrepancy then.
It is a discrepancy.

You have to earn.
Learning speed is the reward.

It's not about speed then.
But I I think speed is better as a reward because if you just
have speed without earning it, it doesn't feel as good.
Then you have games like Sonic

Forces.
I will say though, that Sonic won definitely after Greenhill
like even going into marble marble, well, I'm freaking
marble zone, marble zone, you go in it, it focuses more on the
stop push this box here like it is not focused on speed.
It is focused on platforming and slight puzzle solving, not
complicated puzzles, just simple puzzles.
Sonic 2 and onward a little more open, a little more emphasis on
actually like going through loops.
And like if you look at like the levels themselves and the way
they're laid out, like they focused more on what made Green
Hill great in Sonic 2, like kind of the whole way through.
So I feel like as you progress through the series, there's an
emphasis on more speed than there was.
And then you get Sonic R, which is just the culmination of every
I.

Like the soundtrack?
Oh yeah, we go Super Sonic

Racing.
Oh.

Yeah, sorry I I got us off on a
on a tangent with Sonic talk.

I mean, I could talk.
To you I.

Agree with you, I could talk to
Sonic all day, but I mean Sonic 1 if they if if the zones were
like mixed around a little bit, you know like if you didn't go
from green hill to marble, like say you went green hill to
spring yard or something, it would it would flow better.
Like Sonic one has kind of a weird flow that they did fix in
the later games.

It's Casino 3.
Is casino night zone in in 2?

See that one.
I also feel like is very slow, not in a bad way.
It's a very it's a fun level to play like I love that level, but
but there's so many things that will just like bounce it, bounce
you back.

You get stuck.
In the in the middle.

Yeah, yeah.
But at the end of the day, if they are platformers just like
anybody else, I think people when they think of Sonic, they
think of speed and want to treat it like a racing game.
And it's like no at the.

End.
And that's also how they marketed it too, to be honest.
True.

Like, but at the end of the day,
yeah, they're just, they're fast-paced platformers, you
know, they're faster than Mario and they're more focused on like
momentum and all that kind of stuff.
But at the end of the day, you'll still have to do jumping
stuff and fight weird Robotnik bosses that suck like the Casino
Night 1 and and you know, it is what it is.
Man, Yep, that's.

And that ain't Banjo.
No, that's nothing.

Yeah.
That's not banjo.

Banjo is very slow paced.
Yeah, it's pretty slow paced.

Almost, almost to a fault.
Almost at at points.

At points, sure, yeah.
Absolutely.

It's one of the gripes I have
about this game too.

It's not particularly the level
design, and it might just be based on the limitations.
We talked about the depth perception and everything, but
the actual layout of these worlds I find frustrating to
navigate.

Yeah.
Some of them definitely are.

Yeah, there's there's only a
handful of like definitive landmarks that you can really
latch onto and be like, OK, this is where I am.
Yeah.

And it's just you have such a
small view and perspective of the actual like entire area.
I almost think this will be really cool if it was on PC and
had like, you know, like ultra wide support and you could just
see everything that would be that'd be dope.
Yeah, that's just me throwing that out there, but.
It definitely.

It definitely feels like the
level design is just trying to do what Banjo Kazooie and Banjo
Two we did with the big 3D open worlds.
But yeah, as you said, it doesn't have the real, the
screen real estate to make it work.
Yeah, so they they should have.

Done a better job.
Yeah, or even maybe like a little mini map or something to
help keep you.

Keep track.
Just something even like a simple mini map, like something
I just had, even just some sprites on it, like just.
A very basic thing, yeah, 'cause there's so many times in this
game where you're, you're running around and you're like,
wait, am I here?

I thought I was over there, you
know, and you get lost.

Yeah, especially with some of
like the outdoor areas where, yes, depth is part of it, but
also everything kind of looks the same on the ground.
So it's a little bit difficult to figure out.
You know, we're watching sort of an indoor area, which I think
was a little bit more defined.

But that's, again, that would be
with a lot of games.

Too.
I hated the area that we're in.

Right now, so did I, but it was
at least you could you knew which direction you needed to
go.

Or at least I I did.
I didn't.

I was OK with this with this
particular part, but it was the only issue with this is the
whole thing where I mentioned, like it, you just lose so much
health in this area because everything's on fire and the
ground is on fire.

There's lava and it's like, OK,
you know, I get it.

Can I just, you know, do
something to get around that?

It felt more difficult than it
needed to be only because if you made a small mistake, you're
punished more than I thought you should be.
Again, that's that's a platformer.
There's an ice level, there's a lava level.
There's, you know, like all those types of things.
It's all there.

It's just all part of it, right?
The person who's playing this game right now that we're
watching, it's definitely not my playthrough.
They're crazy good.

They're crazy good.
They're they're dodging the fucking bees.
Like get out of here.

This is all they play we.
Stitch together a lot of sections of it, a lot of these
long plays all stitch together their best.
I'm not knocking it, but they'll stitch together.
Yeah, their best just.

To play multiple.
Just to keep it short, yeah.

You know what?
You know what's crazy, though?

We've been talking about it.
A lot of the criticisms we have are like the similar ones I
would have to Kirby in the amazing Mirror on GBA.
Oh, OK.

Like.
I haven't played it so I can't.

Yeah, I mean I.
Haven't played it.

I'll just it's Kirby trying to
be a Metroidvania, like an amazing concept, but I think the
execution was not great and for a lot of the same reasons here
we're like the map.

It has a map system, but it's
not great.

And very often I was getting
lost and be like, where the fuck do I have to go, you know?
But.

In fact, for those who who said
they didn't play it, it is on

Switch online I believe.
Oh, but I'm.

Pretty sure it is.
That's me, the game.

I think is yeah.
Grundy's revenge is not.

No.
That'd be interesting if it was.

Yeah, it would be.
It's it would be a good, good, yeah.
Kirby that's.

Yeah, true.
Why?

Not, I mean, they're not putting
anything else on GBA, Yeah.

I know, honestly, Jesus, come
on, let's let's get to pilot in a second.
But I wanna make sure that we talk about the boss.
So yeah, we, we haven't gone into like a lot of the we'll
just.

We'll just let.
We'll just let Josh go.

We'll just let Josh go for it.
We haven't gotten into like a lot of sort of like the the
finite details of like, you know, whatever, but like
honestly, it's it's it's a 2.5 D ish Zelda, you know, just check
out the game.

You'll get an idea of what it
looks like and stuff and go like that.
But The thing is with the with the boss is the final boss.
I think it's taking ideas from the other games.
I think that's what's trying to do and mash them all.
At least for me, it feels that way a little bit.
And they're trying to mash it all together in this way too
long of a sequence of a final boss battle that, you know, OK,
maybe give, give grunty extra health or.
It has five stages.

That's that's what.
It is not needed.

You don't need 5 stages for a
four hour platformer.

It would be fine if it
checkpointed you.

Yes.
But it doesn't checkpoint you.

And to Josh's point, the number,
to me, the number one issue with it is every time you do fail and
die, because you likely will at least once or twice, it's not
like it brings you back to the beginning where you just walk
into the door and hey, let's start this over.
You have to, you have to go to this area of Spiral Mountain.
You have to have enough frozen eggs in order to put out fire
that comes back and then you have to go.
I think it has a timer too, doesn't it?
We have to get to the timer in order to jump to the area that
has the the walkway, the doorway to take you to the boss level.
Why do you need to do that shit just to do the boss over and
over and over again?

Because you will need to do
that.

That part should not even be
part of it.

Like it should not be an aspect
of this.

Do it once.
Banjo Kazooie make you do this on North 64.
No, no, no.

OK, There is an element in the
in Banjo Kazooie, the first game that is similar to this boss
with the quizzes.

Yeah, the Banjo Kazooie and.
That's why I'm saying that's what's getting I.
Would argue even fans of that game are not a fan of the
quizzes.

I don't know about you Jaggy.
I can't say for all fans, but at least my perception of even
people who like Kazooie a lot, they're not necessarily a huge,
I shouldn't say a huge fan of the quizzes, but I to me the
quizzes are just not great game design because it doesn't test
you on any mechanics that they've taught you.
They test It tests you on your memory that you didn't know you
were being tested on in the first place.
Sound effects and whatever, yeah.
Yeah like what sound does this thing come from?
Like, I don't fucking know.

Like yeah, they all sound the
God damn same on an N64 I'm.

I'm the first.
I'm the first.

Game exaggerating, but the.
First game's furnace fun Furnace fun, very unforgiving.
Like you have to, you have to get good.
Didn't like that as much.

I actually didn't mind two weeks
as just sort of like an ending game gimmick.
It's not that bad.

It's just kind of silly.
There's also a lot more of like what level is this?
And it's, it's sort of, it's something I actually started
doing on my YouTube channel as like community posts like
texture challenges, where I'm just like, what game is this
from?

Like, let's see if you guys can
get it.

And I'll just take like a random
like screenshot from a game and like zoom in on something and
like, and it's kind of fun.

What pixel is this game from?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

People.
I'm amazed at some people like how fast they get it.
I'm like, how do you know this?

Like Crash, Like Crash 2, it's
this level and I'm like.

What the Wow.
Like I didn't even know that.

I zoomed in on the dirt texture
like this could be any insert

PS1 title like ever.
It's just crazy.

I, I don't mind the quiz stuff,
mainly because I just like for me, I, I, you guys were talking
a little bit about the sound and stuff.
I I like the sound, I like the music.
I'm OK with that.

I it just.
Oh, the music I liked.

I hated the sound effects for
the voice specifics.

See I'm totally fine with it.
To me it just brings me back.

So I think I just the nostalgia
hits me even though I didn't play this.
Specific game what grading your ears on?
No, I just like it.

I like hearing.
I like hearing.

I like.
I like gibberish, but I I play this on mute.
It's it's trying to be consistent with the other games
in the series.

But yeah.
But I understand.

And some are better than others.
Isn't as good.

Yeah, some of them are better
than others.

Like Grunty sounds pretty good.
Banjo doesn't really sound like banjo sounds really weird.
Yeah, but but even that it, I don't know, It's almost like he
only has one sound, whereas normally, like Jiggy said
earlier, they have a couple more cadences that you kind of play
with and his is very, very monotone, if that's even how it
would work when it's gibberish.

But.
I don't even know monotone.

Gibberish.
Monotone.

Gibberish.
My new band name.

That's great.
Yeah.

So anyway, so back to the boss.
So you do a version.

You start with a version of a
boss that you've played already up until this point where
there's a shield.

You run around.
I guess we don't really get quite to the story that much,
but Grunty is in a Mecca suit and has all these like different
abilities and stuff.

Mecca grunty.
Too bad you didn't like also get large and like fight like over
rooftops or something that'd.

Be sick if you want a brief
synopsis.

Yes.
Basically Grunty's soul gets thrown into this Mecca version
of Grunty and time travels back to the past to actually capture
Kazooie and like stop.

Like doesn't want Banjo Kazooie,
doesn't want Banjo Kazooie to be together.
No, just kidnaps Kazooie, it locks her up.
So you actually have to spend the first part of this game
rescuing Kazooie and Mumbo uses his magic to send Banjo back in
time to, you know, save Kazooie, save all of time.
I guess I don't know.

And it's it's a little like the
time thing isn't really that important, honestly, no.
It's.

Are you telling me Banjo is the
hero of time?

Banjo is the true hero of time,
yes.

No, honestly, this sounds like
Banjo's version of the

Terminator.
Yeah.

Oh yeah, it.
Is sort of like the Terminator, yeah.
Yeah, the banjo Terminator.

Yeah, 100.
Percent banjo is are you

Kazooie?
I'm looking for Grud.

I'm looking for Kazooie.
Come with me if you want to spring.
With me if you want jiggy.

It's it's super interesting too,
because it actually caused another issue with the Mumbo,
like being in the past.

In the in the original game,
Mumbo's face is a skull because grunty like was his student and
transformed his face into a skull.
And but in the past his face is still a skull.
So that's just kind of like an oversight.
And then they're like, well, we never really capitalized on it
anyway, so everyone just accepts that Mumbo just always look like
that.

And then for some reason, like
we have Bottle's grandfather teaches us moves for being a
main person in the series.

Bottles like his role gets
diminished like.

He's not even in this.
He's basically he's, he's not even anywhere close to beating
this.

Yeah, well.
In two weeks.

Because he loves it.
Right, That's right.

Yeah.
I love that banter stuff.

I love it.
That's like one of my favorite parts of.
These games, they took so much from Tui in this game, right?
And it it feels like it needed to be scaled back significantly.
It needed to be more like

Kazooie, less like Tui, but they
just kept packing stuff in.

It's like just refine the
gameplay that you have.

Right.
Up adding mechanics and it gets a little overwhelming and in the
boss fight in the boss fights in general because there's even
boss fights where you have to use like first person
perspective and like.

Yeah, forgot about Target.
Yeah, that was yeah.

And I found that pretty easy
though, like I got through pretty quickly but.
It's just it's padding, like we said it earlier, it's padding.
It's a lot of padding.

This game is like, OK, we're
short.

We're gonna pad the game and
we're gonna make things as difficult as possible, which is
all I could think about with the with the last boss.
I'm just like, let's just make this super difficult to make
this game extend just a little bit longer.
Yeah, so so my whole thing with the with the with the boss was
that I did you end up using the safe state?
Cuz even though I do have this is the only one in the in the
franchise where I just have the cartridge and not the box.
Like this is the only one I cannot find a complete for a
realistic price for a realistic price.
So I'm just.

Game collecting.
Amazing.

It's just fantastic, isn't it?
It's the only series where I'm like, I gotta get everything.
That and some of the Donkey Kong stuff.
But anyways, I ended up using a safe state for it because.
And one of the reasons why is yes, it's frustrating and pretty
annoying, but I've connected my retro arc to retro achievements.
I don't know if thrac, if you've if you've used that at all.
Yeah, it's great.

I.
Love retro achievements?

Yeah, it's so good.
I'm not usually an achievement hunter, trophy hunter person.
I'm not.

But when it comes to these, it's
cool that it adds it to retro games.
So I'm like, you know what?

Every once in a while I'm gonna
try to go for the extra stuff, which is one of the reasons why
I tried to go for a couple more notes, a couple more Jiggies and
things like that.

One of the achievements in this
is to beat the final stage of grunty without getting hit and.
Nice.

And I did not, I actually did
not have a choice because like I said earlier, I only had one hit
left when I was doing the fishing mini game thing and that
happens just before you get to this point.
So whether I had retro achievements or not and whether
I had save states or not, well,

I guess I had to have safe
states.

But where I saved it I only had
one honeycomb left and I ended up beating that last part yes
trying multiple times but I ended up being beating that last
part without getting hit and I was.
Like I think what's frustrating and I think what's frustrating
with the final boss is that the actual like when you're when
you're not in the quiz sections,

I actually don't hate it.
I actually think it's not like awful, like even the final
grunty like showdown, Yeah, that's I don't think is
unreasonable and I don't think it's completely unfair.
I actually think it's a pretty decent final boss.
It's just that it's the, it's the gauntlet nature of it.
All on one health bar, all on the fact that like, they they,
they what a boss is supposed to be.
Is it supposed to test you on the mechanics that the game has
taught you throughout your experience?
Up to that point.

Up to that point, right, the
quiz is not a mechanic like there's no mechanics in the game
that like are meant to like prepare you for this test.
If they gave you quizzes leading up to this, almost like here,
here's some stuff that did like what do you remember from this
section?

You just played through?
And then by the time you you you might not you might be a little
frustrated in that first section.
So then you go to the second one and then see when you see see it
in the second area, you're like, oh, so this is just a thing that
I'm going to have to do.

Whether you like it or dislike
it is up to you.

But like if they if they
continue continuously did that, so by the time you get to the
final boss, you're like, well I gotta be fucking prepared.
I have, I, I've taken 5 quizzes after there.
I better know my stuff about the trivia of this world.
But they haven't.

The the game doesn't teach you
any trivia mechanics, for lack of a better term.
It's just.

It teaches you platforming
mechanics and shooting mechanics.
I think I think they like they can have quizzes even in general
in the game but just leave it out of the final boss too.
Exactly.

So when you get to the final
boss and like each section of the final boss is another test
of something that you've done before.
I mean, I'm not a fan of the the henchman turning invisible, but
I think they don't make him visible for long enough.
I think that's a little not unfair, but it's not very fun
because it's like I feel like

I'm playing more guesswork than
anything else.

You're like, you know, he'll,
he'll disappear.

The dude will disappear.
You'll see which direction he just like as he's walking off.
So you go to that direction and you attack and then you miss him
and then he suddenly spawns and he's on the opposite side of the
screen.

So I felt like I was just
getting lucky half the time and not actually like I, I didn't
know what to how to infer his pattern because you can't see
him.

You see the direction anyway,
but that that's a minor grave because I was able to beat it.
But like those sections, those 3 sections, if it was just three
phases of that, I would have been cool with it.
I would have been.

I'm I'm annoyed that they do a
section, a quiz, another like boss mechanic section, and then
another quiz an even longer one and then the final one.
Like I actually did not hate the actual segments of the boss that
were the boss, it was just the quizzes.
And then like you also said,

Dave, the lead up to it to
literally get to the boss by having to climb that tower every
single time.

And the fact that you needed to
have those eggs at the ready, which you might not.
And if you don't have any, they do have some that will spawn for
you but you only get 3 at a time and three is not enough so you
have to get three run off screen in order to spawn it.
I found a way to spawn it faster is just to go into the honeycomb
hive and then come right back out because if I even if I
walked over to the honey home hive and walked back it, they
weren't always there so I just would just go to honey home.
Hive just a stupid idea.

The fact that you even have to
do that, it's just dumb.

Yeah, it's just.
Dumb so that I think what's frustrating is that the boss
itself is actually a really good boss for what they teach you
throughout the game.

It's just the stuff before and
in the middle is the problem.

Yeah, the the filler, like you
said, the filler.

So OK, before before we forget,
I guess I I think this game is worth playing.
Don't expect anything incredible, but there are little
grapes and stuff that we've mentioned.
But but let's talk about Banjo pilot because I want to make
sure that we're definitely covering some of this because
no, no, because honestly, because it's.
An hour and a half into recording.
Yeah, that's fine.

It is fine.
But the reason why one of the reasons why is because I know
that especially for for me and

Jiggy, we absolutely love Diddy
Kong Racing and think it's just a fantastic game.
This would have been in Banjo

Pilot, like was mentioned
earlier, was supposed to be a sequel to that or spiritual
successor or whatever it might have been called at the time and
just didn't happen for the various reasons like Microsoft
and rights and all those types of things that that we also
mentioned.

But but it's a cart racer with a
plane and you know, some some depth and some you know, up and
down mechanics and verticality and things like that.
But it is very much a classic cart racer at heart.
This game was something that completely passed me by.
I don't know if I was done playing the GBA too much at the
time.

I don't know if I just didn't
know what existed.

I don't know.
I don't know what it was, but I never played this up until a
couple years ago when I picked up this this cartridge and, and
played it and I was like, Oh my

God, I got to get all the Banjo
Kazooie games and I'm an idiot.

So I got to go buy it and I got
to find it in the box and all that kind of stuff.
And I think it's overall, I think it's I think it's pretty
good overall.

I, I, I enjoy, I am I am
enjoying and have enjoyed my time with it.
But just like Grunty's revenge,

I don't think it's a home run
for a lot of different reasons, but I like Banjo pilot and I
like what I played with it.

So Jiggy, what what about you?
Did you played Grunty's revenge?

Did you play this grown up too?
Briefly, briefly.

OK, I did.
Yeah.

Oh, of course it's it's Banjo.
So I was like, but sorry you were.
What this is?

Oh, this is not one that I
liked.

OK.
And I, I, I played it now and I can see some like redeeming
qualities, I guess.

I, I was really like, Oh my
gosh, this is Jenny Kong Racing.

I'm a Game Boy with Banjo.
This is going to be fantastic.

That's how I talked to when I
was like 10 or whatever.

You're fucking cool a lot
whenever you it's.

Going to be it's going to be
really really really great OK and then it ended up being
really really, really mid you know got.
Some in your mouth.

Yeah, you.
Know marshmallows?

It's it's interesting.
Chubby Bunny.

Chubby buddy.
Chubby buddy.

Yes, exactly.
You.

You, Dave.
You.

Love Did you love Mario's Super
Circuit?

I, I, I, I really, we talked
about on, I talked about on, on

Josh's show.
Yeah, I was going to say you guessed.
It I was trying to, I was trying to remember it.
I I don't think.

I, I don't think I I loved it
completely, but I, it's another game that I also had very little
experience before coming on the show and talking about it.
I liked it.

I thought it was pretty good.
I thought it was one of the I was, I was pleasantly surprised.
I actually was going to expect it wasn't going to be very good
and I had a pretty good time with it.
I if you want to compare the two, I've that game's probably
better than this in my opinion.

But but yeah, I had AI, had a
pretty decent time with it.

I just like, I don't really like
that game.

OK.
And I don't really, I don't really care about this game
either, to be honest.

OK.
And I think what it what does it for me is the going back to the
depth perception we had in

Grunty's Revenge, except this is
like all about depth perception, like going forward and the the
pop in that you get for like items and things.
Yeah, that's a problem with this.
It's not bad, it's just it, it makes me feel like I can't
perform as well unless I like go through and do a lap and I like
recognize the track where it's going.
Like I can't like see ahead, which most racing games.
That's how I kind of play.

I'm like, OK, this is coming up,
I'm going to go up here.

It's just like a weird like 2DS
trying to be 3D sort of thing because I've got that with the
original Mario Kart on Super

Nintendo.
It's kind of the same thing.

I'm just not a huge fan of it
and but I like F0 so I don't know what that's about.
Right, it's just a better game.

Yeah.
It's it's not that F.

Zero is a great game, Yeah,
that's no question.

It's not that I dislike this,
but it's not something that I particularly would like to play.
This is definitely my least favorite Banjo game out of all
of them.

OK, fair enough.
So.

We'll talk about some of the
details of, of how it differentiates itself and stuff
too, because I think those are some of the reasons why I, I
thought it was like, OK, at least it's doing interesting
things.

So, Thrack, what about you,
buddy?

Well oh real quick, Mario Kart
Super Circuit.

Fun fact, it is the highest
rated Mario Kart game on

Metacritic.
Really.

Shit, what?
It's at a 93.

Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is a 92.
Interesting.

So eat it.
Super Circuit, Super circuit.

Super circuit is perfectly fine.
Yeah.

Banjo pilot.
I've known about this game for a while, but I never really played
it 'cause I'm just like, oh, it's probably just some stupid
racing game, who cares, right?

It's only been in like really
since I've been podcasting with

Bill 'cause he's really into
racing, but I've been playing more racing games and I've been
getting more enjoyment out of them.
So for this one, I was like, you know, let's see what the big
deal is And and yeah, it's weird.
It's called a cart racing game, but you're flying.
Shouldn't shouldn't it be, shouldn't it be a prop plane?
You know, like the the the cart no cart equivalent would be a
prop.

Plane, prop plane.
Yeah.

I think that the reason why it's
that is because you're cartoony characters and you're picking up
items and you're shooting them at other players.
That that's it.

That's a cart racer.
That's the definition of that.

So, but yeah, you're right, it
is a prop plane.

You're right.
And there are, there are actually some pretty good and
interesting racing games on the

GBA.
Yeah, this isn't one of them.

This is.
Like like yeah the pop in can be an issue but like the track
designs are so basic and.

Similar.
Yeah, and like the.

You don't like trapezoids?
I like trapezoids.

I.
Just don't you know what's?

Your favorite shape?
What's your?

I have to think about it and.
Get back on a 2D plane.

Not on a 3D plane.
On a 2D plane.

Yeah, this is strictly 2 DI.
Like the hexagon?

There you.
Go hexagon A.

Healthy.
That's a healthy shape.

That's a good one.
Yeah, a naturally occurring shape too.
But but yeah, like the track designed is very plain, like the
items they give you all.

All I really saw was either you
could spit out like an ice cube behind you or you could just
shoot a fireball in front or like a UFO and that.
Was that was the UFO thing is weird.
Yeah, yeah.

And it's like the game tries to
have rubber banding but it doesn't really work because
there'll be times where I get swamped with like like I'll be
in first and I'll just get hit with a bunch of items and go
back to like 6th and then I just do like a lap and then I'm back
in like second again and I hit like 2 items.
Bungee jumping versus rubber banding.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's slingshotting.
Yeah, it's, it's really weird.

Like it feels like the game is
trying to be difficult, but it's like super fucking easy.
Yeah, it's not that hard.

Yeah, it's not that.
Yeah, yeah.

And and you have like you can
hold R to do a sharper turn, but like I never really needed it.
Yeah, no, you're you handle pretty like it controls
perfectly fine.

If your handling is solid, you
don't have to.

You don't skid or anything
weird.

Like that and to your point, the
tracks, because they're not super difficult, you don't need
to worry about those tight turns as much as you would in
something like Diddy Kong Racing that has that.
As or an F0 even.

Or F0, Yeah.
Yeah, exactly.

The only interesting thing is
you can adjust your height, which say for like when you go
through the, the the speed boost, you know, if you're not
the right height, you could miss it.
Or if you're trying to get the, the music notes, you could miss
them if you're not high or low enough off the ground.
But that's really about it.

This feels like like a like a
vertical slice for what a banjo racing game would be on GBA.
Like it doesn't feel fully formed.
You know, they're like, it needs more interesting.
Yeah, it like it needs more interesting level design or it
needs, it needs something more and it just doesn't have it.
But they're like, hey, let's just get this out of here
because we got to we got to make cameo or something stupid.
So like, yeah, just get this out the door.
You know, we can move on to that.
So it's it's OK.

Like I played it for a couple
hours.

I don't feel like I wasted my
time, but I don't feel like I gained anything.
Yeah, yeah.

That's fair.
That's fair.

Like like if you want to play a
really cool cart racing game on

GBA I'd recommend Konami Crazy
Racers.

That game is really good.
OK, yeah, that was like really good track design.
It's Konami.

So it's got it's, I think it has
like Dracula and I think Gray

Fox is in it, you know, but it
has really good track design.

It controls better than Super
Circuit.

I like how it looks.
Yeah.

That's a really cool game they
all should check out.

So you're telling me it has more
than just trapezoids?

Oh yeah, it's got, it's got all
kinds of shapes.

I think there's a Figure 8 in
there too.

Oh my God, fancy.
Don't be crazy now I know I.

Thought we were just looking for
for straight corners in here.

Jeez, you thought Josh turned?
My camera off.

Yeah, Josh, you weren't able to
to get your time with this and stuff.
Is it ever, was it ever anything that you were you were
interested in at all or is it kind of just no, no, not really?
No, so I am not a racing game fan in the slightest.
The only racing game I've ever enjoyed in my life is a PS1
snowmobile racing game called

Sled Storm.
Really, really like that.

It's really good.
It's really good.

It's really good.
I love it.

Racing games are an interesting
breed.

So what I will say this, I, I
think Thrak, you're right on the money with this, where it just
needed something more.

And the reason I say that I, I,
I have no idea how it controls how it handles because like I
said, I didn't play, but I've been watching literally videos
leading up to this.

And so all, all my experiences
with just how this game presents visually, right?
I don't even know what the sound is right now because I've had it
muted down.

Well, let's, let's see.
Well, why would you do that to me?
No, so the The thing is the where where the reason why I say
it needs more, I think one thing it actually does really well.
I actually think the character sprites are really good.
They they, they, they clearly did a lot of animation work on
them because they'll flip and tumble and turn and you, they
feel fully realized.

When you see that where the game
really kind of fall fails and falters is not even just the
layout of the track design, it's the visuals of the track design.
Because it's almost like if you look at the backgrounds of every
single thing, it's like they took a panoramic shot and it
just pans left and right depending on how you turn the
cart.

There's yeah, it feels really
weird and it doesn't feel fully natural.
It does, it doesn't, it feels like a really poorly done sky
box, Right.

And it just it.
Yeah, Sky.

Box nice.
That's yeah, yeah, yeah.

There's a lot of those on the
Game Boy Advance.

Poorly done sky boxes.
Yeah, I didn't believe it.

I mean, actually, I think one of
the most interesting things about the GBA, this is a very
quick side tangent that I don't have much to say on because I
haven't played them all.

The GBA is a bizarre amount of
first person shooters, which I always found super odds like
Medal of Honor underground.

You know, Dave and I, I don't
want this is coming out in what may, right Dave?
Yeah.

So probably be.
Yeah, yeah, everyone will probably.
Hear that episode Our episode for Punch Nazi month will be out
by then so Dave was joined me for punch and Nazi month to talk
about Medal of Honor underground and for the PS1.
It had a GBA version and it's very weird it's.
Very bad like I could do I could do a whole thing on like all the
PS1 ports, the GBA right?

That one from my experience is
the worst one by far.

Wow, it's it is terrible.
And this is obviously not 3D, but it's got like, you know, the
mode 7 style.

I don't know if it if mode 7 was
on the GBA or not, but that was, you know, the Super Nintendo
equivalent.

This does is feels like a poor
version of that, and I think mainly because of the art
direction, not because of any technical issues.
It's just the art direction really felt like they could have
just done a little bit more to mask maybe the the the jankiness
of the background visuals.

I also think just in general,
the idea of making everything fly is actually kind of dumb.
Not because a flying racing game is bad, but there's so many
portions where it's like they won't let you fly over the lava
because that's a spot where you couldn't drive over with a car.
I'm like, but I'm not in a car,

I'm in a plane.
I could just fly right over this.
Yeah, You might as well just put columns of flames above me, like
right there.

So that way I know.
Out of the ground.

Fly through that, yeah.
Or like if you're flying over, like I we joked about at the
beginning of the episode, you know, if you fly over grass, all
of a sudden you see the plane start shaking because it's going
through turbulence because the grass is just so grassy.
It's just.

It's too green.
Silly.

It's blinding my eyes, Sarge.
It's just.

Sorry.
There's just.

That classic Banjo Kazooie
character, Sarge.

Banjo Kazooie Sarge is war.
I've seen so many jiggies fall not.
Today, soldiers been in the.

Conquer territory here, yeah.
Yeah, that's right.

Yeah.
But I'm never made it back to the frame I'll.
Be in, conquer.

I'll be started.
But no, I just I think that's really where this game falters
is it's just it's visual presentation because while the
characters look really solid, especially for AGBA title, the
world's feel really kind of like under bait or the the tracks,
excuse me, feel very under baked.
I will give them credit for trying like a weird boss type of
thing at the end of each.

From what I saw, there's like 4
races in each cup and then there's like a boss race and I'm
watching the boss races and it seems not my favorite type of
thing.

But that also just feels like a
bit of preference.

It's like it seems like you take
turns like you're you'd have a turn shooting at the boss and
then you have a turn dodging from the boss and you have
health bars and that kind of stuff.
It's an interesting idea.

Like I don't think it's a
completely it's, it's not a game devoid of any unique ideas.
I just think there's a lot of elements where it's like, well,
you could have put this in the oven a little bit longer.
And I think this there there's like, you know, the ingredients
in this game.

I think you could have made a
really nice cake, but you just let it stay in the you just
didn't leave it in the oven long enough.
And that's kind of like, or maybe you left it in too long,
who knows.

I think I think that's a part
of.

This is the, this is the
definition of 1/2 baked game.

You know, like, like like when
you bite and do like a piece of bread and that's a little bit
doughy in the middle.

Like this is.
That's the equivalent of this game.
Got you.

I hope I.
Don't get an upset stomach after this.
Yeah.

The the the whole, but the whole
boss race thing, that's in Diddy

Kong Racing, isn't it?
Well, so that so that's The thing is like the the, the the
couple of things that are from that.
And obviously, like we said, this was supposed to be Diddy
Kong Pilot.

So I think they kept that
because they needed to change for rights issues.
And also it was pilot initially and that version because that
was one of the unique ways that you drove around and raced in
Diddy Kong Racing.

So they're like, well, we should
do that.

That'll differentiate us from a
Mario Kart or from a Sonic One or Crash or whatever was out at
the time, right?

So I think that's why they went
that way.

And then yes, Diddy Kong Racing
has the boss races, which I really enjoy, but also very
difficult in this.

They're not that hard, so I like
that they tried to do something different like I do.
I think they're incredible.

No, I think some of them are
kind of weird too.

Like you face bottles at one
point and he's like pooping out like lightning bolts or
something.

For some reason I'm like, what?
What does this have to do with anything?
But you said bottles.

I thought you said balls.
I'm like, whose balls?

Is bottles cousin little cousin?
Cousin Balls.

Cousin Balls.
Instead.

Of the glasses up here, he has
them down, blows waist.

Bottles is like we have, we see
the most extended family of bottles in the Banjo series.
It's crazy.

He's got a wife, he's got
several kids.

Yep, he's got his his brother
jam jars.

He was in the military.
His ancestor.

We just learned about him.
Grunty's Revenge like he's all over the place.
Yeah, I'm so glad to know

Bottles fucks.
Oh, isn't it?

Isn't it very reassuring?
It's very reassuring.

Bottles given him if.
He can do it.

Anybody can.
If he could spending all that time on the ground and he could
still get it done.

Come on.
I I, I think you know what?

I feel like I'm the only one who
kind of liked this game.

I don't know.
I like.

I didn't hate.
It I can't, I don't, I can't really have an opinion on it.
I'm I'm basing my like it's literally all my opinion is
based purely off of the visuals, not off of the.
Not like the the feel of it or whatever.
I so I I think that.

It's definitely.
Go ahead, go ahead.

It's definitely a game that if I
had it as a kid, I would have played it a bunch and probably
had a found this for it, you know, because it's very simple
and all that.

It's just, I don't know, I don't
even want to say my racing game taste is sophisticated, but like
I play a lot of Forza Horizon.

So going from that to this is
like, you know, but it is probably fine, but it but it
makes me wonder if this was

Diddy Kong pilot and this was
like in theory the same game but

Diddy Kong, would it be better
or would it be worse?

I think the expectation would be
different.

Expectation could be a bit
different, which is why I sort of mentioned like the, the, the
pilot, like the the plane thing and the boss.
You're kind of like, Oh yeah, that's what I expect from this
game.

I don't know, 'cause it 'cause
it's not gonna feel any different, you know, Like if, if
it, if it was.

And it feels fine.
There's something wrong with that.
Yeah, I think it's OK.

I think I have some some
problems with sort of how they they manage the speed when you
hit boosts and things.

But I but I think I think what I
give, what I give the most credit to is the is those ideas
that it has.

So the boss that the boss races
or battles, you can even call them or at least something
different.

I don't think they're
incredible, but at least there's something different.
And then there's, if you go deeper into this one, I think
there's actually a decent amount of races in this, more than I
thought there would be.

And then there's these things, I
don't know if you guys got to this, where when you collect
enough pages for is it Cheeto?

Is that what it's called Cheeto?
Cheeto, who's like the the sort of like encyclopedia for the
franchise that has information.

Which is spellbook.
Which is what?

Which is spellbook.
Which is spellbook.

That's what it is, I think I.
Think, I think, Dave, I think the Banjo Encyclopedia is here
in the call with us right now.

I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.

My mistake.
You're not.

You're not wrong.
You're not right.

No.
No, It's exact.

Yeah.
What are you talking about?

Yeah.
So like when you do that and you collect when you win races or
when you do time trials or whatever, you get pages that you
can go to Cheeto and and unlock characters or battle races or
these things.

What are what are those called?
Jiggy encyclopedia?

What are those called?
The little sort of like devil looking guys.
The greblins.

Yes, yes, those.
So you can go to Cheeto and get and unlock those.
And what happens is they show up on certain races and Oh no.
No, no.

Globos, Globos, is that what it
is?

Yeah, Globos.
So when you, when you pick up one of those, similar to when
you pick up one of the notes or the, OR the jiggies in it, a
different boost thing pops up in the level.
And when you go through it, it gives you, or at least most of
them.

You go through it, it gives you
like super speed and it steers for you for almost an entire
lap.

And it's kind of a cool idea
because you kind of have to really have to unlock it.
First of all, you have to notice that it's in in the in the
stage, which sometimes can be tricky with the way things pop
in.

And then you have to go and get
yourself to that boost in that same lap and it gives you this
massive lead.

Then it does try to do the
rubber banding.

You usually don't really have
too much of an issue, but suddenly they're right behind
you and then the race kind of continues.
But if it is something that you get in the second or third lap,
it makes a huge difference.

That's at least a cool idea.
The execution of it is hit and miss because of the way that
they handle speed and depth and height and things like that.
So I think that's kind of the problem with it.
But the, again, the idea of it,

I enjoyed and thought it was
kind of cool.

It was one of those things where
I looked up to be like, what the fuck was that thing?
I just saw?

Like, what is that?
I couldn't quite tell because it was kind of muddy and in the
corner and I was zooming right past it.
But I give it a little extra, you know, kudos for trying to do
something.

A little bit different.
This, this, this.

It's just I want this to be
Diddy Kong Racing 2 and in my mind like, oh, banjo themed
Banjo Focus.

Diddy Kong Racing 2 sounds even
cooler to me.

I was like, but it's got some
things like even the the whole like ready go at the beginning
is totally Diddy Kong Racing.

Like there's so many elements of
it that I do I want to like so much.
And then the actual gameplay is just pretty bland for me.
It just doesn't do anything special.
I didn't really.

I did play as a few different
characters.

I didn't.
I can't say that.

I, I mean, it's basically like
if I hit boost, I was winning.

So yeah, I don't feel like
anyone particularly gave me an advantage.
I played as Kazooie a lot.

So did I.
Actually I I never finished below first place.
Yeah, it was.

It was hard to, especially in
the early, early ones, It's it's difficult to not win.
Yeah, 'cause you hit, you hit a couple boosts, like let's say
there's two boosts in the entire lap on some of the early ones,
which is pretty minimal.

You'll be fine.
You'll probably win if you make a couple mistakes, maybe you'll
come, you'll probably still come top three.
And they're they're pretty generous with the items they
give you with the pickups, which there are a lot of the timing
cart racers that are, are are or prop plane, plop plane racers.
Easy for me to say.

Plane Flyers.
Plop.

Yeah, exactly.
So, you know, they're, they want you to win.
I think it's, it's a little bit, it's definitely more forgiving
than like, you know, Super

Circuit or the Mario Kart games
and stuff.

You can tell this is made for a
very young audience.

Yes, yes you can.
There's not a ton of depth to it other than like hey collect the
pages, unlock stuff and you'll get new characters so.
Collect a thon.

Listen, I did like that element
of it, collecting the notes on the track like looking for them
you.

Know what the notes did?
That's a neat idea.

I had to look up what they did.
What do they do?

Don't they unlike?
The they give you, they, the more notes you, you don't have
to collect them all.

I thought it was one of those
things where it's like, oh, collect all the, you know,
whatever, and then you get, you know, maybe it was coins.
I thought maybe it'd give you more speed or something like
that.

It's not.
So the more notes you collect, even if you collect just one, it
multiplies how many pages you get.
At the end of the race.

Which I was like, OK, that's
also kind of an interesting way of doing it.
The speed and stuff is sort of a

Mario Kart thing, right?
So.

You get pages if you don't get
the notes.

Yes, you do.
Because I never didn't get all the notes because that's what I
spent most of my time doing.

I.
Was like, there's a note, I'm going to get it.
The next lap, like the first lap was just like, I'm just gonna
look for all the notes, Yeah.

And the second lap was get all
the notes and then the third lap was hit every boost and win.
Yeah, that's that.

That's pretty much a loop.
And then they have the Jiggy challenge thing.
I don't know if you guys tried that.
That's essentially like in Diddy

Kong Racing where you have to
collect what's it called?

What do you have to collect in
Diddy Kong now?

And forget I'm blanking me.
You have to go around the lap.

Oh, the silver.
Coins.

To collect the silver that
there's, there's four or five

Jiggies around it, It completes
a little picture in the corner and then you complete the race.
But this is only one-on-one, so it's not as hectic and crazy.
So as long as you again, as long as you hit a boost and you
collect the Jiggies in like 1 1/2 laps, you'll probably be
fine.

You know what?
You know what also is really annoying?
We go through all these different banjo stages.
Yeah, and none of the music is from Banjo Kazooie.
It's all like original like, which doesn't necessarily have
to be a bad thing, but when you're going in like Treasure
Treasure Trove Cove or Gobi's

Valley, like tracks that hit
super hard, I would have loved to have just like, yeah, let's
see, let's listen, you know, a

GB AFI version of those tracks.
I I wonder if they couldn't though because Nintendo owned
the copyright too.

Well, I guess rare.
No rare rings, Banjo.

Rare rings banjo.
Yes.

But I don't.
But who would have the rights to to the music specifically could
have been different.

I don't know.
Yeah, but there's.

But they didn't own, but like,
you know, they owned the rights to Banjo even on the N64.
They were independent of

Nintendo.
It's just that when they like.

Yeah, they were a second party
developer, like Nintendo had a minority stake so that they
would publish their stuff and had publishing rights.
But when?

I'm pretty sure when Microsoft
bought Rare they got all those publishing rights.
Yes, that's right.

So.
That's why like Banjo Kazooie got those 360.
Yeah, and Rare Replay is only on on Xbox and like things like.
Yeah, exactly.

So that is kind of weird that
they didn't put any of the the tracks from from any of the
Banjo game or like the tracks in there 'cause like they should
have had the rights to.

It some of the stages have like
hints of it, but it's definitely not the song, which I think
either point would actually add a lot to it 'cause it would give
you that feeling.

You know, even if like the sound
isn't great or even if like the characters don't make the the
noises and sounds and tracks like at least that is there.
And even if it doesn't look or feel like it based on like the
visuals.

Music is a huge part of what
rare does in their games and all their really good games like
Donkey Kong series is a perfect example.
Even stuff like Killer Instinct, like great music, but, and
obviously Goldeneye is a big part of that, but like if you
don't have that, you lose a lot of character and that's a huge
part of what they do because it's very cartoony music and
sound is a huge part of cartoons in general.
You have to have some of it I think.
The only thing I could guess is either maybe Grant Kirk Hope
didn't want them to use the tunes or maybe they tried to GB
AFI the songs and they didn't like how they sounded so they
just made new compositions for them.
Leading to the half baked theory that we that we have.
Compositions are a little doughy in the middle.
Yeah, a little.

Too dough.
Or maybe maybe because this transition from Diddy Kong
pilot, maybe it was like it was never intended like to just
pick, maybe didn't have time, they didn't have time to do it.
And they're just like.

They're basically how.
These tunes are what would have been in Diddy Kong pilot.
Yeah.

Yeah, so like you, you asked
before, Dave, do we think this game would have been better if
it if it had the Diddy Kong license or and I'm if I don't
think it's necessarily a question you can answer like if
it if you took it directly and just put Diddy Kong and Donkey
Kong characters in this, no, it would not have made it better
just because you still have nostalgic attachment to the
banjo characters just like you do like like you do to Donkey
Kong characters.

And it didn't save it right now.
What I do think though, the reason why I don't think you can
actually really genuinely answer that, is that if this game, like
you, like you said Jiggy, was meant to be a Diddy Kong Racing
game that they had to switch over midway through development
or at some point in the.

Very late actually.
They only had about like just over a year to switch this over
or under a year to switch.

This.
Over so like for GPA?

That's not bad.
Doesn't it doesn't.

Maybe, maybe it's not bad, but
it doesn't sound like much, you know?
True, but I feel like the creating this game on that isn't
necessary.

Like you, you're not going to be
able to you're you generally genuinely, excuse me, won't know
because you don't know what constraints they were played
unless they can tell you specifically what constraints
they ended up getting placed on because of the chaos of the
being bought out by Microsoft.

And now all of a sudden you're
switching publishers.

Like who knows what THQ made
them do like if if anything, because even though Mike they
were owned by Microsoft, THQ was publishing this because
Microsoft wasn't going to publish on the Game Boy or the
GBA or if Nintendo would even let them.
Like who knows?

Like there's because they were
they're a competitor, right.

So who knows if they had to do
some weird stuff with it, kind of like kind of like in the same
vein of like how Konami circumvented the NES is like 5
game a year limit by creating ultra ultra games or whatever it
is.

Like there's weird shit like
that like just on the NES.

So I wouldn't be surprised if
there was something weird that happened here.
So like, I feel like this game, yeah, it's half baked from like,
once again, from my outsider's perspective, but I feel like it
looks pretty half baked.

But I, I, I honestly, it feels
like it just because of the chaotic, what I would assume
would have been a chaotic, excuse me, development period
between all the business stuff behind the scenes and then
having to reconcile all that in the game in under a year while
still trying to figure out the fallout from like, how how long
do you think they had to hold on developing the game even after
the sale?

Right?
Like if it happened like a year before it was released, if the
sale happened a year before this game came out, like does that
mean they were actively working for the full year or were they
in a holding pattern until they could figure out rights?
So the.

Game was in development for five
years.

It was first announced in 2001,
and then the rare the Microsoft sale was what, 2002?
1002.

Yeah, yeah.
So.

Oh, so it only happened a year
into development?

They had four extra years.
Yeah, basically so.

Yeah, it could have been.
A case of they, well, and think about it, they were also working
on Grunny's Revenge 'cause that came out before this as well.
So, you know, that was my theory.
It could have been a case of they were just juggling a bunch
of products and Microsoft was like not sure which ones to
prioritize.

They were also porting all the
Donkey Kong games to GBA at the same time too, like that.
That was a big thing.

They are.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

They're great.
So I just, I just saw this on on.
Take it for a grain of salt on the Wikipedia entry for it.
Yes, but it says the soundtrack was composed by Robin Beamland
of Rare fame and Jamie Hughes, and it was unaltered as Rare was
unable to implement new music.

Yeah, OK.
By the time it was released.

Yeah, so there you go.
No, I, I.

Believe that?
Throwback to that, Yeah.

Makes sense cuz cuz they're
credited in the game and if you go to the mobi games for Banjo
pilot they're right there so yeah.
Yeah, one of the one of the interesting things too that I
don't know which one you guys mentioned using the
accelerometer tilt ometer thing for the GBA a little while ago
earlier in the episode.

For warrior were twisted.
That's what it was so.

Yeah, it has a gyroscope in it.
Gyroscope.

That's it.
So Diddy Kong pilot was also supposed to have that.
That was supposed to be one of the ways that they were trying
to make that could have been kind of cool.
Yeah.

I feel like there's something
about using the D pad on the GBA 'cause this is the one that I
played on the GBA and not on with my Xbox controller.
Essentially it's what I play.

Corn teaser vendor.
I mean, it's just the D pads or whatever, but but the but the D
pad almost really throws you around the screen a lot more and
on a pretty small screen as well.
So I felt like that is part of the issue this game ran into.
If you could tilt it, depending on how accurate it was, I think
maybe that would have actually helped with some of the control.
You know, say what you will about the excessive motion
controls in some games for we or we you that may or may not have
worked, but in this I don't know.
I I haven't played one of those on the GBA before because
there's there's a very few of them.
There's a Kirby game I think as well that has a.
Kirby Tilts and Tumble, you're giving me, you're giving me mad
flashbacks to Kirby Tilts and

Tumble.
Because when I did play that on my GBA SP, OK, once we
transition from single screen, you know, not a flip, OK.
But when you have a game like

Kirby Tilts and Tumble, where
there's a mechanic of launching

Kirby in the air by going like
this, what happens?

The screen flips.
The screen flips.

They're gonna say you hit
something in the face.

You flip it back and forth,
you're like really working that hinge.
It's like, and it didn't fix it.

You know, DS, same thing, same
thing.

So like any I I'm not a huge,
I'm not a huge gyro fan.

What what's cool with What's
cool with tilt and tumble?

On the NSO version you can use
the the gyroscope to control it.

Yeah, that's true.
Cool.

Oh, I should try that.
Remember, it's worth, it's worth playing it that way.
Yeah.

And.
Then it's like.

Portable I think even if you do
the the joy cons and the little grips you can do.
It that way, that's a pro controller, that's fun, that's
that's good.

Yeah, yeah, it's a fun game.
Yeah, I, I, I like those.

I like how Kirby does a lot of
different stuff.

So I'm I'm happy.
Kirby handles gimmicks really well.
Yes, yes.

That's what Kirby has really,
actually turned into, is that that's really what it's should
kind of be known for in in a lot of ways.
But but if you see like

Forgotten land, they can still
make a really.

Good like Oh my God, I solid
Kirby game.

I just played that two months
ago at a friend's place.

He got it for his for his son
who just got a switch like his for his game system is a switch
and he's like 8 years old or whatever.
There you go, tilt and tumble.

Also, like, the coolest game
cartridge ever, Yeah.

That's nice looking and man I
love my forgotten world is fucking good holy shit.
It's my favorite.

It's my favorite Kirby.
Game I gotta you know what when or if let's be honest, when I
get a switch to that's gonna be one of the games that I wanna
get for it I'm just gonna play it on that but man it was fun.
I played it.

I don't know we were passing the
controller around like oh your turn my turn whatever for like
an hour and I'm like this is fantastic.
This is.

Really 100% of it and it was
worth it.

Yeah, it yeah, it's a great
time.

It looks great.
So Banjo Pilot, give it a shot if you want.
I don't know if you're going to really get more than a couple
hours out of it, but if you want to play something like this, you
can easily just go to the 64 and play that instead.
Or there's other racers, as we've discussed on the GBA, that
yeah, they're not prop planes, but they're probably turbulent,
but they're probably better than this, yeah.
If.

You if you play this game for
half an hour, you'll be good.

Yeah, you'll get the gist of it.
That's true.

Yeah, that's true.
I was gonna say, listen, we we got here, we didn't, we haven't
talked about the GBA very often.

So this obviously it's an N64
podcast.

The fact we talked about the
GBA, we went on these, we went on these little side tangents,
OK, to talk about different games we like different
mechanics, different things, like all about the GBA, like
fantastic.

But I think that speaks to the
quality of these two games that we went on these tangents
talking about other games we liked more or different
mechanics we liked more.

We're like these games were
almost something we liked.

At least Grunty's Revenge was a
little more positive.

But you know, there's something
there.

But we definitely think there's
a lot better titles on the Game

Boy Advance.
I don't know.

That's, that's what I'm getting
from this.

I I.
Think so.

That's part of.
It, I think it, I think it's like if this represents like the
middle of the road for the GBA, that means you have so much more
great stuff to go off.

Like it has a really deep
library of games.

And a lot of when I was like,
exploring it and playing all these random games, like so many
of them surprised me at how well they were made and just how fun
they were.

Because it felt like by this
point, most people had figured out how to do 2D games and make
2D games that were really great.

And the GBA is just jam packed
with amazing games.

Yeah.
Huge library, huge library.

And also I went from having the
original Game Boy to the color to this.
All my games played on it and like as a kid.
That's cool that.

Was awesome and I also loved
like.

I played the first Wario game a
ton growing up.

I love that game so much.
It is amazing now.

No, but I have a lot of
nostalgia for it.

Little things where you could
just like switch the color palette or shades or whatever
they call them on it.

I had a couple of favorites that
I always went to, like that kind of stuff was it's just cool to
have that option, you know?

I have a lot of respect for the
Wario Land series.

Yeah, yeah, the first two.
Nintendo.

It's Nintendo being unique and
actually genuinely experimenting, which is
something that they do less and less of the further we get into
them, you know?

Absolutely around that.
Time and Wario Land 4 and Wario

Land 4 is one of the best.
It's.

Fantastic on that, on that
console so.

Yeah, it's really, really good.
Yeah.

And they're doing something
weird, which like you said, is not something they're really
known for at the at this moment anyway, right now.
Especially as weird as like

Wario Land.
Yeah, like.

Yeah, like some of the things
they do in those games feels very UN Nintendo.
And it gets weirder as they go along, I think, you know, like
they really do.

They should be crazy with it.
Yeah, and after and after trying to play, say, Super Mario
Brothers Wonder and being kind of underwhelmed by it, I'm like,
Nintendo should just go back to

Wario Land.
Like, let them do that.

Wacky.
They should anyways, whether whether that game was a huge hit
and people loved it or not, like

Wonder or whatever, like
whatever it is, I think they they should make another, yeah,
another Wario game for sure, yeah.
Too many Wario wares, I know.

We've had enough warrior wear.
I want warrior land.

Yeah, A. 100% I miss those yeah
and and 2D make it 2D just like wonder was I'm I'm all.
For it or Warrior World 2.

Yeah.
I've talked about Warrior World before.
I don't, I'm not.

It's a fine game, but it's it's
it's own beast.

Wario himself and those games
themselves are their own beast, and that's why we want to see
more.

OK, so there's the.
Waluigi Game.

Oh my God, maybe that's what
Waluigi.

We're.
We're sitting here just a couple.
We're sitting here just a couple days before the Switch to
announcement.

This will be coming out far
after that, but maybe there'll be a Waluigi game.
Oh, never mind.

Mario that Luigi.
Pinball.

Just do Waluigi pinball.
Dude.

Why not?
Do it, do it.

Pokémon pimple game.
Either that or we get AGTA clone with Waluigi.
Yes.

Which is all I've ever wanted.
It's all we all.

It's all any of us really need.
It's GTA 6, but you're Waluigi.

But you're Waluigi.
Yeah, they beat Rockstar to it.

Thank God.
OK, So before we get out of here, Josh, we'll start with you
first.

Where can everybody find still
loading and this Will, yeah, I know we're doing this a lot, a
lot earlier than it's actually coming out.
But April and May, what's what's on tap?
If you do know that far ahead?

Actually, yeah, I do know.
I I've planned out.

I planned out my stuff way too
far in advance.

April is Punch a Nazi month
over.

It's still loading for no
topical reason whatsoever.

We got games being covered or
were covered by the time this comes out.
Wolfenstein 3D Medal of Honor

Underground with Dave over here,
Dave truly over here and then wrapping it up with Bionic
Commando.

Let's see what else do I have?
I think that's pretty much the big thing that I had going on at
the time in April and also depending on when this comes
out, Thrax Co host over at the 3D O Experience Bill is going to
be on to talk about infamous.

Oh, nice, nice.
Shout out Bill.

Nice.
And then March was the.

Hardest working man in
podcasting is Bill.

Honestly, holy no kidding.
Like making us all look bad, but in a good way.
But in a good way.

I try, I asked to help all the
time and he's like I'm good.

I try.
It dry and that's that's a still loading podcast.
You can find it all across your podcast feeds and everything.
Still loading pod on most social media, Most active on Blue Sky
and Instagram More on Blue Sky and yeah at still loading pod at
all those at all those locations.
Also, just cuz I I don't normally shout this out cuz it
is like money thing, but just cuz I've been really enjoying
it.

I do at on my Patreon for at the
$5 level.

I have a monthly movie podcast
which I do some still loading pun based off whatever movie
series I'm to covering right now.
It's the fast and furious franchise.
So it's still family.

And so it's all all the guests
who join me aren't just friends, they're family.
We're going through all the Fast and Furious movies.
And I think if this is out in

May, then the movie that we'll
be covering in May is the 6th 1.

So we're already we're already
over halfway through the series by the by the time.
Well, about halfway through the.

Series.
That one's fast 6, right?

That's when they started.
Like, you know, it's.

Like half the title.
No Fast 5 Fast and Furious 6

Furious 7 That's right, the fate
of the Furious is the 8th 1 The fate a fate of the Furious is
the.

They they pulled it off there,
but they didn't pull it off with with anyways.
Yeah, I'm waiting for I'm waiting for Fast and Furious.
I'm waiting for Fast and Furious 2 Turbo HD Ultra Mix.
And the challengers?

I mean it, it would be Fast and
Furious presents because that's what Hobbs and Shaw is the
offshoot 1 Fast and Furious presents.
That's the title.

Fast and Furious presents Hobbs
and Shaw and then the final one is Fast X for the 10th 1 and
obviously there's a Part 2 coming out later on.
They still focus on cars.

Are they just generic action
Movies Now?

They are car.
Weren't they always, though?

So here's.
No, the early.

Ones do early on.
Car culture, the first, the first, like three.
Yeah, here's the weird thing for stuff.
The answer to both of those questions is yes.
Yeah.

Yeah.
Because does it focus on cars?

Yes.
Is it car culture?

Not so much anymore, more as
cars as an extension of their bodies, the.
Like trans prime.

Prime example of this without
going too far into the weeds, in

Furious 7 there is a scene where
one of the characters is like launched off like they're they
got launched off of a like.

I forget exactly how, but they
they're they fly out out of the car they're on and they're go
about to go all over a Cliff side right.
There's a luckily one of their friends is right behind them in
their own car.

And instead of like stopping and
getting out and rushing over to help them because they would
have had time to do that, they drive over there.
They drive over with their car and they whip the tail the back
end of the car around.

So just the rear 2 tires go off
the edge of the Cliff.

And since they're going fast
enough, they have the momentum get back on and the person about
to fly over the Cliff catches the spoiler on it.
So they don't, they don't actually use their arms and legs
to help their friends.

They just use their cars as
extensions of themselves.

Like remember they didn't grab
them with their hands, they grab them with their car.
And that is?

Spoiler of their car.
The spoiler of their car so yeah, the.
And for anyone who has not watches movies, if you like
action movies, I always tell people watch the fifth one.
If you don't enjoy the fifth one, you're not going to like
the where the series goes from there.
If if the fifth one is like too insane and over the top for you,
don't bother watching the rest because they don't tone it down
at all.

They just get more.
Done gets worse.

And go to space with duct tape.
I love it, but it's.

Done.
I think I need to start watching these Movies Now.
They're great.

They're very entertaining, I
will say that.

Like I've watched the later,
like the recent releases and I'm always like, I had fun watching
this.

It was so ridiculous.
It's amazing.

And Vin Diesel is basically
indestructible for some reason.

Wow, it just runs 90?
Percent just gets shotgun blasted in the face.
He's like need to face when you got family.
There is.

See, I've been watching a lot of
Star Trek recently, so this is like the complete opposite.
Yeah, if.

You if you want something that
so Star Trek actually has like messages and actually has
intelligence.

Ethics and morals and all that,
yeah.

I mean there's ethics and
beautiful one.

One of the weird this is like,
oh man, I gotta stop.

I could go off on a tangent.
What I will say is.

You should make me watch one of
these and come on your show and

I'll be like, what the?
Fuck is happening?

What did you just do to me?
Would you make me watch?

I love it but I'm so confused.
The the The funny thing is, is that like they just get more and
more like how can I put this?

They do get more and more over
the top and more and more silly, but you just can't help but
enjoy it there.

There is, there's, there's so
much, there was something that

Jiggy said that sparked
something.

And now I'm, I've already lost
this, my train of thought in the thread of what I was going to
say.

So I'm gonna, if I remember it,
I'll jump back in here.

Otherwise I'll jump back in.
Otherwise, I'm just going to continue to ramble.
But yeah, if you don't like the fifth one, don't bother with the
rest because they get more and more insane over time.
And I actually always encourage people to watch them in order
because believe it or not, there's a really dumb plot line
between overarching plot line as the movies go on.
But it makes it much more fun if you watch them in the order they
came out and you'll see why that's like, normally I wouldn't
say that's important, but like it it, it's just dumb, silly
fun.

And I love them and they're
just, they're silly.

Oh, I remember what I was going
to say is we were talking about like with Star Trek, how it's
all, you know, there's these very like it's trying to say
something and have more like these deep morals.
The Fast and Furious movies they have, like they actually have a
really good like familial like, you know, like you how you are
supposed to treat your friends and have each others backs and
like you call each other like that type of stuff.
It actually does a pretty good job at that, but it has a lot of
line deliveries where they they think they're saying something
like badass or deep, but it's not and it doesn't make any
fucking sense.

It's like pseudo intellectual or
bro intellectual.

It's.
Lower than that it's but like.

Don't eat that chicken, you'll
have raging diarrhea.

I don't need diarrhea.
I got family.

It's like.
The diarrhea is my family.

My my favorite line, my favorite
example of this is in this in the 7th movie.
He this is a mild spoiler.

Vin Diesel and another character
who I will not name just for those who have not seen it just
because it's it's it's a fun character.
They are playing chicken with their cars.
So they're driving head first at each other.
Neither of them yield and they slam into each other, arguably
going 90 miles an hour minimum, right slam into each other.
Neither of them are wearing seatbelts, but they don't fly
out of the cars for physics.

I don't understand.
They get out Vin Diesel looks at the dudes car and sees that he
like reinforced it, right?

Like he he he aligned it with
like metal rods and steel and whatnot and he looks at it and
he's like you reinforced your chassis.
It's like going into a ring with weighted gloves and meaning
meaning that you cheated at this thing we do well, you know, like
weighted gloves is cheating in boxing.
So he's accusing this person of cheating at driving into each
other with our cars.

And then they say, what is it?
They say the guys like, you know, I've, you know, I, I
didn't grow up on the streets.

You did.
I grew up on me, you know, like me in the streets and you did.
I'm not here to play games.

And he he has a library like,
well, that's the thing about street fights.
The street always wins.

I don't know what the fuck that
means, I don't understand it and

I love every time it's
delivered.

Inject more of that into my
veins.

Thank you and and rant.
That's patreon.com/the little wing pop I need.
To watch, I need to watch these movies.
It's incredible.

So I watched the first 3 and
they were they were pretty good.

The first one is just point
break with cars.

The second one is like is like
early 2000s like action romp it it's very.
There's the Drift is really cool.
I took a rewatch it but I remember really liking it.
It it sticks out because it feels like it's more focused on
the cars than the other ones.

Yeah, the 4th 1 is kind of like
sets the formula for what it will be, but it's a lot more
serious.

Excuse me, that one's just
called Fast and Furious.

Yeah, the first one is The Fast
and the Furious.

Yeah, it's the Fast and the
Furious and the fourth one, the 4th 1 is just fast and furious
and then the fifth one is Fast 5 and it goes off from there.
But I I've already rambled and ranted too much so.
But yeah, patreon.com/still loading pod still loading 5.
Thrac what you up to buddy?

So as you guys are we, I'm a
part of the Super Pod network.

So you know, my show, the 3D
podcast is on that.

So be sure to check that out.
At this point, I don't know what we just we just kind of fly by
the seat of our pants on that one.
And I also occasionally do blogs on the Super Pod.
The most recent one as of this recording was mine on Medal of
Honor, the first one for the

PS1.
So you should go read that if you're interested in punching
Nazis.

Outside of that, you can follow
me on Blue Sky at Thrac.

I'm on Instagram at Thrac 94 and
see other things I'm doing.

I'm currently doing a a big long
series with Chris from a novel console about the Metal Gear
series.

So hopefully by the time this is
out, the first episode will be out and we'll probably be
working on the second one.

Who knows, Timing on that may be
a little iffy, but but yeah, that that's, that's just what I
do, yeah.

Amazing.
Thanks for having me.

Of course man, this has been
awesome.

And you will.
And you will be back, whether you like it or not.
Well, well, we're doing that.

That Army men thing that's.
Right.

Yeah, that's it.
Yeah, I.

Cannot wait.
Jiggy, what about you, buddy?

How's how's things?
Things are going great, YouTube stuff in the works.
I actually just dropped a kind of a people joked it was like a
a jiggy look back direct.

I dropped like a little image
that said coming soon of just all the different videos I've
been working on because I've been not pumping out content as
regularly as I normally would.

But I've got so many things
going on.

I'm gonna be streaming Quest 64,
which I've never played before.

Oh.
Yeah, yeah.

So I shout out to our boy quest,
Yeah.

Yes, so I'm I'm hopping on
Friday and gonna start streaming that every Friday as long as it
takes to to beat this game.

It's gonna be fantastic.
I've got a mysteries of Pikmin on GameCube video coming out
working on that.

I also have a mysteries of Ape
Escape for PS1.

And then I have two wandering
worlds, which is a game where I use a camera tool and go through
it's kind of reverse boundary break.
I like boundary break.

Boundary break looks on the
outside and like what's off screen?
What can we not see?

And I'm like, let's hyper zoom
in on these textures and see like any small details, see if
there's anything weird, you know?
And it's pretty cool sometimes what you can find, you don't
expect it.

So I'm doing one for Smash
Brothers Melee that's a collaboration with another
YouTube, and one for Banjo

Tooie, which I'm really excited
about, and that one's taking forever because the world's are
huge.

And then, yeah.
I have a surprise video that I'm not announcing yet, but it's
gonna be legit and it's gonna have a really cool update from
me about a project.

So that'll come at some point,
but it's super excited.

Nice man.
And then As for the show itself, we normally obviously cover the
N64.

So that's remember 64 show
across show, show media, which at this point, similar to what
the other fellas have said is

Blue sky and Instagram at this
point.

And, and also if you want to
watch these episodes or if you want to watch the other videos
that I put up every once in a while when I have a few minutes
to make something silly or put out some gameplay videos and
things like that, that's on

YouTube.
And you can subscribe to that to get an idea of every once in a
while when I have inconsistent times to stream games, I don't
have that time available to me as much as I'd like to.
Jiggy has a schedule and you should check out him playing the
games like he just mentioned.

So, but if you subscribe, you'll
get that little notification of when I go live and I'll play
games like Grunty's Revenge, which I streamed and sometimes
just random stuff they have in my backlog that I'm playing
through on Game Pass or something like that.
Just to sort of sit down and share my time with the games.
That is remember 64 on YouTube and on
patreonpatreon.com/remember 64 show.
You can get every single episode early, sometimes even weeks
ahead of time because ones like this are recorded very early and
why not share them to those that are patrons?
You can also get pre show chats.

You can get some other episodes
that I'm trying to do again.

Time is tricky sometimes, but
other games I'm playing away from the 64, those would be the
little mini audio recordings and ramblings.
I put up a couple of those recently as well.
And also, yeah, I guess give us a rating on your podcast app of
choice as as we always want everybody to do, to help us get
found even further.

And oh, and then one thing I
meant to mention, I think I I'm going to put a little thing at
the beginning of the episode, but I have a new thing that I'm
doing.

I want to hear more from people
that are watching and listening.

It's called Voicecast and then
you can name it after us.

Ours is obviously remember 64,
so Voicecasta remember 64.

You can leave a voice message
about what you think of the show, what you think of
episodes, games that we've played, games that are coming up
that you want to share your thoughts on.
So you can check social media to see sort of, you know, what
games might be coming up.

And you can say, hey, I played
this game or, and I love it or I hate it or why would you cover
this?

It's trash.
Whatever, you guys are trash.

I don't care.
Tell us what you think.

It could be anywhere from 30
seconds to 5 minutes of a message.
Make it a little shorter.

It's easier to play on the show.
And then we'll have that message say who you are, where you're
from, and we'll play the message on the show and we'll we'll have
that included in our recordings, which is what I want to do going
forward.

So that is voice cast dot app
slash remember 64 and it is completely free.
You can also find that link in the show notes and also across
social media as well.

So that's it.
Everybody is completely free.

What's that?
You know what else is completely?
Free.

No.
What is it, Jiggy?

Creating this podcast.
That's right, right?

Yeah.
Is it, is it free?

It it doesn't cost any money to
give it five stars.

So there you go.
That's right, At least not yet.

Not.
Yet not yet.

Smoke them while you got them.
Five stars.

Smoke them while you got them
kids.

And yeah, so we'll see you next
time on the show.

Banjo Kazooie is out there.
At this point.

We have Rayman 2 where Josh was
on getting back into the swing of things in 2025 has been
awesome.

I I guess almost every episode
to start the year, which has been great and more to come
throughout the rest of the year.

So stay tuned.
Thanks everyone for listening and talking some GBA with us.
Thanks guys for joining me.

We will see everybody soon.
Goodbye, bye.

Bye.
The.

Our trio of Banjo-Kazooie episodes continues!We boot up the GBA with Grunty's Revenge and Banjo Pilot with Thrak from The 3DO Experience & Josh returns from @stillloadingpodcast !

We talk a ton about the Game Boy Advance, our favourites on the handheld, and if these two games are worth picking up!


You can WATCH this episode as well: https://youtu.be/WvppWugqUEk

What did you think of the episode and this game? Leave us a message completely free at: ⁠⁠⁠voicecast.app/remember64⁠⁠


We've launched a ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Patreon page⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ where you can get episodes early and pre-show chats about pretty much anything and everything!

PLUS, some free content is dropping on the page as well like mini reviews! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠patreon.com/remember64show⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠