I imagine we all have that one video game franchise revival we keep hoping for every time announcement season comes around – a little flame in your heart for the return of a nostalgic favorite you loved as a kid. For me, that’s Banjo-Kazooie. I’ve nearly given up hope that Xbox will ever deliver the Banjo-Threeie I’ve waited 25 years for, but luckily, one fan developer is helping fill the gap with an incredible tribute game in Dreams.
Dreams is, of course, the whimsical game creation tool built by LittleBigPlanet developer Media Molecule. I remind you of that fact primarily because PlayStation has very much allowed Dreams to fall out of the limelight since official support ended in 2023. But that hasn’t stopped William ‘Eupholace’ Butkevicius from using it to build an absolutely incredible-looking Banjo fan game.
The catch is that Mumbomania is much smaller in scope than a full Banjo sequel would be, consisting of just a single level. It’s a pitch perfect recreation of Treasure Trove Cove, the second world in the original game, and one that comes with an array of new challenges to overcome and mechanics to play around with, so it still manages to impress even with a roughly 30-minute playtime based on the playthrough video below.
It’s certainly impressive enough to have attracted the attention of the original developers. Gregg Mayles, who led development on the original Banjo-Kazooie, retweeted the release announcement for Mumbomania and called it “splendid.” Legendary composer Grant Kirkhope also shared the announcement, and even the official Rare account got in on the action: “Put our fanciest hat on just so we could tip it to this. Incredible work!”
It’s only available in Dreams, but that looks impressive. I admire the dedication, although at this point, you should probably use proper tools and make the game/demo available to more people.
Download the level and it’s nice enough. I’ve always found Banjo games overrated a little found it a shame that Xbox dropped plans for a Kameo sequel. Xbox lacks 3D platform games compared to its rivals over the years, despite some nice tries like with BLiNX and Kamo
Technical limitations. Stems from one decision made during development. They chose an extremely non-standard rendering basis that is only exposed on PS platform. They could have switched over to something standard and exposed on all platforms and hardware, but then that would likely have broken all existing content.
I’m not sure the old-style platforming works today except maybe for Nintendo. I would much rather prefer something like ORI or if they could move in that direction.
I asked Grok to analyze the image and give me the best bet it could and it says this game is
Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet.
The information seems to be from X
I’m starting to think #TheGameAwards mystery desert statue could be teasing Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet🚀
We still don’t know what planet Sempira looks like beyond the few seconds of combat against a robot
I think a quality and modernized collectathon (and not something experimental like N&B) Banjo game with good production values that will also release on the Switch 2 and PC may turn out a decent seller. I don’t know if PS5 versions will be worth the cost of porting the game over there though since the PS fanbase doesn’t seem to care about the genre that much…even Astrobot which was a 1st party game with Playstation nostalgia as it’s theme that got a lot of GOTY awards and a very high metascore didn’t too that well.
Either way we are still ways off from a potential Banjo game, maybe Phil will see an opportunity in the future to bring the IP back.
Never liked B&J, and while the market for 3D platform games wasn’t like it was when I was growing up. I would have liked to have seen RARE allowed to make a sequel to Kameo
Same. Kameo certainly has a lot of potential. If Moon studios didn’t have all the baggage and drama they would be a good fit for it especially since I think Kameo fits into that Ori like format.
On a side note, I did wish Xbox had a studio like Moon to work on this. There was a rumor of a studio in New Zealand that never seemed to have materialized.
I would have loved it if they had spun Ever Wild into a Kameo game, the at was pretty solid.
Kameo had so much potential to be made into a fabulous game/series if the team were allowed to make a sequel. Hope Double Fine are allowed to make a new Platform game. Psychonauts 2 is one of the best platform games I’ve had to pleasure to play in any generation
Dreams is a treasure, I made two full games in it. Check it out while you play this Banjo-inspired creation. I was happy that Rare acknowledged it, too.