Former Rare dev reveals how lunchtime GoldenEye 007 deathmatches influenced the N64 classic Banjo-Tooie

Former Rare developer Chris Sutherland looked back on Rareware’s heyday when it was working on the studio’s hit FPS GoldenEye 007. Surprisingly, Sutherland stated that the game had a strong influence on their 1998 platforming game Banjo-Tooie, thanks to a handful of devs who spent their lunch breaks playing GoldenEye 007 on the N64 “for a couple of years.”

Sutherland mentioned this in the latest issue of Retro Gamer Magazine (via GamesRadar+). Sutherland went into detail about how the GoldenEye obsession chipped its way into the 2000 Banjo-Tooie’s design, especially during sections when games view the game from Banjo’s first-person perspective, while gripping Kazooie by the neck and unleashing a barrage of eggs like an “anthropomorphic machine gun.”

This never-before-seen split-character mode not only made for some amazing puzzle-solving and combat at the time, but also made its way into Banjo-Tooie’s multiplayer mini-games, mixing up Rare’s inseparable bear and bird duo with some shooting mechanics inspired by GoldenEye 007.

Sutherland mentioned in the interview, “There were four or five of us on the Banjo team that would play GoldenEye, probably every lunchtime for a couple of years, so that was a strong influence on Banjo-Tooie. 

Then I think director Gregg Mayles always wanted to have Banjo and Kazooie separate and then join up. I just felt like the next logical step. Once we split the characters apart, suddenly your moveset was reduced, so you couldn’t do all the things you could do before. It was another way to give you a different set of moves. Then there were missions built around that.

Breaking up Banjo and Kazooie allowed Banjo-Tooie’s gameplay to evolve from that of the previous instalment. Gregg Mayles, who spearheaded both Banjo projects, called the idea a natural progression, taking GoldenEye’s FPS mechanics and tying them into a family-friendly package.

Back at the turn of the century, lunchroom breaks with four-player splitscreen GoldenEye deathmatches were the norm, which went on to influence many projects in Rare’s pipeline, ranging from Perfect Dark to Conker’s Bad Fur Day.

It’s been 25 years, and Rare, under Xbox Game Division, is charting modern waters with Sea of Thieves’ ongoing success, while also crashing into tidal waves like Everwild’s cancellation. As for the Banjo series, a return to Rare’s N64 platforming days seems to be a shot in the dark.

Buy Banjo-Tooie: The Official Nintendo Player's Strategy Guide on Amazon