Summary
Even though we’re still waiting for news on whether there will ever be anything new fromBanjo-Kazooie, fans of the series were thrown a bone last week. Banjo-Tooie, the sequel to the popular platformer, finally joined the original on Nintendo Switch Online. While the game appears to run as well as you could hope on the Switch, something strange appears to be happening to the NSO version of Banjo-Tooie during its opening moments.
Spotted byBlue Sky user Alex Olney(thanks,GamesRadar), the demo that plays on the Banjo-Tooie start screen if you don’t start the game right away appears to be playing way too fast. Banjo is running around a lot faster than he does when you take control of him. However, the sounds he and the surrounding environment are making aren’t distorted and sound identical to how they’d sound in the original version of the game on Nintendo 64.
While those who played the OG on N64 will have likely noticed something was up with the emulated NSO version of Banjo-Tooie,GamePrimehas put together a video that shows not only the NSO version of the game running alongside the original, but also the Xbox Live Arcade version released a few years ago. As you can see, Banjo is getting around a lot more quickly in the Switch version than he is in the original, but the addition of the Xbox version only makes things more confusing.
Banjo-Tooie’s Opening Demo Runs A Little Too Quickly On NSO
Banjo And Kazooie Have Somehow Gotten Faster In Their Old Age
Regardless of what it is exactly that’s causing Banjo-Tooie’s opening to run too quickly on NSO, you’d expect the Xbox version to either align with the original or the Switch version, but it doesn’t. It falls somewhere between them, running faster than the demo ran on N64, but not quite as comically speedy as it is on NSO. As for what’s causing all of this, it’s likely connected to how poorly the game ran on N64, struggling to hit 20 fps at times, and Nintendo trying to figure out what to do about that with an emulated version 24 years later.
Even though this means the NSO version of Banjo-Tooie isn’t perfect, it appears to be the only issue discovered during its first weekend on Switch. Something that doesn’t affect gameplay is a big win compared to issues with other N64 games on NSO.
Nintendo has been notoriously bad at ironing out issues with quite a few of the N64 games it has brought to its NSO Expansion Pack so far.A game-breaking bug needed to be addressed in Kirby 64, and a laundry list of issues that includedthe Switch’s inability to render fog in Ocarina Of Timewas sent Nintendo’s way when it first rolled out its N64 NSO library in 2021.
