8. Exploring Dying Monsters with Banjo
Despite whatever you think of Rare now, they were once one of the most celebrated developers for the N64, developing some of the systems best games: Goldeneye, Perfect Dark, Conker's Bad Fur Day, Donkey Kong 64 and Banjo-Kazooie/Tooie. Of all of those Banjo-Kazooie was my favourite; it was one of the strongest platformers of its time, and took place in a fantastically rich setting. I mean Spyro may have had dragons, but this game had a snarky bird that lived in a backpack.
So, what's so disturbing about Banjo-Kazooie? I anticipate being mocked like some medieval prisoner being carted through the streets; "Banjo-Kazooie, disturbing? Oh no, dear boy," they'll proclaim with ceaseless derision. Banjo-Kazooie is like a
Pixar flick (child friendly but packed with adult references), it's funny and cute in equal measure. Sure, there's a haunted house level, a killer shark and a machine that extracts youth from one user to another; but can any part of Banjo-Kazooie be considered disturbing? When it involves
this guy, it most certainly can. Based on appearances alone, Clanker was pretty unsettling for this N64 player. The NPCs of Banjo-Kazooie are anthropomorphic creatures, personified inanimate objects or fantastical beings. Basically, typical cutesy, 90's platformer stuff. Clanker, however, is a huge, monstrous, mechanical sea creature - and the first time you see him he lunges forward slightly, letting off a loud groan. He even outdid that frigging eel from Super Mario 64 in the scares department. But his role in the game is actually more disturbing than appearances would suggest: he lives a sad, torturous existence. Grunty, the game's primary antagonist, has imprisoned him and reduced him to garbage grinder; something he isn't too happy about, due to its degrading toll on his body. The entire Clanker's Cavern level revolves around fixing him in small ways, or attempting to avoid the effects of dangerous corruption done to his body. Pretty heavy stuff for a game that opened up with a hearty musical number.