Banjo & Kazooie

Artwork of Banjo & Kazooie in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.

*Banjo & Kazooie* are the main characters of the *Banjo-Kazooie* franchise, and was a former most wanted of PapaGenos's for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, and they are now his current mains.

## Background

*Banjo-Kazooie* features main characters, Banjo & Kazooie. Banjo is a brown honey bear who is very heroic and loves to play the banjo, hence his name. Kazooie is a fictional bird breed known as the Breegull. One afternoon, a foul-mouthed witch by the name of Gruntilda learns from her cauldron, Dingpot, that Banjo's sister, Tooty, is more beautiful then she is. Out of jealousy, Gruntilda creates a machine to transfer her beauty with another, and she plans to use it with Tooty. As such, Gruntilda kidnaps Tooty and its up to Banjo & Kazooie to save her.

In Banjo-Kazooie, their are plenty of collectables for you to collect. The main collectable, however, are the golden puzzle pieces known as Jiggies, which are used to access more areas within Gruntilda's Lair. Their are also other collectables such as music notes, which when collecting 100 of them, rewards you a Jiggy. One must also collect all the colored Jinjos within an area, which doing so also grants you a Jiggy. You can also collect feathers which can be used to give you special abilities like gliding and using the infamous Wonderwing.

## PapaGenos's History

Banjo & Kazooie were some of PapaGenos's most wanted characters for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, and he explains his history with the duo in Why I Want Banjo & Kazooie and A Bear, A Bird, And A Grinch. Papa's story actually doesn't start out with Banjo-Kazooie, but it actually starts out with Super Mario 64. As a kid growing up with the Nintendo 64, he was blown away at the 3D graphics that the system was able to handle. Super Mario 64 was an inspiration for him to doodle on pieces of paper what his ideal game would be if he were to make one. He talks about how he would come up with a character, the locations, the hub world and what these characters would collect and what the story was about. Then, Banjo-Kazooie comes out. Papa talks about how Banjo-Kazooie, to him, felt like THE perfect game and how every 3D platformer should take cues from Banjo-Kazooie, and he even went as far as to say that he personally finds it better then Super Mario 64 as their are more things to collect ect. Papa always thought of Banjo & Kazooie as Nintendo characters, almost in the same vein as Mario, Link and Pikachu, and as such, he wanted to see more Banjo-Kazooie titles on future Nintendo systems.

However, things take a sharp left turn. In 2002, Microsoft purchased Rare from Nintendo, along with Banjo-Kazooie. At the time, this shocked Papa and he never really knew how companies work in the real world. He thought whatever was on Nintendo, was considered a Nintendo game, much like whatever is on PlayStation is a PlayStation game and whatever is on SEGA is a SEGA game, and he never thought too deep about it. Microsoft purchasing Rare basically put a nail in the coffin for Banjo & Kazooie to ever be back on a Nintendo system again. That is where Super Smash Bros. comes in.

As Papa said for Geno, Smash is really the only way to bring back characters who have been dead for a very long time, and as such, Papa has started to campaign for Banjo & Kazooie to be put in Brawl, however, Papa never really thought Banjo had much of a shot to get included back in the day. He thought the fact that Banjo & Kazooie were owned by Microsoft, being a competitive company to Nintendo, basically was a huge barrier of Banjo & Kazooie getting included, but he still rooted for the bear & bird duo regardless.

And then Smash 4 rolls around and Papa votes for Banjo & Kazooie in the Super Smash Bros. Fighter Ballot. Due to the immense amount of support for Banjo & Kazooie in Smash, it has caught the attention of the head of Xbox, Phil Spencer, and Phil claims that he would love to see Banjo & Kazooie in Smash and that Rare has no issues working with Nintendo. This really increased Papa's hope for Banjo and this was what really drived his hype for Banjo even further.

Papa goes over his source from the Grinch Leak days, and goes over all the stuff leading up to Banjo & Kazooie being in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate until they were finally included. Papa was very excited over the announcement and since then, he has picked them up as his main ever since they released.