| Lobb: |
Most of you have heard the basic.. ah... main game play difference which is now Banjo and Kazooie can split. You know, what this means is you start out with a bunch of the moves you already started out with in Banjo-Kazooie, which is twenty-plus. When you first play level one, you're still connected together, still best of friends, not that that ever changes, But you start learning new moves that you can use together as a team. Some of these moves are simple, like a new and better drill move, or a better way to fly, or a better way to shoot eggs, you know, there are a bunch of different eggs. Some of them are... rather unique, One of my personal favorites is, uh, after you do some certain elements in level one, you get this move where in certain areas of certain minigames, you know, Banjo will like reach back into his backpack, and, you know, pulls out Kazooie, cocks his neck and *bing* it goes into first-person mode, and you play something that, ah, borrows a little bit from Rare's other great first person shooters, if you know what they are, and you can actually play that in the four-player mode as well, but it makes up a really nice couple stages throughout the game where you have these big huge dungeons, really bizarre giant bosses, I'll give you an example of some of that pretty soon. Well, by the time you work your way into level two and three, you start realizing that ther's something different going on. You find something that's called a Split Pad, only you can't use it at first, but it's pretty obvious what it's going to do. There are a couple pads on the ground, on one is Banjo, and on the other side you see a picture of Kazooie. This is where the game gets a little interesting. The idea is obviously that you, after you've acquired this ability you go jump on the Split Pad, and now you can play as either Banjo or Kazooie. And of course just like the first game, they start out and they're kind of weak, in other words they don't have a lot of moves. Then by working your way through the game meeting up with Bottles' brother, I'll let you figure out what happened to Bottles as you play through the game yourself, um, you'll learn new moves for each of the characters, you'll learn better ways for the character to fly, you know, if you're using just Kazooie, Kazooie has some unique diving and shooting attacks, and you'll also get some stuff you can do with Banjo. Of course what this means is now you've got a lot of more different moves in a game that already had a lot of moves. What it really comes down to is, in Banjo the idea was, 'I'm gonna do a certain set of things, and then I'm gonna earn myself a Jiggy'. Obviously this was borrowed from, ah, the genre established by the great Mr. Miyamoto, um, you know, the idea of 'I'm gonna do something and I'm gonna gain something and if I get a certain amount of these things I'm gonna be able to go somewhere else.' What they've done in Tooie, though, is, uh, if you play Banjo-Kazooie again, a lot of the jiggies were, what I would call laying there. Maybe twenty percent of them you'd just get somewhere in a level, and the puzzle itself was, well, how do I get to that jiggy that's sitting on top of that mountain or sitting in this cubby hole. In Kazooie, excuse me, in Tooie, the gameplay has changed a little bit to be kind of multi-stepped. You get these puzzles that are based around the different moves the players can do, the different things they can turn into, and also with the help of Mumbo, and a new character, Humba Wumba, which I'll explain in a second. You have to take this kind of multi-step approach to.. .to solving some of the jiggy puzzles. I'm gonna go ahead and give you a demo of this, now, one of, ah, one of what I might call the 'medium-difficulty jiggies', and some of these jiggies get pretty complicated. Um, one other thing I'd like to point out, though, before I do this, or as I start doing it, um, in Banjo, you also had this big separation of the game. You had an underworld that was kind of underground most of the time, so we won't call it an overworld. It connected together all the other levels. You had to get a bunch notes, and you could access the other levels if you had enough jiggies, etcetera, etcetera. This game has an overworld that connects the other levels together, but what it does new, is that there's also connections between the worlds, inside the worlds. In fact, some of the areas inside some of the worlds you can only get to by going there from another place inside of another world. That sounds kind of complicated, but what it really ends up being is this kind of big spaghetti map, so to speak, trying to figure out how to make it to this section of this level while you have to go back to another level to do it. I'll give you an example of that puzzle in a second. This little thing here is called a Glowbo, basically you collect those now instead of the silver skulls, you need Glowbos to kind of feed to either, uh, Mumbo or Humba Wumba. Mumbo is in the game, but Mumbo doesn't turn you into things now. I'm actually going to go visit Mumbo now, we'll kind of veer out into our own corner. Those dubloons are part of another one of the things you have to do to solve a couple of the jiggies in this world. I'll leave that one for you to figure out.
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(We hear Mumbo talking. Shortly Banjo starts up. Mumbo goes back to talking.)
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Lobb: |
Uhdee, uhdee, uhdee (Mr. Lobb mocking Mumbo).
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(Banjo is talking. Mumbo talks. There's a little "whoo!" then a short victory-type tune. Mumbo starts talking.)
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Lobb: |
Okay, so now I'm Mumbo.
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(There's an electric sound, then a little plopping noise.)
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Lobb: |
That's quite a sweet little attack. I'll try and find some of, ah, the enemies in the overworld of this stage, as the outside, over-water parts are a little sparse. One of the cool things that I wanted to show you about the particular level, one of these, is that I picked this jiggy, is what I would call, uh, water stress. You know, water levels have always been fun, but there's this problem with water levels, and that's that you have to deal with water stress. You're only allowed for a certain amount of time in most of these games. Well, if I bust out my mighty Mumbo magic, I can take care of that in this level.
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(You can hear Mumbo chanting something in the background as the music changes to a mysterious-type of sound. He eventually yells "Oogala!", like he does when you transform in B-K. Mumbo continues talking.)
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Lobb: |
So as he said, I no longer have to hold my breath underwater in this level, and you have, uh, so you end up with a level that's oh, ten or twelve times bigger than a water level in the original Banjo, and yet I can swim underwater for as long as I want. I can actually get a nice move where I can split apart. We have warp pads to help you get through the level quickly, because these levels are really really big. And of course, one thing you'll notice is that when you play the E3 version is that, regardless of which level you select, it assumes that you're a new player so every time you touch something it's gonna try and explain it to you. Obviously I would have found a warp pad in level one and they would no longer be explaining to me what they are by the time I got to this level, which is level four. This game is significantly bigger than the original Banjo, but it does a really nice job of laying them out and again giving you warps, so that you don't have to worry about traveling them so many times. And I think the warp system is, uh, more user friendly than what was in Donkey Kong, it just, you sort of had like a numbered pad. As soon as I touch a warp pad, it just sort of pops up a list of the warp pads I've been to in that level with very good descriptions, like this warps me into Mumbo's skull, or this warps me into Mumbo, uh, Humba Wumba's cave, or, etcetera, etcetera. Okay, so now I'm Banjo and Kazooie, and I can go underwater and swim as long as I want! So I'm gonna go down there and swim and have a look around. Remember, all this has been in the pursuit of one jiggy.
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(You hear Kazooie squawk, then there's a splash, then you her them dive and the music changes to the "underwatery" feel.)
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Lobb: |
You have the dynamic music, of course. What's most obvious in this water is this big, kind of blue thing besides those big orange, yellowy things. I'm gonna show you a move that you will have had to have earned by the time you get here, but they just give it to you now, and that's the ability to split underwater any time. I actually don't need a Split Pad, for this, we have this great ability to swim around incredibly fast. It only allows a certain amount of time. And actually, in this level what I'm going to use it for is to bust that door open. Everything's over there, I'm going to cruise over there. Bam. Okay, now it won't let me in here, so I'll just swim back out now until it will let me in. They all say 'Stop, only Bears and Birds, yadda yadda.'
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(The dynamic music changes to normal, as we hear Banjo gasp, and they break the surface of the water. There's an electric-sounding music and sound effects in the background.)
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Lobb: |
And I have used one of my newfound eggs. You know I have regular eggs, fire eggs, ice eggs, grenade eggs, and you got these little like homing missile chicken eggs that, those arent' available in this version. So now I'll drop into first person, take my freezy egg, and...
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(You hear Kazooie shoot an egg, and then what sounds like an alien starts to talk. Kazooie keeps shooting and there are little chimes every now and then. Eventually there's a little victory chime and the alien starts talking again. Carnivalish music starts up. Banjo chimes in. The alien responds. Then you hear Banjo run back to the water and jump in, and dive.)
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Lobb: |
So I'm here and we helped his little buddy alien guys, and they're gonna leave, of course, a little something out.
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(We hear the underwater music start as they swim for anout fifteen seconds, [ah, gives me a break from transcripting the fast-talking Ken Lobb] and soon there's the "got jiggy" musical blurb.)
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Lobb: |
Okay, I got one jiggy. Uh, eighty-something more to go. Uh, again, that was an example of kind of what I would call a medium-difficulty jiggy. You know, some of these take three or four times that as much, uh, amount of time, not just helping people, or racing people, uh, one of the beauties of thie game is that there's a ridiculous amount of variety that they've included in the game. They have minigames that sometimes open up into things you can play in multiplayer, they have the first-person part, there's different types of soccer. Um, I want to give you a feeling for how big this level is. Obviously, I've shown you the, ah, that area I was in was pretty big, the outside area is pretty big. I'll cruise down through here, take care of this, uh, octopus thing.
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(We hear the camera go into first person several times as Kazooie shoots out eggs UNDERWATER! Eventually there's a rattling noise as the ice egg solidifies the enemy.)
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Lobb: |
It takes a while here, with the water, and of course it'll unfreeze and any it won't stop you'll be damaged. This helps you open the second section of this level, just a little path, kind of large. And each of these temples have levels inside of them. Some of them I can get into now, some of them I have to do a couple things before I can get into them. And if I track my way down here, over in this area there's another... Here, I'll send out Kazooie there, quickly. Aaaaahhh! As I said, swimming at this high speed is.....tricky. Right down there is actually access to another area that's as big as this one, and there's another corner that takes you to a peice of another level that actually, uh, has water in it, so you're connecting yourself from this level into one of the other levels. I'll go ahead and show you, uh, what it's like to fight a boss in this game. Again, being, uh, a Rare game, they've kind of pride themselves. The first game, I thought that fighting Gruntilda was the first time that anybody has successfully, you know, pulled off a boss in 3-D that felt like bosses we used to fight like on the SNES. This game is filled with bosses like that, that require patterns, and learning where to hide, exactly how to fight them. Okay, this is the ever-lovely title-screen part. Okay, this allows you to jump around and do a lot of the stuff, this is the show floor version, so I would, ah, encourage all of you to go in and jump between levels, see what the bosses are like. Anyway, this is the part I was mentioning to you. It seems Banjo is holding Kazooie in a very nice way.
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(Kazooie is talking. Then Banjo starts. There's a rumbling, then menacing music starts up, and a character that sounds kind of like Napper from Mad Monster Mansion starts to talk. There's a lot of little chimes, and a pounding noise. He continues talking. The boss music starts.)
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Lobb: |
Okay, you see I'm in first-person shooter, I can stay this way.
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(Kazooie shoots a lot of eggs at the foe.)
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Lobb: |
I can send some midgets out to get me. By the way, although this game is using the expansion RAM at the, uh, at the showing for this version, with the debug code, this game is not using the expansion pak. That's pretty amazing, considering how good it looks. Okay, I'm using my, ah, oh, I'm supposed to have all the other eggs turned off, I'll go back and fry a guy. Uh, let's jump in and show you one more thing. We have about five more minutes.
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Guy in Crowd: |
Are they all new levels?
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Lobb: |
All new levels. Eight new levels. There are actually, uh, the storyline to this game you can watch it with me at the beginning you saw game information and story. At the show feel free to go over there, flip on story. It's about eight or nine minutes, you know, real-time cinema. I figured I'd better not waste my twenty minutes with nine minutes of cinema. Okay, so what I should have done. This guy is, uh, very possibly the biggest boss I've ever seen in a videogame. Circus expansion is increased under this big-top tent, you know, this is kind of, circus level.
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(Kazooie talks. Then Banjo starts up.)
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Lobb: |
Rare's also gotten very very good at animating these different characters.
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(We hear a sound like a balloon being blown up, with menacing boss music playing in the background.)
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Lobb: |
Okay, we see that Banjo is maybe up to below his ankle, here. But then I did something, because it's not really big enough yet.
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(The boss starts yelling at Banjo and Kazooie. Kazooie quips back with something, and the crowd starts laughing. The boss returns with something. Banjo talks for a second. There are more sounds of a balloon blowing up.)
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Lobb: |
See that pixel down there is Banjo and Kazooie. If, uh, if Banjo and Kazooie were my height, this guy's like fifty or sixty stories tall. We just have to fly around and shoot out the patches, then we all get a good death scene that's obviously very patterned and very excellent, and brings back and brings back kind of a really, like a cool feeling like you're playing an old school 16-bit boss. Now we're about out of time, I'll give you one peek of a part of the multiplayer levels. You can, ah, as you play through the game, you can find these minigames in certain modes, like first-person mode, that then gain you access to something you can play with four-player, which is something that obviously wasn't in Banjo. But since that time, it's really popular in games like Mario Kart, and, you know, Goldeneye, etcetera, Rare has, ah, come over to the multiplayer splitscreen side, and, as you know from seeing and hearing about all their recent games, that virtually all include some multiplayer aspect. This part's particularly cool, actually, Mumbo, ah, has to use his magic to flip up that train, and then you go into the train, and you have to fight a boss, and then once you've done that, you can ride the train as another one of the examples of taking a shortcut from one level to another. This is like a twisted version of some kind of weird soccer game that has good balls, bad balls, and really bad balls. SO the good balls are the yellow ones, you're supposed to get them in your goal, red balls are the bad balls, you shoot them into somebody else's goal, takes away a score, and those... that kind of sizzly ball is obviously an exploding... I have actually, ah, controller two sitting here, waiting, and it basically reads off of the version at E3 that if you have four controller ports that it's automatically a four player game. There's like two or three versions of this soccer, there's a first person shooter mode, there's target practice modes, there's the race mode. Again, it's kind of packing in some replay value, and again, only accessable after you've seen those parts of the one-player game. Uh, can't access it in this version, I'm sorry. You can play that level, but you can't... it's not in the multiplayer part. Uh, there is the parts... ah, we'll tell you how we're gonna do it. Anyway, I have to run now, it's ah, I'm sorry, I wish I had had some closing comments, but, ah, I'd like to thank you for your time, and for myself..
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(clapping)
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Lobb: |
Let's go ahead and... just, just make damn sure you get enough time to see Conker, you know, Dino, and Zelda, and Mickey, we have all these great games, and you know, in the back of the Conker area we're serving beer, and it's, it's a good old time. Cheers.
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