Banjo-Kazooie

North America cover box art

The Banjo-Kazooie games are a series of 3D platform/adventure video games created by Rare Ltd. The game stars a honey bear named Banjo and a bird named Kazooie as the protagonists, who are controlled by the player, and a witch named Gruntilda as the primary antagonist. There are currently five games in the series.

Games

• Banjo Kazooie - The first installment of the series for the N64, it introduces many of the reoccurring characters here from Banjo and Kazooie, to Gruntilda, Mumbo and Bottles. Gruntilda (also commonly called "Grunty") had spoken to her animated cauldron Dingpot, whom she asked if she was the prettiest of them all. When she learned that Tooty was, in fact, the prettiest, she seeked out the young cub to absorb her beauty for herself. After she kidnapped Tooty, her older brother Banjo had set out with Kazooie to go to the witch's home at the top paralleling Spiral Mountain. From there, with the help of Bottles, and through several tasks to help others, Banjo and Kazooie navigate throughout Grunty's home filled with unique worlds for every nook and cranny of her keep, each unlocked through a set amount of music notes and golden jigsaw pieces known as jiggies. In the end, after gaining all the jiggies, rescuing all the jinjos, and completing the Furnace Fun challenge Grunty had set out, Banjo rescues Tooty, and then further challenges Grunty whom they defeated with the help of the jinjos and their secret weapon, the Jinjonator.
• Banjo Tooie - The second game in the series for the N64, but chronologically the third game in the series, two years had passed since the events of the first game where Grunty is trapped in a crater under a large boulder after the events of the final battle in the last game. Her loyal servant Klungo remained with her and all was well in Banjo's life up until Grunty's sisters, Blobella and Mingella, had appeared, driving through Isle o Hags in a large drill-tank known as the HAG1, to use their magic to free Grunty. Grunty, although still alive throughout the entire two years, had her body decayed into nothing but a skeletal shadow of herself, and in quick revenge before setting her plans in motion, she attacked Banjo's house, killing Bottles in the process. She then sets off at her sisters' home in Cauldron Keep to use a machine they designed called B.O.B. that is capable of draining the entire island's worth of life to restore Grunty's body, one early victim of this machine being King Jingaling, the ruler of the jinjos. Once again, after setting off to recover jiggies scattered in the entire area of Isle O Hags and rescue the jinjos whom also fled their homes, Banjo and Kazooie are guided by Bottles's brother Jamjars in learning several new moves as well as defeating Mingella and Blobella in Grunty's second quiz challenge (Tower of Tragedy), as well as restoring Bottles's and Jingaling's lives. In a final showdown with Grunty, they destroyed the HAG1 and, in a spell backfired by Kazooie's egg-shot, destroyed much of Grunty's body as well, leaving her as a skull.
• Banjo Kazooie: Grunty's Revenge - The third game in the series for the Game Boy Advance, but the second chonologically, the game takes place two months after the events of Kazooie. Grunty is still trapped under the boulder, still alive and aware of her sisters coming to her. Unable to wait much longer, Klungo hatches a plan to create a new robotic body for Grunty to allow her soul to leave her current body and use the robot. It works, and Grunty promptly sets off to kidnap Kazooie and go back in time to prevent Banjo from ever meeting Kazooie and thus make them unable to defeat her in the events of the first game. When she takes Kazooie to the past with her, Mumbo Jumbo helps Banjo by using his magic to also transport him to the past, where Banjo meets with Bottles and Jamjar's great great grandfather, Bozzeye, whom teaches him moves Banjo forgot during his travel in time as well as some new ones. Banjo travels throughout the past version of Isle O Hags while eventually rescuing Kazooie, and later challenges both Grunty and Klungo multiple times before eventually defeating them. After the final battle, Grunty's robotic body is destroyed and Banjo and Kazooie are transported back into the present, thus forcing Grunty to return to her body in the crater under the boulder and wait for her sisters, leading off to the events of Tooie.
• Banjo Pilot - Originally planned to be a sequel to Diddy Kong Racing, the events of Rare being bought out by Microsoft caused the game to be retooled into Banjo Pilot for the Game Boy Advance. The story isn't heavily involved with the rest of the series, and involves Cheato, Grunty's spellbook, to have lost his pages, requiring everyone else to retrieve them on their various aircraft.
• Banjo Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts - The latest entry to the series for the X-Box 360, it takes place eight years after the events of Tooie where both Banjo and Kazooie had gotten older, lazier and out of shape over the years due to their lack of adventuring, while Grunty, still reduced to a skull, finally seeks them out to challenge them in spite of her current form. Their latest brawl sparks the appearance of a powerful entity known as the Lord Of Games (nicknamed L.O.G.) to come forward to settle the conflict once and for all. He gives them a challenge in Showdown Town where the prize would be the deed to Spiral Mountain while punishment for the loser would be eternal harship in L.O.G.'s video game factory. To even the odds for both parties, he restored Banjo and Kazooie to their prime shape and fitness (but didn't give them the moves they would have retained from Kazooie, Tooie and Grunty's Revenge), while giving Grunty a new robotic body and, with Klungo abandoning her, a new henchmen in the form of an adorable pink kitty named Piddles. The two would compete where Banjo and Kazooie will use various blueprints, tools and parts at their disposal to create unique and varied vehicles to traverse through levels, while Grunty would not only create her own vehicles, but also Gruntbots as well to challenge them. In the end, Banjo and Kazooie had overpowered Grunty and were about to have a final showdown when L.O.G. intervenes, declaring that the duo had already won, granting Banjo and Kazooie Spiral Mountain's deed while transporting Grunty to his factory where Piddles (in the first and only instance in the game she spoke) would serve as Grunty's supervisor while constantly giving her orders.

Characters

• Banjo is a brown honey bear, who is one of the two main characters of the series. He is polite and well-mannered, and is always seen wearing yellow shorts with a belt, a shark tooth necklace, and a bright blue backpack. The backpack usually contains his good friend Kazooie.
• Kazooie is a large, red female bird (known as a "Red-Crested Breegull") who is Banjo's closest companion and lifelong friend, although their personalities are quite different from each other's. Whereas Banjo is polite and friendly, Kazooie is loud, sarcastic and rude. Kazooie does not hesitate to make crass statements about even the most imposing figures that the duo encounter, much to Banjo's dismay. Although Banjo often finds himself apologizing for Kazooie's remarks, they almost always find themselves embroiled in dangerous situations simply due to Kazooie's inability to keep quiet.
• Bottles is a shortsighted mole who assists Banjo and Kazooie. He wears large, thick, cokebottle framed glasses and has a wife, Mrs. Bottles, two children, Speccy and Goggles, and a brother, Jamjars. In the X-Box 360 remake or the N64 (with the help of a gameshark), he was a playable character as Devil Bottles in Bottles Revenge Mode for Tooie, where the players can use him to control most enemies in the game to interfere with the main player's progress in the game.
• Jamjars is the brother of Bottles and a militaristic drill sergeant mole, complete with trooper sunglasses, green fatigues and army boots.
• Bozzeye the ancestor of Bottles and Jamjars, he resembles the two in wearing large, thick glasses and sports long, grey hair and a huge beard. His eyes also move erratically in opposing directions and he is prone to ramble on, causing Banjo (and later Kazooie) to question more on what direction he's looking at rather than pay attention to his speeches.
• Tooty is Banjo's younger sister and Bottles' best friend. Tooty wears purple pants, red top and pigtails. In Banjo-Kazooie, she gets kidnapped by Gruntilda because she is more beautiful than her. She is physically absent from all other games in the series.
• Gruntilda "Grunty" Winkybunion is the main antagonist of the series, who is a large, wide witch with green skin, very thin limbs and a long nose and chin. While alive she had grown jealous of Tooty and kidnapped her in an attempt to steal her beauty. In Kazooie's game over sequence, she succeeds and appears as a beautiful woman with an evil glare in her eyes. After Tooie, she appears as a reanimated skeleton of her former self, who, over the course of the series, loses bits and pieces of her form until she is reduced to being a head.
• Piddles is a small, pink cat with a very long body and neck and very tiny, stubby legs. She was assigned by L.O.G. to be Grunty's partner in the absence of Grunty's former assistant Klungo, but with her cuteness, Grunty would shoo her away, causing a large rivalry between the two. Eventually, however, the two grudgingly cooperated long enough to team up against Banjo and Kazooie, but still lost to the two. In the end she was assigned to go to L.O.G.'s video game factory with Grunty, but had been shown to give Grunty constant orders rather than actually help her.