Banjo-Dreamie

Banjo-Dreamie is a N64 hack of Banjo-Kazooie by Loggo which began development in 2013 and was released in 2018. It is by far one of the most ambitious hacks of Banjo-Kazooie, consisting of a overworld and eight playable levels.

The game wasn’t made into a patch, so it can be played directly from the ROM without having to modify it at all. You can get it from the N64 Squid mirror by using the password loggothetoilet. If you’re using an emulator, be sure to set it to set it to 8MB of memory, but I played it on a real N64 with an Expansion Pak, so that works fine as well.

About Banjo-Dreamie

Plot and setting

The game takes place in between of Banjo-Kazooie and Banjo-Tooie, consider it kind of like a BK 1.5. Loggo (the toilet from Mad Monster Mansion) obtained Gruntilda’s magic and used it to create the Dreamy Depths, an area below Grunty’s Lair. It’s up to Banjo and Kazooie to get to him. The game doesn’t have an intro cutscene like the original did, so you have to piece together what is going on from the clues within the game such as the environment and Loggo’s taunts.

This hack is based off of Banjo-Kazooie, not Banjo-Tooie, so don’t expect to see all of the abilities and characters from that game in here. It does make good use of what it has though.

Gameplay

Banjo-Dreamie plays very similarly to Banjo-Kazooie, but with a few key differences. First thing you’ll notice is that you start out with a very basic Banjo. Imagine playing BK and walking around Spiral mountain before you talk to bottles in any of his molehills. Each of those Bottles skills are spread throughout the game so you’ll have to go through the first few levels severely handicapped. For instance, you only learn basic attacks and how to climb trees in the first stage.

There are no Jiggies in the game. None, zilch, nada. Progression is instead done by collecting notes which unlock doors in the Dreamy Depths.

The last main difference that had me stumped for a while is that the levels cannot be completed the first time around. The first level, Glowing Gardens, has some areas that cannot be accessed without jumping skills, but those are learned in the next level.

This makes it so that there is a lot of inter-level backtracking. While this did happen in BK (Gobi Valley needs Beak Bomb and Freezeezy Peaks needs Turbo Trainers), it is much more prevalent in Banjo-Dreamie.

You aren’t even told about this until you leave the first level.

World and Levels

The hub world for the game is called Dreamy Depths, which connects all the different levels together. Those levels are:

• Glowing Gardens
• Twinkling Tunnels
• Sparkling Springs
• Highlight Heights
• Lunar Landing
• Memory Meadow
• Daybreak Barracks
• Nightfall Fortress

Something I find amazing is that each stage comes with its own music which just comes to show how Loggo went above and beyond to make this a unique game.

Review and Conclusion

Banjo-Dreamie is without a doubt the most ambitious Banjo-Kazooie hack out there. It is quite a bit harder than the original in my opinion, but that can be tallied up to it being meant for people who already have completed the original game and want something new.

There are quite a few camera issues caused by the level design. Most of the time it’s caused by having platforming challenges too close to a wall or just a very cramped environment. It can also be frustrating to see an inaccessible area of a stage but the ability required to get there is hidden in a later stage… It makes you ask “should I search for a molehill I might have missed or should I check the next stage right now?” It makes the game disorienting to play through.

That’s the only bad things I can say about Banjo-Dreamie, really. It is a solid game that squeezes every bit of juice from the hacking process. It feels right at home as a Banjo -Kazooie game from the platforming, the style, the music and even the dialogue.

A must-play for anyone interested in the series but was left with hunger for more after Tooie.

Pretty good for a toilet, I must say.