We’ve talked a lot about Kaze Emanuar recently. If you don’t know, they’re a Super Mario 64 modder that uses their imagination to bring Mario to brand new worlds. Their previous projects include creating a custom version of Super Mario Odyssey using the Mario 64 engine and making a mini-hack of Super Mario Sunshine. This time around, Kaze’s vision is grander, with the intent of totally recreating another Nintendo 64 classic: Banjo-Kazooie.
Announced in a new video on their Youtube channel, Kaze’s next project is officially titled Mario 64 X Banjo Kazooie. The video shows off Spiral Mountain, the iconic homeland of Banjo and Kazooie, except there are a couple of pretty notable changes. For starters, you won’t find any bear or bird, but instead, a 64-bit plumber triple jumping the area’s iconic peak. Instead of the weird and wacky monsters you’d normally expect, goombas roam the fields. But other than that, the area is almost the same as what you’d find in Banjo-Kazooie.
In fact, the two areas are identical. According to Kaze’s video, the Spiral Mountain area that was recreated is 1:1 compared to the original. That’s due to Kaze’s new tactic of porting the Banjo-Kazooie engine to Mario 64. Luckily, there are also new tools to help the project along and possibly make it a more faithful recreation. Namely, a new Super Mario 64 modding tool is allowing work to be done much faster than before. Kaze states that with older tools, recreating this level would have taken months – instead, it took only two weeks. So far, Kaze is setting a similar timeframe for recreating the other levels of Banjo-Kazooie, one more every week or two.
While the project is impressive technologically, what you’ll actually be able to do takes it to the next level. In each of the 12 recreated levels, there will be 12 Jiggy pieces to find. They won’t just be set about the world either – you may have to jump through some hoops to get them. For instance, one of the Jiggies in the video is collected once the player finds all five Jinjos.
The project is still in early development, which can also be clearly seen in the video. During multiple points the game’s framerate lowers significantly, an issue Kaze states they’re working on currently. There are also some audio hiccups, such as static when you collect a jiggy, but those are sure to be tweaked.
Currently, there is no release date for Mario 64 X Banjo Kazooie, so if you want to follow its progress the best places are Kaze’s Youtube channel or Twitter.
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