A needlessly long Banjo Kazooie Iceberg Explained

A while ago, I made this Banjo-Kazooie iceberg image. Now, I'm doing a video explaining it.

0:07 Intro
1:16 Layer 1
13:07 Layer 2
27:03 Layer 3
34:48 Layer 4
44:16 Layer 5
52:42 Layer 6
59:14 Outro

[smashers]

Some minor corrections

*Mount Fire-eyes: that was confirmed to be a fake rumor by the developers, but they admired the dedication of the fans to make a wiki page for it.

*Stop and Swap: The items that appear in Tooie appear regardless even if you don’t have a save file from Kazooie in the N64 version, Stop and Swap was also meant for Rare’s other games for the N64 after Banjo Kazooie (DK64 being the only game having some work done for stop and swap alongside Tooie before it was scrapped, not just the BK fridge but also a cut DK statue in Creepy Castle that would’ve tied to Stop and Swap.)

* Tooty’s whereabouts: Again not a correction, but the original pitch for Grunty’s revenge explained that she was having her own adventures offscreen which I feel makes more sense than the Rubbish video game police.


Still a pretty good iceberg video regardless! There was some stuff I didn’t even know about!

[mr.gameland]

Got a copyright claim, had to mute the part where it plays "Teddy Bear's Picnic"

[MattJDave]

Damn, ever since throwing my hat back into the small youtuber ring I'm getting recommended all sorts of small gaming youtubers, and man it's great. There's just a neat feeling of old youtube style passion and simplicity, and it's real nice.

[sparkarez]

48:31 I’M SO GLAD I’M NOT THE ONLY ONE WHO FELT THIS WAY. In fact the entire Terrydactyland level in general has always just felt really unsettling to me and I could never quite figure out why. ESPECIALLY the Stomping Plains.

[AnAverageGoblin]

Bear With A Sword that eventually became Banjo looks badass and I will headcanon him as Banjo's medieval ancestor

[StarMechV]

44:30 Well I be a Mumbo's uncle! I can't believe someone actually found that old BK Crystal Jiggy proof of concept!!

Farfetched to believed but some of those sketches shown are actually some of mine when I was like around 15 years old (opening scene concept, Hub entrances sketches, enemy concepts) which is why they are really bad, hahaha. Obviously we were all really young folks working on something way too big for our britches and we had little knowledge of how to pull off so the whole project fell apart fairly quickly as far as I know. But it was a food memory nonetheless.

No idea if the concepts that ended up in the mod were taken from our old thing or just coincidence, but regardless I thank you a lot for giving me a small trip down memory lane!

[turntoyou]

Man, your sense of humor really elevates an already interesting and well organized topic choice. Pretty sure I ACTUALLY laughed a couple of times, and that almost doesn't happen anymore. You are really good at this! Thanks for the fantastic video!

[Purplesubmariner]

11:30 there is actually a lot more to this than people have been lead to believe. Another YouTuber named Skawo posted a video demonstrating how the function actually would have worked with a Banjo Kazooie cartridge. One of the game devs posted a comment on that video that led to over 200 replies and a pretty in depth conversation among them about the scrapped feature. I've saved all the comments and insights in a rough paste word document that I'm still trying to figure the best way to present it online. But in the mean time, allow me to paraphrase some clarity:

Stop n Swop was pulled by Nintendo during the development of DK64. Banjo Kazooie was a completed cartridge by then and everything programmed to run and work as intended. Nothing regarding SnS on Kazooie is scrapped or leftover cut content, the codes are still in game and can be received by the intended methods per Skawo's video demonstration.

The items in SnS were NOT all going to BK2, but rather initially intended to have one item for a different Rare game that would be developed after. DK64 was already in the works when Banjo was nearing completion, they knew they wanted their first SnS feature on the game, and the item was to be an Ice Key. When SnS was canned, elements of it had to be pulled from DK64, but other hard programmed bits like camera movements and level layouts/rooms couldn't be so easily removed. This is why you have a random room with an empty pedestal, or a camera that pans into an empty wall.

Because the other games SnS would have affected were not even in development, let alone known what they would be, Rare had to make some kind of ambiguous mystery container that could reveal it's contents on the other games when they figured out what they wanted it to be. They went with colorful ? eggs, a kind of cross between a colorful wrapped present and an Easter egg container. The Ice Key is the exception because DK64 was already far enough into development they knew what they wanted that game's item to be.

BK2 wasn't anything that had been greenlit at the time BK1 was completed, the 3 SnS eggs and key in that game were more of an inside knowledge/easter egg throw back to BK1, as those items were seen at the end of BK1 if you 100%ed the game.

The last 3 eggs of BK1 are just kind of randomly placed in the levels compared to the specialized rooms the other 4 objects had as they were added near the end of the game's development. I personally would speculate this is also why they don't show up in Mumbo's photos at the end of a 100% game finish.

And the "Swop" half of SnS was not initially a misspelling, some programmer/developer secretly changed it and they liked it better that way so they kept it.

[escaperoutebritish]

I think Barrell Boy may have been a subtle insult directed toward Bottles' weight, Kazooie is a real classy bird after all and would probably stoop to such comedy

[SideQuestStories]

You might think "Mingella's Milk" is weird but Minghella Ice Cream is a genuine thing on the Isle of Wight.

[Roggenschrotdosenbrot]

Off to a strong start with this channel, it feels like. Hope this gets a fair amount of views. There's already a ton of iceberg videos, but if you want to keep making them, I'll gladly watch.

[agentepolaris]

Glad to see people still is talking about this amazing franchise, there were many details I didn't knew. Also feels great to see an Iceberg again.

Totally subscribing my dude.

[qwertykins]

Two BK iceberg videos from different channels in less than 24 hours? heck yeah

[WilfredCthulu]

Finally another post 2021 iceberg video and chart that's actually decent. I have some corrections and further details on stop n swop though. Someone else already said it so I won't bring up that but what they didn't include also is that you were NEVER meant to leave your n64 on, they knew that would damage the hardware. It was always based on the ram left over after turning it off. While before we thought tooie was the only game, it is now known it was meant for other games too as the other commenter said albeit not just from data in dk64 but I'm pretty sure a dev has since confirmed it. Also while stop n swop was removed from all the planned games, it's still in Kazooie fully functional. Skawo has some great videos demonstrating what it would look like to unlock the items through the intended ram message means as opposed to the sandcastle cheat codes; and with the recent decompilation this may be something that becomes much more surfaced and accessible if not something more.

[Boinky_Spoinky]

Oh hell yeah! Something to watch while playing and drawing Banjo & Kazooie 🗣️🔥

[andrewmeiller]

56:20 the legs and wings thing is very true. In some Rare Replay bonus video content, original devs of the game talk about giving banjo more advanced moves, and that started with kazooie just being wings and then legs coming out from the backpack

[ytP-U-R-G]

The rhymes at the end were amazing! Love your channel

[jiggylookback]

I support more Banjo and Rare Content on YouTube. Glad to see I’m not the only one! Keep up the good work my friend!

[eeveepeasy]

Love your lil hatguy avatar, characters that're just a void with eyes are peak design.

[midnightinaperfectworld]

Perhaps they gave Mr. Fit more of a role in Nuts 'n Bolts because they originally wanted to do more with him in BT