Rare wrong-foot everyone by turning Banjo into a vehicle-building sandbox, and the idea ends up brilliant. Cobbling together a contraption to crack a challenge is endlessly satisfying, even if platforming purists grumble.
Your verdict
Category
Platformer4 players7+
Split screen
Description
Platform and vehicle game by Rare and Microsoft, November 2008. Banjo and Kazooie build custom vehicles from salvaged parts to compete in races and battle Gruntilda in her automobile empire. Unprecedented vehicle building and customisation with thousands of combinations, varied missions and characteristic Rare humor. Radical reinvention of the platforming franchise.
Banjo-Kazooie - Nuts & Bolts review
4/5
Art direction
★★★★★
"Striking"
4/5
Music
★★★★★
"Excellent"
3/5
Story
★★★★★
"Solid"
The world is presented as a toy box: vehicles assembled piece by piece from blocks, wheels and propellers in primary colors, settings with simple rounded volumes, characters in shiny plastic. The build workshop sits at the center of the game, and watching other players' rickety contraptions drive by is part of the show.
Grant Kirkhope takes his own themes from 1998 and has an orchestra play them again, so melodies written for a sound chip ring out in brass and strings. The piece also adjusts to the machine you built: light instrumentation for a small wheeled vehicle, heavier as soon as you add engines, the music commenting live on your improvised contraption.
Banjo-Kazooie Nuts & Bolts, the return of Rare's mascot that swaps classic platforming for vehicle building, a bold turn that split fans while revealing real inventiveness. Still common, its collector interest rests on this singularity within a beloved series rather than scarcity, the Japanese and Asian pressing being markedly harder to find. An interesting piece for a Rare set.
Better with friends
A platformer reinvented around vehicle building, where you assemble wacky contraptions to tackle challenges of all kinds, solo or with others. The competition springs from ingenuity: pitting your creations in races or sports trials draws as much admiration as laughter. Inventive and good-natured, it turns every bit of tinkering into a source of amused rivalries and shared discoveries.
Is Banjo-Kazooie - Nuts & Bolts still worth playing in 2026?
Released in 2008 on Xbox 360, Rare's return swaps classic collecting for a vehicle building workshop, a bold choice that divided fans. Assembling a machine to crack each challenge, from a cobbled together plane to a grabber truck, unleashes a joyful creativity once you accept the pitch. The colourful worlds and the house humour keep all their charm. Fans of the original platformer may feel short changed, but the idea stays brilliant and underrated. For lovers of mechanical sandboxes and the Rare curious, this singular title genuinely deserves a second chance today.
