Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts

Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts is a 3D platform game in which the player controls the bear-and-bird duo of Banjo & Kazooie to construct vehicles and complete challenges. The player finds or earns vehicle components and blueprints across six worlds to give their vehicles new traversal abilities and complete further challenges.—to build vehicles including automobiles, helicopters, submarines, hovercraft, boats, and aeroplanes in Mumbo's Motors, a workshop in the hub. Another character in the hub, Humba Wumba, sells the player additional vehicle parts and blueprints. There are a total of 131 Jiggies, but Kazooie can use a spanner as a melee weapon. Players who own Nuts & Bolts and Banjo-Kazooie (1998) on the same Xbox 360 can unlock bonus content, such as novelty vehicle parts. Players can compete using custom or pre-made vehicles and share vehicle blueprints over Xbox Live. ==Development==

Conception 's first game built specifically for the Xbox 360 (pictured). Although Rare generally resisted continual sequels, they knew they were not finished with Banjo. The Banjo team wanted the third game to feature game mechanics that were impossible on older hardware, and they did not think it was possible to build a worthy successor until the Xbox 360's release in 2005. What became Nuts & Bolts entered development after Rare completed Grabbed by the Ghoulies (2003), their first game for Microsoft's Xbox. Gregg Mayles led the 71-member team, However, staff felt the effort it took to recreate the environments would be better spent on a new game and feared that audiences would dismiss the remake as a rehash. Nuts & Bolts working titles included Banjo 3, Banjo-Buildie, and Banjo-Threeie, but Mayles chose Nuts & Bolts to appeal to non-fans and differ from previous titles. They wanted to reach a broad audience, of players old and new, Rare sought to stay faithful to the series. Mayles and Rare head Mark Betteridge said its humour, characters, structure, and feel remained the same, and they still considered Nuts & Bolts a platformer despite the focus on vehicles. He thought vehicles would make exploration more fun, since he found travelling to objectives was often the weakest part of platformers; the game design grew from this. Mayles expected the new direction to unsettle fans initially but hoped they would come to appreciate it. Game balance was complicated, as the nonlinear gameplay meant each tester approached objectives differently, though the game changed little during its testing phase. Early editors required players to keep parts attached to vehicles or they would fall. This was changed to make building feel more like a Lego set, so players could see all their parts and choose where to put them. Rare initially re-used Banjo and Kazooie's design from the Nintendo 64 games, but thought it lacked charm as a high-polygon model. After several redesigns, the team chose a blockier design with sharp edges reminiscent of an upscaled low-polygon model, which they felt fit Nuts & Bolts direction. which features self-deprecating humour referencing other Rare games and the state of the video game industry. Loveday, who had not written for a Rare game since Jet Force Gemini (1999), had to balance the distinctive speech tics of the Banjo cast with making gameplay details clear and was required to write in American English rather than British English. Rare used Comic Sans for the dialogue since it was readable on both high-definition and standard-definition displays. Kirkhope's new tracks incorporated references to past compositions. His first track was a rearrangement of the Spiral Mountain theme using a real banjo recorded in Pro Tools. He intended the rearrangement to sound "a little rough round the edges, [imagining] Banjo sitting there trying to remember how he played the banjo all those years ago". The Nuts & Bolts soundtrack was Kirkhope's final work for Rare, having worked there since October 1995. He described composing it as a distressing time. ==Release==

Microsoft announced an Xbox 360 Banjo-Kazooie game as in development at its X06 conference in September 2006 with an animated trailer but no release date or gameplay details. Apart from confirming in early 2007 that Mayles and the original Banjo-Kazooie team were returning with unexpected elements for the franchise, Rare did not want to show off the game before they felt it was ready and remained silent about the project throughout the year, to the point that in November they had to deny a rumour that it had been cancelled. In February 2008, Microsoft Game Studios announced that the game would be released around the 2008 Christmas shopping season. On its recently created website, Rare challenged fans to guess the game's plot on April Fools' Day 2008. Microsoft formally announced Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts during its Spring Showcase event in May, a few days after screenshots leaked. During its E3 2008 conference, Microsoft showcased a Nuts & Bolts trailer and provided a demo to attendees. VG247 named Nuts & Bolts among the best games showcased at E3 2008, and IGN wrote Microsoft and Rare tailored the E3 demo to show that it was a natural continuation for the franchise. They felt it retained the series' core elements while introducing "fresh ideas to a genre that has fallen out of favour with gamers". as well as a Best Platform Game nomination for their Overall Best of E3 Awards. Microsoft invited journalists to its UK headquarters in Reading, Berkshire to play Nuts & Bolts in September, and Rare released a demo via the Xbox Live Marketplace in October. The X06 reveal led to excitement from Banjo-Kazooie fans, but Nuts & Bolts proved divisive following its announcement. While some observers found the possibilities offered by vehicle construction exciting, the new direction confused others. Banjo-Kazooie fans had desired for the first Xbox Banjo-Kazooie game to build on its predecessors' gameplay, and Nuts & Bolts departure from the series' style left many angry; GameRevolution said the release "was undeniably defined by the cries of longtime fans feeling as if they had been wronged... it was impossible to read about Nuts & Bolts without hearing how upset Xbox 360 owners were that the game wasn't a traditional platformer". They noted part of the discourse was rooted in console war sentiments, as some backlash came from Nintendo fans who remained bitter over Microsoft's acquisition of Rare. Those who pre-ordered Nuts & Bolts received the Xbox version of Banjo-Kazooie for free. Nuts & Bolts sold 140,000 copies in the United States during its first month on sale and over 100,000 copies in the United Kingdom by 2010. It was added to Microsoft's Platinum Hits budget game line in January 2010, indicating sales of at least 400,000 copies within nine months of its release. Despite this, Nuts & Bolts was considered a commercial disappointment. Fable II, another late 2008 Microsoft game, sold 1.2 million copies in the United States within the same timeframe as Nuts & Bolts 140,000. Though Nuts & Bolts underperformed, Rare was satisfied with the released product. ==Reception==

Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts received "generally favourable reviews", according to the review aggregate website Metacritic. Critics considered Nuts & Bolts a unique experience, which IGN and Eurogamer said would satisfy gamers willing to invest time in playing it. Rare's reputation had declined in the years following their acquisition by Microsoft. 1Up.com said Nuts & Bolts "puts the ailing developer on the road back to relevancy", with Game Informer adding it proved Rare was still capable of innovation. Critics commended the visuals, describing the game world as big, cartoonish, colourful, and varied. VideoGamer.com and Wired singled out the hub's scale and quality for particular praise, and Gameplanet and GameSpy favourably compared its visuals to Viva Piñata. Some criticised its frame rate for occasional instability; GameSpot said frame rate dips protracted races and buying items. VideoGamer.com said Nuts & Bolts would be the best-looking Xbox 360 game but for its unstable frame rate. Reviewers praised its soundtrack as fitting and adapting to the player's surroundings. Many considered the vehicle editor a highlight. Critics found it deep (to the point that Game Informer considered it "a game in and of itself"), absorbing, and well designed, requiring players to use their imagination and conceive crafty solutions to problems. While 1Up.com considered this to be Nuts & Bolts heart, Eurogamer and Wired felt the concept failed to amount to consistently fun gameplay. IGN and GameSpy, though enjoying the gameplay overall, found the vehicle editor complex and potentially limiting the appeal to less-experienced players. GameSpot and GameSpy criticised the vehicles as difficult to control. GameSpy found this particularly frustrating given how significantly the vehicles factor into the experience. The online multiplayer mode and the competition among custom vehicles it encouraged was consistently praised. Eurogamer said it was where Nuts & Bolts best qualities were consolidated, and 1Up.com enjoyed observing how different players overcame the same situation. Conversely, IGN thought it worked better in theory than in practice, finding the amount of strategy it required off-putting. Reviewers enjoyed exploring the worlds. 1Up.com and GameSpot thought Rare made exploration fun and not a burden necessary to find minigames, which GameSpot said was a problem in previous games. Eurogamer and Wired considered the Klungo minigame a highlight. Though they called exploration fun, Gameplanet said there was little to do outside completing missions, and some questioned whether Rare's departure from the previous' games platforming was for the best. GameSpy described Rare's decision to forgo traditional platforming as brave but said Nuts & Bolts did not live up as a sequel, while GamesRadar+ said it was unrecognisable as a Banjo game aside from some fan service. Eurogamer wrote Nuts & Bolts lack of platforming made its flaws more obvious, while IGN said that players should not ignore Nuts & Bolts just because it diverged from its predecessors and that it was "a great change of pace from the usual Xbox 360 fare". Nuts & Bolts features Rare's characteristic humour, and reviewers praised its writing. Game Informer said the writing "deftly blends legitimate laughs with a compelling commentary on the state of video games", and GamesRadar+ appreciated Nuts & Bolts levity in a landscape full of somber games. Reviewers highlighted Rare's self-deprecation (targeting their failures like Grabbed by the Ghoulies) and jokes about game clichés, gamer culture, and Xbox 360 hardware problems. Though they enjoyed completing challenges, critics felt Nuts & Bolts became tedious as it progressed, crowded by an abundance of racing minigames that prevented players from experimenting. VideoGamer.com said the best missions featured "some of the most ingenious next-gen gameplay we've seen", but overall their quality was inconsistent. Eurogamer thought Nuts & Bolts failed to resolve Viva Piñata problem of a needlessly protracted tutorial that could have been avoided with experimentation and trusting the player's intuition. They also felt the game suffered from repetition, as players could overcome most challenges by simply upgrading their engine. Game Informer and GamesRadar+ added the game required players to spend considerable time collecting items, even while the script mocks Rare's reputation for making such games. ==Post-release==

A month after the release, Rare released a patch to make small dialogue text more readable on standard-definition televisions. In April 2009, Rare released the ''L.O.G.'s Lost Challenges downloadable content, Rare also ran a contest from December 2008 into January 2009 in which players could share their custom Nuts & Bolts'' vehicles for a chance for their inclusion in the game. Rare added the seven winners' designs to ''L.O.G.'s Lost Challenges, which are unlocked through ownership of the Xbox 360 version of Banjo-Tooie''. Nuts & Bolts was among the 30 games included in the Xbox One compilation Rare Replay, released to coincide with Rare's 30th anniversary in 2015. Rare dedicated one of its Rare Revealed documentaries to the development of Nuts & Bolts. Nuts & Bolts was also one of the first games added to the Xbox One's catalogue of backward-compatible Xbox 360 games. As an Xbox One X enhanced game, its graphics are upscaled to run at a 4K resolution. ==Legacy==

Journalists continue to characterise Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts as divisive. Xbox: The Official Magazine wrote that it is commonly described as the black sheep of the Banjo franchise. According to Hardcore Gamer, while Rare's reputation had already declined following the Microsoft buyout, it was Nuts & Bolts that "solidified the negativity of the company", its departure from the series' roots seen as a betrayal that eroded fans' trust. In February 2009, Microsoft restructured Rare in response to the lacklustre performance of Nuts & Bolts and their other Xbox 360 games, directing them to focus on Xbox Live Avatars and the motion control-based Kinect peripheral. Nuts & Bolts was Rare's last non-Kinect game for several years; GamesRadar+ wrote that following it, Rare was "continually hit with layoffs, further diluting the brand and reducing the studio's output to minigame collections and the occasional Xbox Live Avatar outfit". Nonetheless, Nuts & Bolts reputation improved in the years following its release. GameRevolution wrote that fans began to judge it on its own merits rather than for what it was not. Likewise, Eurogamer wrote in a 2012 retrospective that the customisation tools provided versatility that meant it held up well. After Rare Replay release, GamesRadar+ expressed pleasure players would be able to experience Nuts & Bolts without the discourse that encircled it in 2008. and praised its unique gameplay. The 2019 sandbox game Trailmakers was inspired by Nuts & Bolts, featuring similar vehicle customisation tools and design elements. Many commentators noted similarities between Nuts & Bolts and The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (2023) vehicle customisation mechanics. Not all retrospective assessments were positive. GamesRadar+ and Hardcore Gamer said that while Nuts & Bolts was great when judged individually, fans' dislike was not meritless. Mayles echoed these sentiments in a 2020 Xbox: The Official Magazine retrospective. While he still felt Nuts & Bolts was a proper continuation of the series, Mayles admitted that "maybe it was too radical a departure. Perhaps we should have taken an even bigger risk by removing the game from the Banjo world and building it as something else". Nuts & Bolts remains the most recent Banjo-Kazooie game. Former Rare personnel established the independent studio Playtonic Games in 2014 to develop a spiritual successor to Banjo-Kazooie, Yooka-Laylee (2017). Additionally, fan requests for Banjo and Kazooie's inclusion in Nintendo's crossover fighting game series Super Smash Bros. led to their addition to Super Smash Bros. Ultimate (2018) in 2019. Mayles' brother Steve said the enthusiastic responses to their addition could convince Microsoft to commission another Banjo-Kazooie game. ==Notes==