Rare on how Banjo-Kazooie made it into Super Smash Bros. Ultimate
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate just wrapped its first Fighters Pass. Undoubtedly, one of the highlights was the inclusion of Banjo-Kazooie. Nintendo ended up working with Microsoft and Rare, which wasn’t always the likeliest collaboration.
In an interview with GamesIndustry, Rare head Craig Duncan spoke about how Banjo-Kazooie ended up in the game. Duncan told the site:
“Minecraft had paved the way for that relationship between Nintendo and Microsoft. I met with Nintendo at the E3 before we announced it. And then we connected our teams, because we thought it seemed like a great opportunity.”
“We had an initial kick off call with Sakurai-san and some of his team. There was myself, Gregg Mayles… who is the father of Banjo, even though he hates it when we call him that. Andrew Wensley, who runs our business team. And a chap called Paul Cunningham, who runs our partnerships. Those people had a conversation, [Nintendo] talked through what their approach would be, and then that process started.”
“And then a year goes by of sharing animatics and ideas and character concepts. It was a back-and-forth. We ended up with something that was really great. But the execution came from the Smash team.”
