Last month, we informed you about an unofficial native PC port of one of the best Nintendo 64 games, Banjo-Kazooie. And today, we have some exciting news for its fans.
Let’s start with the recomp. Banjo: Recompiled is a project that takes Banjo-Kazooie and turns it into a native PC port using N64: Recompiled. This new version adds many new features, improvements, and lots of mod support. It also uses RT64 as its rendering engine to give the game better graphics.
The cool thing about this PC version of Banjo-Kazooie is that it supports high framerates and high resolutions. This means you can play the game at more than 60FPS. There is also support for mods, as well as for ultra-wide screens. All the advanced visual effects, like the jigsaw puzzle screen transition and Bottles’ Moving Picture Game, work as intended.
The music and sounds are exactly like the original N64 version of the game. All of the audio processing works correctly, with no popping or stuttering. Any scenes that match sound to visuals have been fixed so the timing stays perfectly in sync, just like on the original hardware.
Two weeks ago, ProxyBK released a must-have mod for it. This mod extends the game’s draw distance, allowing you to see more of its world. This mod lets you enjoy Banjo-Kazooie even more than before.
Then, we have a new HD Texture Pack for it. Created by Granvillimus, this pack upscales all of the game’s textures. By using it, PC gamers can get a crisper and more detailed image.
With these two mods, Banjo-Kazooie has been fully remastered on PC. In my opinion, this is the definitive way to replay it. So, if you are a big Banjo-Kazooie fan, you should definitely try them.
You can download the Draw Distance Mod and the HD Texture Pack from here and here, respectively. Do note that you will also need the Asset Expansion Pak. This rewrites the asset management system of the game to allow direct asset in-memory replacements by other mods.
If you enjoy projects like this, there are plenty of other unofficial PC ports you can try. You can download PC versions of Super Mario 64, Mario Kart 64, Crash Team Racing, and Duke Nukem: Zero Hour. There are also PC ports of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Majora’s Mask, Perfect Dark, Jak & Daxter, and Sonic Unleashed. And, as I mentioned earlier this month, we may soon get a PC port of the canceled GoldenEye 007 Remaster.
Have fun!
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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