Prerelease:Banjo-Kazooie/Banjo-Kazooie

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Announcement

With E3 1997 looming over the horizon, Banjo Kazoo was finally, for the first time in its two-year development history, ready to be unveiled. However, the team ran into trademark issues over Kazoo's name, and so quickly altered it to "Kazooie" (whilst also hyphenating the title as an extra precaution) so as not to interfere too heavily with existing publicity materials. Piccolo would eventually catch the short end of this as well, receiving a name change to "Tooty" late in development.

Nintendo started to tease the game in the weeks leading up to E3, albeit—bizarrely—under its original name of Project Dream. To build up hype, they sent a postcard to the press featuring "Mario and Fox McCloud [...] driving in front of a city landscape with a mysterious shadow figure in-between them". A minute-long demo movie was shown behind closed doors to retail managers, who—even more confusingly—described the protagonist as "a friendly young boy":

"The game looked like a mixture of Super Mario 64 and Nights (Sega Saturn's 2-1/2D flying platformer), and was very cartoony," said one manager. "There was a young boy who walked around, and it looked like it was fully explorable."

When asked what whas^(sic) meant by 'cartoony,' the manager replied, "Cartoony like Super Mario 64: primary colors, a friendly looking young boy was the main character, and somewhat dreamy."

The emphasis on Super Mario 64-esque cartoon visuals and full-3D gameplay (and, of course, the general time frame) suggest that this is still the same game being shown off, with the "young boy" simply being Banjo mistaken for a human (and not Edson come back from the dead).

With just a few days to go, Nintendo dropped the pretense and revealed the game's actual final name of Banjo-Kazooie, citing the reason for the "change" as sounding too similar to NiGHTS Into Dreams (though in reality, the game had stopped being called Dream long before). Suffice to say, the real name drew some mixed reactions from the press and public:

"Banjo-Kazooie? Say it to yourself. Say it to yourself again, out loud. You sound pretty stupid, huh?"

"That's pretty lame in terms of coolness and originality. Perhaps the sequel will be called 'Videogame by Rare'."

"What the hell type of name is that? No game deserves a title like that. [...] I am not interested in the game now. I think the guys at Rare came up with the name to this game about the same time they got the music for Blast Corps."

"I wouldn't mind if the game was called 'Crap', so long as it makes FF7 look like Pong."

"To me, Banjo-Kazooie sounds like a game where you play the role of a circus midget named Kazooie who plays a little Banjo for his circus act. But, when Bobo, the circus ringleader, turns evil and takes the circus crowd hostage, Kazooie leaps into action. With his new magical Banjo as a weapon, Kazooie must explore the entire circus grounds, battling off Bobo's henchclowns, and rescuing hostages in an attempt to uncover why Bobo went berserk."

"That has got to be the worst name of all time for a video game. It reminds me of a brand of cereal. 'Banjo-kazooie is a part of a well-balanced breakfast.'"

"I think that Dream was a much better name, but I'm still interested in the game, no matter what they name it. Still, Banjo-Kazooie sounds like the theme from Deliverance."

"I think that the Banjo-Kazooie name sounds more like two old men who sit around on their front porch all day and talk about steak and beer while they twiddle their thumbs and read bass fishing magazines."

"What the hell is a Kazooie?"

And so on.

E3 1997

To do: Coverage: NP, EGM, others?