Banjo Kazooie developer Rare gave fans a clever cheat code to stay at home during the coronavirus pandemic. The company took to Twitter to post a short video showing off the infamous keypad floor in the sandcastle of Treasure Trove Cove. Seasoned Banjo players will remember this area for that infectious background music and the presence of that floor tile puzzle. Solving it once yields a Jiggy, but in this clip, it serves a completely different purpose: Telling people to chill out at the house to stop the spread of the virus. Banjo even activates Invincibility Mode after entering the words.
Videos by ComicBook.com
A lot of people were digging the joke, but there are a ton of replies under it that lament the fact that gamers still don’t have any idea if or when they’ll get another Banjo game. Rare helped bring Battletoads back, but the game they are most commonly associated with lies over in the corner waiting for a return to the spotlight. Earlier this year, the company’s statue featuring the bear and the bird actually got damaged by a storm. 100 mile per hour winds knocked Kazooie’s head off the statue, but Banjo remains.
Another topic of conversation after the character’s surprise introduction to Super Smash Bros. was if Playtonic would step up to produce the long awaited core sequel to Banjo-Tooie. Well, the Yooka Laylee series producers don’t have a ton to report on that front either.
— Rare Ltd. (@RareLtd) March 26, 2020
“Hey everyone, we wanted to address this speculation currently swarming our mentions,” wrote the developer on Twitter last year. “We hate to be the bearer of news that isn’t what you want to hear, but we thought it best to come out and say — we aren’t working on a new Banjo-Kazooie game and we remain an indepedent studio.”
“While we would love to work with the bear and bird again, that ball isn’t in our court. With that said, we are keen to continue progressing as a studio, carrying the experience of games we worked on, old and new, to create new characters and adventures for you to hopefully love.”
“We’re sorry if this isn’t what you wanted to hear from us, at first, we found it amusing that Ed Bryan’s bag is being used as serious ‘evidence’, but we reckon it wouldn’t be fair if we didn’t set the record straight.”
Are you replaying Banjo during your free time this weekend? Let us know in the comments!
