Concept art for Playtonic’s Banjo-Kazooie “spiritual successor” emerges

project-ukulele

Playtonic Games shared their intention to craft Banjo-Kazooie’s “spiritual successor” last week, currently being referred to as Project Ukulele.

Their reveal came in EDGE’s newest issue, which was accompanied by concept art that Siliconera have obtained scans for.

The rather whimsical setting recalls the lineage of the ex-Rare employees that have formed the independent studio, such as Donkey Kong Country and Banjo-Kazooie lead programmer Chris Sutherland, artist Steve Mayles who created Banjo and Kazooie, Viva Piñata designer Gavin Price and composer Grant Kirkhope.

“There’s been so much pent-up passion for doing something like this, because we’ve all been sat on a lot of these ideas since Banjo-Tooie came out,” Price explained to the magazine.

“There’s a history of working with Nintendo, so we’d naturally love to see our game on a Nintendo platform. If people tell us to make Wii U our target console platform, then we’ve got the flexibility to do that.”

Playtonic are to make a proof-of-concept, before hiring other ex-Rare employees to build an “N64-size” team comprised of 10 – 15 staff. They already have enough funds for this first game, with their long-term business plan eventually seeing them move to other genres if they’d like to do so.

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  1. I’m so happy to hear this, it’s like RARE is back in action in a way. They made so many good games on the N64.

  2. Good these guys are what made my childhood and they know what they have created is something so unique and has gone to waste over time, these guys will no doubt deliver us who have waited for say banjo threeie, another DK that has an open world. I cant wait its awesome to hear its the original cast of people involved, this will be amazing banjo threeie 3ds!!!

  3. What I would like to see done by Playtonic Games for Nintendo plattforms:
    Donkey Kong 64 3D – they might work together with Monster Games (unless they have already started with an other project after the Xenoblades 3D port)

    1. Game changes
    1.1. Revamp of the overworld – adjust it to the current DKC (Returns) overworld
    1.2. The location of world 6 should be changed to a snow world (I explain why in 1.5) – you know this canyon world with the tar and the skeletons
    1.3 As like in case of DKC Tropical Freeze the player would be blasted between several “parts” of the island via barrel cannons, this also means a lot of “hubworld tasks” from DK64 could not be used anymore and would be requiered to be re-created.
    1.4 Remove Tiny and get Dixie back
    1.5. The game would end with an additinoal cutscene where the big Tiki awakens (from all the noise maybe), which causes the snow area to melt (the volcano was idle before), resulting in looking like as it looks “today” (DKC:Returns) -> yes I would like to see DK64 in a proper timeline somehow and not with completly changing overworld island anymore
    1.6 Each kong can now get up to 120 bananas in each of the main courses (now 600 instead of 500).
    1.7 Banana medals need 100 instead of 75 banans

    2. Visual changes
    2.1. Generally sharper textures, better and current 3D models, more details (specially in the jungle world -> decogras, more other foilage, plants and some more palm trees maybe in the central area)
    2.2. Angry Aztec should be redesigned looking more like the ruins from DKC: Returns
    means not being in a desert anymore
    2,3 Fungi Forest should get some additinal visual elements from World 5 of DKC: Returns (the houses in the trees maybe), but in general it will stay the “Forest” World of the game.
    2.4 Crystal Caverns shall be set for connections for world 4 of DKc: Returns (the world with the mine carts, rockets and moles), however just for some visual adaptions to the other games in the series
    2.5 the “bonus room” barrels should look like these from DKC 2 and DKC 3 (the star with the B)

    A … Duck Hunt Adventure game? (like Banjo Kazooie?)

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