Nintendo has announced that the following game is coming to its Switch Online service: Nintendo 64 Platform Classic Banjo-Kazooie. The game is inextricably linked to the N64 – it’s a collectible with blurry cartoon graphics and cute animal characters – but this is the first time you’ve been able to play it on Nintendo hardware since Microsoft bought the original developer Rare in 2002.
Rare has released a number of spin-off titles for the Game Boy Advance, but the latest major Banjo-Kazooie game was from 2008 Nuts bolts for the Xbox 360. That game, as well as 360 ports of the original Banjo-Kazooie and continued Banjo-Tooie, are also available on modern Xbox consoles through Game Pass and a compilation called Rare Recurrence.
Banjo-Kazooie will be available on Thursday to subscribers to Nintendo Switch Online’s Expansion Pack, which brought N64 and Sega Genesis games to the service. Ever since Paper Mario was added in December, it looks like Nintendo plans to add about one N64 game a month, which isn’t exactly a breakneck pace, but is a change from the deep cutbacks on the NES and SNES that have come to the fore. emerged in the few months. Hopefully Nintendo can make the emulation work better than some of the previous N64 titles.