Banjo-Kazooie for the GameBoy Advance is the sequel to the Banjo games on the N64. The story, as the title suggests, is about Grunty’s return, and your efforts to stop her. This isn’t ordinary Grunty either. Her goons constructed a Mecha-Grunty for her spirit to inhabit because her body is trapped away under the ground. The game starts out with Grunty going back into the past to kidnap Kazooie, in order to keep Banjo and Kazooie form ever meeting so they couldn’t have stopped her in the first place. The first part of the game involves Banjo being sent back into the past and rescuing Kazooie. The rest of the game is focused on stopping the new Mecha-Grunty.

The game is played via a top down, 3-D perspective. Seeing as how the N64 games were 3-D platformers, this setup makes perfect sense. The gameplay is what you would expect. A typical Banjo-Kazooie (Rare) collect-a-thon. Normally I would say this formula is getting old, but somehow it remains fun in this game. That is probably because there is a point to the collecting. You need to find the notes to buy new moves, and you need jiggies (jig-saw puzzle pieces) to unlock the new levels. The new moves you buy will allow you to get to areas in previous levels that you couldn’t reach before, and I even found myself enjoying scouring entire levles looking for all 100 notes and 10 jiggies. The only other games I have cared about such things involved a certain plumber that we all know and love.

The levels also usually include a few mini-games that you must win to find all the jiggies. They are all very well done, and I liked them all. A couple of the games are dodging and collecting items while going down a slide, or shooting at a pirate ship in a semi first-person-shooter style of game. Some of the stages also involve some puzzle solving aspects. Most of the puzzle sections involve one of Banjo’s transformed forms. That’s right, as you progress and collect more voodoo heads, you can have the witch doctor turn you into different animals/things. Some of which include a mouse-to get into small areas, or a candle-to see in dark places, or a tank-for when major firepower is needed.

The controls are very responsive. The only problems I have with the controls is when jumping. For some reason I have trouble landing with precision. If my destination is a small target, it always takes a few tries to hit it. This can get frustrating, especially if you have more than one small target in a row to land on. Some of my jumping issues did not just involve controls. Some of them were graphics-related. Speaking of which . . .

The graphics are quite good, they have a Donkey Kong Country style look to them. The colors are nice and bright, and I could even play the game without much trouble with the light on my SP turned off. They even look decent while playing on the GameBoy Player. Some games look terrible when stretched to fit a TV (see my Donkey Kong Country review for an example of this), but I still had fun with Banjo-Kazooie, plopped on the couch, with a Wavebird in hand, staring at a 27 inch GameBoy. The only graphical problems I found had to do with judging distances. More specifically, they had to do with judging height. There is no way to tell how high the spot you want to jump to is with relation to you. The only way to tell is to try and make the jump, and if you take the plunge, then you know it’s too high. This is no good, because sometimes you are very high before you attempt a jump, and if you cant make it, you can fall VERY far down and have to trudge all the way back up to where you were.

The sounds in Banjo-Kazooie get an A- in my book. The music sounds good, and fits the areas you are in. Only one of the songs started to get annoying, and that was only after being in that area for a long time. The sound effects are nice as well, and I only found the grunts and squacks that the characters make when conversing with other characters to be annoying. Luckily you aren’t talking to people that often.

As far as lasting appeal is concerned, Banjo Kazooie would be above average. There is plenty to find in each area that will take quite awhile if you feel so inclined to find everything. However once you finish the game, and find everything, there really isn’t anything drawing you back to play it again. You can go back and play the mini-games as often as you want, so depending on how much you enjoyed them, they might help improve the life of the game.

In conclusion, Banjo-Kazooie is a good game. Despite the frustrations with some of the jumping, the rest of the game keeps you from shutting it off, and encourages you to hike back up the mountain and try the jump again. This game is not for everyone, however. The collecting, and rather kiddie nature of the game will turn some people off. I would recommend giving it a try if you like platform/adventure games. Some of the dialogue is funny, and if you pass on this game, you will miss out on the groovy witch doctor with a disco ball in his hut. Everyone should have a disco ball in their voodoo hut, don’t you think?