Full disclosure, I played this on a real Nintendo 64 using an Everdrive 64 3.0, it ran as smooth as the original games for the most part, but there were some buggy effects mostly on fire, dusty particles, and the shadows, but they’re easy to ignore. There was also a very slight transparency to many of the walls of the game, but every Banjo hack I’ve played on N64 does this. I also played the original release of this hack and it’s gone through several updates so far. With that out of the way, let’s begin.

If you grew up loving the N64, chances are you’ve played both Banjo Kazooie and Ocarina of Time. They’re both must play N64 titles after all. Or perhaps not. Maybe you only played one of them, which is perfectly understandable given they’re two different genres and different styles. So can you enjoy this game having played one game, but not the other? Well, that depends… are you a Banjo Kazooie fan who’s never played Ocarina of Time? Then yes. This game is at it’s core, a Banjo Kazooie game. It simply takes place in the world of Ocarina of Time. The writing is very in line with what you expect from Banjo, so the humor is expertly maintained. Are you a Zelda fan who’s not into Banjo? Well then it might not be as easy for you. This game is a collect-a-thon platformer, and the core gameplay might not gel with you. And if you take Zelda too seriously, you could potentially not appreciate the hack’s sense of humor. However, knowledge of Ocarina of Time and the Zelda series in general will help you out in this game. There’s even one dungeon that goes really old school and asks you to get a pencil and paper. I won’t spoil that though.

Now when this hack says it’s Banjo Kazooie in the world of Ocarina of Time, boy do they mean it… for the most part anyway. This is a pretty dang faithful recreation of Ocarina of Time’s world, but in a more Banjo Kazooie style that takes some liberties. Very few areas from the game are cut. Some may be heavily altered to the point that it’s no longer recognizable though… there are plenty of completely new areas as well.

And this hack is not only a love letter to Ocarina of Time and Banjo, but there are lots of cameos and Easter eggs from tons of video games associated with Rare, Nintendo, and others. These come in the form of game paks, consoles, and guest characters playing video games in hidden areas. There’s actually a hidden area listing the number of Easter eggs in each area challenging you to find them. There’s

Another very special thing about this hack is the soundtrack, it still very much sounds like Banjo Kazooie music, but it’s all remixes from Ocarina of Time, and various other Zelda games, plus a few other tracks for certain Easter egg areas. The stand outs for me is Hyrule Field, Lake Hylia, And the staircase leading up to the final boss encounter. Mark Kurko has actually made this soundtrack available to download, so look forward to that,

This isn’t a perfect hack though. This may have changed during one of the revisions, but some areas have some pretty unforgiving platforming challenges, including a tedious one you do as a Mumbo transformation, there’s an un-fun invisible maze ( though there’s a clue for this if you’re not playing on real hardware like I was ), there’s an area with a lot of enemies that can only be killed with eggs, but not nearly enough ways to fill them, which is a problem when leaving a map or dying will cause you to lose all your progress in collecting notes. I remember there being a few too many swarms of bees as well. And there’s a very difficult race against time that just feels unfair.

Generally, if you love these games, the flaws are very easy to ignore. I urge you to play this if you like either game. Even though there are no new mechanics, all the transformations and enemies are just reskins, and there’s no new bosses, this still feels like a completely new game to me, or rather a Rare and Nintendo collaboration from the 90’s that went undiscovered until now.