Super Smash Bros. Finally it gave us a lot of cool surprises when it comes to DLC characters, but the addition of Banjo and Kazooie is probably the most notable. While the powerful animal duo is famous for the two most-attacked N64 ads, when Rare was bought by Microsoft the furniture passed to the Xbox, with only a handful of appearances it launched the Nintendo console again.
That's what makes the arrival of these lovers in Smash so amazing; it feels very unpleasant at the same time. In a pretty amazing conversation there Infoindustry.biz, Rare studio head Craig Duncan has been commenting on how this remarkable reunion was:
Minecraft had revealed the path to that relationship between Nintendo and Microsoft. I met Nintendo at E3 before we announced. And then we have coordinated our teams, because we thought it looked like a good opportunity.
We had an early start with the release of Sakurai-san and her team. There was myself, Gregg Mayles … who is Banjo's father, even though he hates when we call him that. Andrew Wensley, who runs our business group. And a chap called Paul Cunningham, in charge of our relationship. Those people had a chat, (Nintendo) talked about what their way would be, and then the process began.
And then the year goes by sharing animatics and characters' ideas and ideas. It was a retreat. We ended up with something really good. But the killings came from Smash's group.
Microsoft's openness to working with companies like Nintendo definitely gives us confidence that good partnerships can be made in the future (we'll be happy with Frequency to Change, if we're honest).
