At Onion Gamers Network, we always strive to provide the pinnacle in gaming news, commentary, previews, and reviews. On rare occasions, however, we have failed to live up to these lofty standards and must take significant steps to correct these missteps. Today, we find ourselves needing to do just that. After a thorough analysis by our 50-person editorial board, we are officially updating our 1998 review of Rare’s Banjo-Kazooie from a 9.7 to a 9.6.
This is not a decision we made lightly.
Allow us to explain our thought process: Without question, Banjo-Kazooie remains a classic example of the golden era of 3D platformers. Indeed, we remain steadfast in our belief that the developer’s extensive attention to detail makes collecting jiggies in the game’s colorful world a “uniquely exhilarating and adorable experience.” Nonetheless, our initial review overlooked several issues that can no longer justify the score of 9.7, indicating near-gaming perfection.
At the time, we were perhaps affected by the significant hype surrounding Banjo-Kazooie’s release, never pausing to factor in the game’s less-than-stellar replayability and occasional graphical glitches.
This, in conjunction with the game’s now-apparent overreliance on borrowed concepts from Mario 64, and our staff’s consensus that the game’s plot—centered around rescuing Banjo’s sister, Tooty, from the evil witch Gruntilda—was merely “excellent” instead of “extraordinary,” have led us to issue an official retraction of our original score and update it with a more thoroughly considered and accurate 9.6.
We apologize to any readers led astray by our initial ranking. Frankly, we cannot repair the damage caused by this error, but we dearly hope our updated review can at least set the record straight for posterity, helping anyone who has yet to play the title, which we’d like to emphasize is still a highly immersive platforming experience.
However, in order to properly make amends, we have fired the original reviewer, a 33-year veteran of the company, as well as the copy editor and three other editorial staffers involved in the publication of this woefully misleading article. To anyone who played the game in 1998 and had a nagging sense that what they were experiencing wasn’t quite “truly next-level gaming” when they were led to believe it was, know only that Onion Gamers Network is profoundly sorry. We hope that our updated grade more accurately reflects the level of merit that Banjo-Kazooie has earned.
Our rating of the game’s sequel, Banjo-Tooie, however, remains unchanged at a 5.1.
