A group of modders wearing their best reverse engineering goggles have successfully ported the bird-and-bear platformer Banjo-Kazooie to PC. We’ve added a ton of extra extras to ensure you won’t be disappointed in your childhood or adulthood. Their work is called Banjo: Recompiled and was released over the weekend.
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This recompiled version of the N64 classic was realized using N64: Recompiled and is primarily the work of modder Wiseguy. If you bring in your game files via a legally obtained ROM of the North American 1.0 version, it will work on Windows, Linux, and Mac.
If you do, you’ll be using a version of Banjo that offers a number of useful features designed to ensure it’s perfect for playing on today’s hardware, but also promises to work on more potato-shaped boxes. If you don’t want to stay at a steady 60, there’s support for high frame rates, widescreen and ultrawide modes, and fast loading times. Stepping up the dual analog cameras, the ability to keep notes if you die or exit a level, and support for playing on a Steam Deck are also part of the puzzle.
Finally, there’s built-in mod support in case you want to run Doom with the Jigsaw minigame. Or download Jiggies of Time, improved texture packs, and more.
All in all, this is a project that might be worth the long wait for Banjo to get a proper PC port, and Microsoft doesn’t think it’s worth digging into the Nostalgia Toy Box just yet to develop it.
If you want to try Banjo: Recompiled, you can find its source code on GitHub. Wiseguy also says that it plans to offer ray tracing at some point in the future.
