Video Game / Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts

"Once upon a time, there lived a heroic bear called Banjo, a rather loud bird called Kazooie, and an unpleasant witch called Gruntilda. When Banjo's sister was kidnapped, the bear and bird rescued her from depths of the witch's lair, overcoming many perils and speech impediments to send Gruntilda tumbling to her doom. But she was nothing if not persistent, and surprising nobody, the old hag rose from her grave for round two. Our brave heroes stood in her way, and this second showdown ended just as badly for Gruntilda, who really should have quit while she was... ahead. Many years have passed, and peace reigns in Spiral Mountain. So what became of the bear, the bird and the witch?"

— Opening Narration

The fifth game in the Banjo-Kazooie series, created by Rare in 2008 for the Xbox 360.

Eight years following their defeat of Gruntilda in Banjo-Tooie, Banjo and Kazooie have become lazy and out of shape due to lack of adventuring. Grunty returns to Spiral Mountain for revenge, but the three are interrupted by the sudden appearance of the Lord of Games (L.O.G.), the creator of all video games. He decides to settle the conflict between the two by devising a series of worlds and vehicle-based challenges.

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Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts provides examples of:

• 100% Completion: Nuts & Bolts requires only 75 of 131 Jiggies to reach the final battle, though it's worth it to keep collecting, as more vehicle parts and blueprints will appear in the shop. While there are over 5,200 notes in the game, they are primarily used to buy new parts, blueprints, and a few Jiggies, so the number needed to win will vary by player and how skilled they are at vehicle-building. However, players who collect every trophy will unlock a Trophy Thomas statue in Showdown Town, and doing so in the L.O.G.'s Lost Challenges DLC will turn it to gold. It's pretty minor, but it's something.
• Actually Pretty Funny: Gruntilda admits to missing Kazooie's wisecracks.
  Gruntilda: Your feathered friend is such a joke, where are the "funny" lines she once spoke?
• Alliterative Name:
  • Terrarium of Terror
  • Trophy Thomas
• And Your Reward Is Clothes: Defeating the Final Boss in Nuts & Bolts grants the main duo formal clothes for the ending and postgame: Banjo wears a tuxedo shirt and jacket while Kazooie dons a bowtie.
• Art Evolution: In Nuts & Bolts, the series underwent a fairly substantial Art Shift.
• Artificial Outdoors Display: All of the game worlds LOG creates have an artificial aesthetic. Nutty Acres in particular is surrounded by television screens projecting a blue sky.
• Art Shift: Nuts & Bolts has a far blockier style than the previous games, to the point where Banjo looks blockier on the Xbox 360 than he did on the Nintendo 64.
• Ascended Extra:
  • Mr. Fit. He begins simply as a throwaway character worth a single Jiggy in Tooie, and then evolves into part of the main cast in Nuts & Bolts.
  • Jolly Roger was the "primary" character of his level in Tooie, but it was still only one level, and he didn't have any impact on the game's overall plot. However, he was upgraded to main cast in Nuts & Bolts, with his new disguise as the "Jolly Dodger."
• Athletic Arena Level: The Jiggosseum. The level is a Roman-style colosseum/stadium with a sports theme. Most of the missions are also based around sports.
• Bag of Spilling: Justified; Banjo and Kazooie have forgotten their old moves, having gotten fat and lazy during the period of inactivity. Because this is a Banjo-Kazooie game, this is frequently lampshaded every time one of the characters points out that an obstacle would have been much easier to clear using one of their old moves. They even beg L.O.G. to grant them their old moves back, Puppy-Dog Eyes and all, but he adamantly refuses because this is a game about vehicles. Then he finally relents at the end of the game, for a nice fat Sequel Hook for the fans who wanted a non-vehicle game.
• Battle Theme Music: The game only has Gruntilda as the final boss, and like in the first game her theme is a remix of her leitmotif (her battles played different themes in Tooie and Grunty's Revenge).
• Biting-the-Hand Humor: The character of L.O.G. seems like a parody of Microsoft executives (changing the gameplay, sneering at the series' platforming roots, saying that gamers "just want to shoot things", etc.).
• Brain in a Jar: Grunty, who's actually a skull in a jar (which seems prone to falling out).
• Burn the Witch!: An achievement called "Burn the Witch" involves shooting the antagonist Gruntilda in the town square with the laser you get near the end of the game. Naturally, since you have to fight her later, the laser doesn't do anything except irritate her.
• Car Fu: In Nuts & Bolts, this is an option. It is of varying effectiveness depending on what you put on your vehicle.
• Cats Are Mean: Piddles. Justified in that Grunty's first action was to kick Piddles sky high.
• Collect-a-Thon Platformer: Parodied and Lampshaded in Nuts & Bolts; L.O.G. even goes as far as to call the Plot Coupons "useless objects".
• Compilation Re-release: While not wholly Banjo-Kazooie focused, Rare Replay does contain Banjo-Kazooie, Banjo-Tooie, and Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts.
• Console Cameo: A whole stack of Xbox 360 consoles can be seen on the file menu screen, and Kazooie can be seen playing an Xbox 360 with a tied up Nintendo 64 to the side. Later, one of the levels is called LOGBOX 720, which is modeled after the interior of an Xbox 360.
• Continuity Nod: The game features an entire level themed around this in the form of Banjoland, a colossal museum packed full of artifacts from the bear and bird's previous adventures. More subtly, Dingpot returns as the none-too-thrilled drivers seat on Grunty's vehices, and Banjo remarks on his previous world saving racing experience having involved a genie and a giant pig.
• Company Cross References: Nuts & Bolts includes numerous shout-outs to other Rare games. One level is nothing but game boxes that reference fictional sequels to classic games such as Killer Instinct and Battletoads.
• Credits Medley: The game features an impressive score that weaves the themes of several main areas into a monster medley as the credits are viewed. The credits include the themes to Mumbo's Test-O-Track, Log BOX 720, Terrarium of Terror, Gruntilda's Challenge, Jiggoseum, Banjo Land, Nutty Acres and Gruntilda's Final Battle.
• Deadpan Snarker: Banjo starts to do it in Nuts & Bolts as well as Kazooie. He's lived with Kazooie for years, so it's no wonder he picked it up.
• Death Is a Slap on the Wrist: The game literally doesn't allow you to die - running out of health just makes Banjo stay on the ground, until Kazooie pops out and slaps him a couple of times to wake him back up and restore his health to full. However, losing your health during a mission makes you fail it. This can be avoided if your vehicle is sufficiently armored, plus you rarely have to get out of a vehicle to traverse the worlds anyway.
• Deconstruction Game: While not otherwise a deconstruction, the game opens with a collectable-collecting sequence played ludicrously simple.
• Defeat Means Menial Labor: The game ends with Gruntilda sent to work in L.O.G's game factory after being defeated by the titular duo.
• Derivative Differentiation: The first game was a good Super Mario 64 clone, but after people tired of that particular formula, the later games diverged increasingly more, with Nuts & Bolts abandoning most of the Platform Game hallmarks altogether.
• Dub Name Change: L.O.G. has different names in the French and Spanish localizations.
  • His name in French is "Seigneur Absolu des Jeux", or "S.A.J."^note Doubles as a Bilingual Bonus, since "S.A.J." is how the word "sage" in French is pronounced. "Sage" means "wise".
  • His name in Spanish is "Señor de los Juegos" or "S.J." for short.
• End-of-Series Awareness: It is frequently joked that the game will sell terribly, the fans will hate it for being vehicle-based instead of the traditional platformer they were promised for many years, and that there will never be another Banjo-Kazooie game. Sadly, it seems like they were right, as there hasn't been a Banjo-Kazooie game since. At the end of the game, L.O.G promised that the next game (if there is one) would be a traditional platformer if Nuts & Bolts is poorly received. He was right... in a way.
• Eternal Engine: Nutty Acres and Logbox 720. The former is a mechanical approach to the Green Hill Zone setting, where several of the seemingly-organic features present are actually man-made. Meanwhile, Logbox 720 is a futuristic reimagining of the interior of the Xbox 360.
• Excuse Plot: This is especially so in the intro to Nuts & Bolts; a New Character Ex Machina appears to help Banjo, Kazooie, and Grunty "settle their differences," by... throwing them into a new video game. In fact, L.O.G. initially tosses them into a minigame in which the point is to collect more pointless objects than your opponent. Naturally, this scene unlocks an Achievement called "Pointless Collector."
• Feather Fingers: Kazooie holds a wrench with her wing's feathers.
• Final-Exam Boss: During the final battle, Gruntilda will use increasingly large vehicles and machines, each requiring a different tactic to be defeated.
• Formerly Fit: Banjo and Kazooie really let themselves go years after last defeating Gruntilda. But by the end of the prologue section, the Lord of Games decides to magically slim them back down so that they can take on the upcoming challenges.
• Game-Breaking Bug: If you're unfortunate enough to hit poor Clanker's eyes during Banjoland's Act 4 mission "Spring Break!" the Disc will become unreadable.
• Game Within a Game: Remember when Klungo went off to "make ssstupid games" after being defeated for the last time in Banjo-Tooie? In Nuts & Bolts, Klungo has indeed made his own game, Hero Klungo Sssaves Teh World, which is a playable mini-game. It is a poor man's Super Mario Bros..
• Genre Shift: Nuts & Bolts completely throws out the platforming and becomes a vehicle based game.
• Gotta Catch Them All: Despite L.O.G. mocking the collect-a-thon genre, this trope is back in full force in this game, with a total of 131 Jiggies to collect, among other items (such as vehicle parts).
• Green Aesop: Gruntilda plans to take the duo's beloved Spiral Mountain and turn it into a polluted industrial resort, and the point of beating her (and the game) is to stop that from happening.
• Hailfire Peaks: Banjoland is a Best Of for the first two games' many varied stock levels. There's also Nutty Acres, which is Palmtree Panic, Lethal Lava Land, Green Hill Zone, and Eternal Engine combined.
• Have a Gay Old Time: One of Grunty's rhymes is "Your name is odd and you look a bit queer, so tell old Grunty, what brings L.O.G. here?"
• Her Code Name Was "Mary Sue": Klungo's self-developed games, Hero Klungo Sssavesss Teh World and the sequel Hero Klungo Sssavesss Teh Universsse fit this quite well. Klungo's games feature himself as the hero, saving planets from his former mistress, and the accompanying◊ artwork◊ hilariously exaggerates Klungo himself and the actual content of his games.
• Hidden Depths: In Banjo-Kazooie Gruntilda desired to make herself beautiful, but in Tooie she instead wanted to completely restore her flesh. By the time Nuts & Bolts came around, she no longer cared about her appearance. Being reduced to an undead skeleton and later a disembodied head must have made her realize she had been taking her body for granted, and thus no longer does so (it could also help that because L.O.G. gave Gruntilda her robot body, she was never focused on acquiring a body for her head).
• Hints Are for Losers: Played with, as one of the hints shown on loading screens tells you that if you haven't gotten any better from reading the hints, you should just stop being so rubbish.
• Hub Level: Showdown Town, the city from which all worlds in the game can be accessed. Rare claims it is the largest hub level it has ever created. It's only the size of a small city, apparently.
• If It Swims, It Flies:
  • Vehicles tend to turn out this way. Plane-ish vehicles tend to be able to navigate underwater easily (if they have the underwater capable cockpits) and Submarine vehicles tend to fly well (if given wings). Make a boat. Then add wings to it. Bam, flying boat!
  • This is especially noticeable in the "The Jiggosseum Torch" mission in Jiggosseum Act 6, which tasks you to use a boat to carry a torch to a specific location without dropping it in the water. There's absolutely nothing stopping you from pointing the propellers upwards and fly to the target.
• Implacable Man: Grunty survives falling off her tower, getting decomposed after two years, getting blown up in HAG 1, her now-disembodied head being the kickball for Banjo and friends, getting back to Spiral Mountain with just that head (which takes eight years), being attacked repeatedly in vehicles, and finally getting her vehicle blown up in her battle against Banjo and Kazooie. In the end, Grunty, who couldn't be killed off, ended up spending the rest of her days working in a video game factory.
• Improvised Lockpick: In the "Banjo is Back!" teaser trailer, Banjo wields Kazooie as a lockpick.
• Interface Screw: The "Bear in a Ball" level is a hard mission where you must pilot a large, clunky ball-shaped car through a course... with the controls reversed.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: The Lord Of Games is arrogant and often petty, but in the end is a decent guy who makes it clear that, though he has to remain neutral, he is fully on Banjo and Kazooie's side.
• Kaizo Trap: The deliberately awful mini-game "Hero Klungo Saves Teh World" has an attempted Kaizo Trap at the end of the last non-boss stage, where Klungo falls into a pit right after you pass the finish line. It's "attempted" because you still get credit for completing the level, but since the whole mini-game is a parody of 8-bit Platform Hell, it was probably meant as a subtle Shout-Out to the original.
• Kill Steal: L.O.G. actually does pause the game to steal the kill from the heroes by sending Gruntilda to work in his video game company.
• Later-Installment Weirdness: In stark contrast to the pure platformers with occasional Unexpected Gameplay Changes the first two games were, Nuts & Bolts heavily downplays the series' trademark platforming elements in favour of a new type of gameplay revolving around vehicle construction. This extends to other elements of the series, too: the game's artstyle is much blockier, and the worlds operate on an act-based structure that results in less worlds overall but allows variations on the existing ones.
• Macro Zone: Logbox 720 is the innards of a giant Xbox 360 pastiche. The architecture is obviously exaggerated, but it shows some game discs running in it, including Grabbed by the Ghoulies.
• Lawyer-Friendly Cameo: Kazooie refers to Mario by name in Tooie. L.O.G. refers to him as "that Italian gentleman".
• Mecha-Mooks: Without Klungo's aid to raise her army of monsters, Gruntilda resorts to create her own band of Mecha-Mooks with the Gruntbots. However, those crud-looking mechanical mischief makers are more a nuisance than a real threat to the bear and bird duo.
• Mood Motif: Several of the remixes of the series' Leitmotifs are scored for instruments intended to convey a particular mood. For example, when we see the overweight, lazy Banjo and Kazooie at the beginning of Nuts & Bolts, the title screen music from the original game is played at about one-eighth of its original speed and scored for tubas and Harmon muted ("wah-wah" muted) trumpet.
• Mooks, but no Bosses: Being a Driving Game instead of a platformer, Nuts & Bolts has plenty of enemies (Gruntbots) but is devoid of bosses (with the exception of Gruntilda, the staple Final Boss). While Mr. Patch from Banjo-Tooie makes an appearance, he's just a non-boss target in two missions this time.
• Most Writers Are Writers: Really, why else would Klungo want to be a game dev?
• Ms. Fanservice: Humba Wumba in Nuts & Bolts is basically a Native American Daisy Duke.
• Never Trust a Trailer: The original teaser for the third game showed what would appear to be new key and weedwhacker moves for Kazooie, implying that the game was more like its predecessors.
• Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: Grunty seems to be more guilty of this trope with each subsequent game. To top it off in Nuts & Bolts, not only is she by default by this point a Robot Zombie Witch, but during the final fight, she attacks the heroes on a Pirate Galleon, briefly making her a Pirate Zombie Robot Witch.
• Nostalgia Level: Banjo Land, which is set in an enormous museum filled with remnants from nearly every level from the previous games. The background music of Banjo Land is also a medley of various level tunes from the previous games.
• Oddball in the Series: Unlike the preceding games, this game is based around designing and driving vehicles instead of collecting and platforming. It also has a completely different artstyle and character designs from past games. Lampshaded in-game with fourth wall-breaking jokes that the game would sell terribly and the fans would hate it for being vehicle-based instead of the traditional platformer they were promised for many years. At the end of the game, L.O.G promises that the next game would once again be a traditional platformer.
• Old Save Bonus:
  • Having a cleared save file from Banjo-Kazooie allows the Stop 'n' Swop feature to unlock extra vehicle parts in Nuts & Bolts.
  • Having a save file from Banjo-Tooie with all the Stop 'n' Swop items obtained in that game will unlock extra premade blueprints in Nuts & Bolts.
• Palmtree Panic: Nutty Acres is a subversion: While it starts out as a tropical landscape, it turns out to be a combination of Palmtree Panic with other level types (namely Green Hill Zone, Lethal Lava Land and Eternal Engine).
• Pass Through the Rings: The game has missions where you have to pass through rings nearly every other Jiggy Game.
• Permanently Missable Content: As there are only a finite number of notes to collect in Nuts & Bolts, spending too many on police bribes will result in Banjo not having enough to buy all the blueprints, vehicle parts, and hints.
• Pop Quiz: This game has a quiz challenge during the final set of challenges in Spiral Mountain, where getting L.O.G's questions right will add extra time to the mission that he assigned you.
• Prolonged Video Game Sequel: The game is bigger than its predecessors as, despite having only five regular worlds, there a ton of content in them as well as in the Hub Level (there's now a total of 131 Jiggies to collect, for example); it's also to be expected considering that it's a vehicle-focused game.
• Racing Minigame: As would be expected from a Driving Game, Nutes & Bolts has many racing mini-games.
• Recurring Riff: The soundtrack for Nuts & Bolts is made up of virtually nothing but orchestrated remixes of previous Banjo-Kazooie songs, and bits of tracks from other Rare games.
• Rhymes on a Dime: With her sisters (who told her to stop rhyming in Tooie) both dead, Gruntilda goes back to her gimmick of speaking entirely in verse.
• Right-Hand Cat: Piddles the Cat. Subverted in that she and Grunty hate each other immediately (or at least one millisecond later after Grunty literally kicks her), and it's implied that she's a Punch-Clock Villain in the epilogue.
• Robot Me: In the game's multiplayer mode, players could control a robotic copy of Banjo as they competed in races with other players online.
• Scars Are Forever: Klungo's face is still visibly messed-up from the beatings Gruntilda gave him in Banjo-Tooie when you meet him again in Nuts & Bolts.
• Self-Deprecation: Rare, as a British company, naturally indulges in the popular British pastime of poking fun at themselves in the games.
  • Nuts & Bolts happily lampshades the series' reputation for having the characters engage in "collecting as many pointless objects as possible."
  • Nuts & Bolts has some references to Grabbed by the Ghoulies being a commercial failure (namely a trashcan filled to the brim with copies of it) and admits that the bird and bear don't have as many games as "that Italian gentleman".
  • "Is it just me, or is your nose square? The fans will hate it, you butt-ugly bear!"
  • "Easy to make boat, add floaters and propellers. Heavier vehicles need more floaters, or boat sink like this game at retail." Yeah. About that...
  • "Can we have our old moves back? If this game isn't successful, we might need them for the next one."
  • The Lord of Games in Nuts & Bolts claims to have had great pleasure in making the invokedCanary Mary sidequest.
    "Remember Canary Mary? Did you have fun racing her? How I laughed when I was setting up those levels. I'm still laughing!"
  • Viva Piñata doesn't get off the hook, either. You find its game disk in the Logbox 720 stage of Nuts & Bolts, and around the edge of the disk is printed, "Winner, best game no-one played. Sequel now available."
• Sequel Hook: Kazooie asks L.O.G. to give them their old moves back, saying they might need them for the next game. L.O.G. does so, though warning them that the next game may not happen. Gruntilda, of course, threatens "Just wait until the game I make!" while working in L.O.G.'s video game factory.
• Sequence Breaking:
  • An example that crops up in Nuts & Bolts involves putting anything in the trolley (such as a bench or a crate), standing on it and then levitating the trolley. The trolley, with you on top of your bench, will start flying and be able to access much of Showdown Town without finishing the various Grunty challenges (specifically, it bypasses the need for high-grip, floating and springs). This gives access to significantly better vehicle parts right from the start.
  • At the start of Nuts & Bolts, it is possible to climb to the top of L.O.G's factory to the Jiggy Tamper Switch almost immediately after entering Showdown Town for the first time. Attempting to use the switch (and thus earn a Jiggy before L.O.G gives you your first one) earns a Shout Out from L.O.G - "Trying to break the game already?" before he locks the switch down and tells you to come back at a "more reasonable time".
• Shout-Out: In Nuts & Bolts, one of the music tracks for the loading screens is the pause music from Battletoads.
• Speaking Simlish: So iconic of the series, it's so famous, in fact, they decided to keep it in Nuts & Bolts. A Rare Scribes column even joked about how horrible the reaction to actual talking would be if the reaction to driving cars was any indication.
• Stylistic Suck: "Hero Klungo Sssavesss Teh World" in Nuts & Bolts, which is hilariously awful. You play as Klungo, who is literally carrying the world, as he automatically runs from left to right, only allowing you to jump at one fixed, unchanging height. To his credit, there are some very tricky timing puzzles centered around making the best use of that jump. The box art reflects this.
• Take That!:
  • Chatting up the Lord of Games in Nuts & Bolts reveals that he has interesting opinions on the state of the video game industry (and video game tropes in general) at the present:
    "For my next trick, I may take that Pinata franchise down the Survival Horror route. What do you think? They go bad, trap you in a cabin, and you have to fend them off with a shovel handle."
    "Yes, there is a Lady of Games. Not that it's any of your business. She invented the first games to feature pony-riding, lovely kittens, and ninjas being blown up with rocket launchers."
    "I invented the first-person shooter, you know. Wish I hadn't bothered now. Have you seen how many of the things there are? I expect there's even a space marine in this game somewhere."invoked
  • Humba Wumba takes a bit of a pop not only at the Gamer Chick character in the second level, but almost actively calls out the Frag Dolls, with her own all-girl clan, the "Hag Trolls". Banjo comments that he can "smell cynicism".
• Take That, Audience!: Nuts & Bolts taunts fans for being upset about the Unexpected Gameplay Change. Even more infuriating is L.O.G. flat-out saying there may never be another game, which he's right on.
• Talking Is a Free Action: The Gruntbots from Nuts & Bolts may be mindless mooks trying to destroy you, but even they wouldn't be so impolite as to interrupt you while you're speaking to someone.
• Tertiary Sexual Characteristics: Kazooie suddenly became a lot curvier in Nuts & Bolts, and grew much more prominent eyelashes.
• Theme-and-Variations Soundtrack: The soundtrack of the game is based on orchestral remixes of old melodies from the first two games.
• Think of the Censors!: Gruntilda, of all people, in Nuts & Bolts after you beat the "Unpleasant Fat Oaf" mission.
  Gruntilda: I'd curse if this game had a higher rating, your confidence is so nauseating!
• The Very Definitely Final Dungeon: Spiral Mountain, consisting of various challenges and quiz questions to potentially give you more time to beat said challenges, and the five-phase final battle against Grunty.
• Video Game Cruelty Potential: You can do all kinds of mean things to NPCs: you can attack them with your wrench, run them over with your vehicle of choice, attack them with lasers, rockets, fire, metallic fists, the list goes on.
• Warp Whistle: The teleport pads in Showdown Town.
• Weight Woe: The beginning of Nuts & Bolts has Banjo and Kazooie having gotten fat and lethargic, leaving them unable to platform as well as the used to.
• Wreaking Havok: Rather overbearing (no pun intended) that the player's vehicle will often tumble uncontrollably when attempting to drive over anything that isn't a flat surface.

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