Crash and Spyro studio, Toys for Bob, has reiterated that it would “love” to work on Rare and Xbox’s dormant Banjo-Kazooie series.
The California-based studio has built a reputation for platformer revivals, having worked on Crash Bandicoot 4 and recently announced a new instalment for Spyro the Dragon.
Banjo-Kazooie seems to be next on the studio’s hit list, since it reiterated in an interview with Kinda Funny that it would jump at the chance to work on the franchise.
“It’s a franchise we love,” said associate creative director Lou Studdert. “As platformer fans, Banjo’s top of the heap. We have some huge, huge fans of that franchise on our staff. I’m talking, they’ve got the Jiggy as their profile pic and that kind of thing.
“So if the opportunity ever arose, that’d be amazing. We love the franchise.”
Studio head Paul Yan echoed the sentiment: “If you look at the throughline of the types of games that we like to make, I imagine that that’s part of that staple as well,” he said.
“Those characters, I think, you described as nostalgic. That’s one way of looking at it, but I think of them as timeless. I think the types of games we want to produce are ones that speak to a timeless place in the player, as well as an ageless one. We call it ‘the inner child’, right? So I think they’re wonderful games and we’re huge fans.”
Original devs unsure if Banjo will come back
The Rare platformer series hasn’t seen an instalment since Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts, which was released for Xbox 360 more than 15 years ago.
In recent years, there were signs of life in the form of a Nintendo Switch Online release, and Banjo and Kazooie were added as playable characters to Super Smash Bros Ultimate.
Speaking to VGC in 2023 as part of an extended interview to mark Banjo-Kazooie’s 25th anniversary, a group of original Rare team members said they weren’t expecting a new game anytime soon.
Despite a $3 million Kickstarter and over 1 million copies sold for their spiritual successor, Playtonic Games’ Yooka-Laylee, composer Grant Kirkhope questioned whether the audience was truly there for a new game.
“I feel like you’d have to get a team with the humour that we had back then, and that’s hard to replicate,” he said. “I think Rare would be open to somebody if they found the right team, but I don’t feel like that team exists. Also, I’m not convinced the audience is there either… I don’t feel like there are that many Banjo fans out there.
“The whole Smash Bros. thing was spectacular… it really was. I think all the team that worked on that game had a tear in their eye when Banjo turned up in Smash Bros… it was just an unbelievable release of emotion. Seeing all those [fans] crying on videos was heart-warming, and we all felt it. That was a once-in-a-lifetime event when that happened.
“But I still feel like, is there that multimillion-dollar thing within Banjo-Kazooie? I’m not convinced there is.”
