15 Video Game Mysteries Answered Years Later

15. Banjo-Kazooie: Stop N' Swop

Banjo-Kazooie and its sequel Banjo-Tooie remain some of the greatest 3D platformers ever made. Dense with secrets from start to finish, the original game sees you exploring a witch's castle hunting for Banjo's kidnapped sister. It's not an easy game to complete, and it's even tougher to 100% with the amount of collectibles on offer. 

For those that did 100% it, they were shown a mysterious sequence involving two coloured eggs and an ice key hidden away in the game's numerous worlds in unreachable areas. This led players to ask an obvious question: how the heck were they supposed to collect these items? It turns out that there were a total of six coloured eggs and the ice key hidden away, with hackers eventually discovering codes that allowed players to access them.

Eventually, years later, one of Rare's developers Paul Machacek explained they had designed 'Stop N Swop' as a way for N64 games to communicate with each other. The idea was that players would swap cartridges while their N64 was still running (likely after collecting those items), quickly swapping it for the sequel, Banjo-Tooie, fast enough that information would be retained and used between the two games. Unfortunately, this was far more ambitious than the technology would allow, so it became an urban myth until years of investigation and Rare's later comments during interviews revealed the true plans.