TACOs, anyone?

So, recently I finished Banjo-Kazooie again. I played it a long time ago (like, 12 years ago), and the game has held up fairly well. Except for all the damn TACOs (Totally Arbitrary Collectible Objects; term "borrowed" from Anachronox). The game is littered with completely trivial pick-ups whose purposes are questionable at best.

For instance, take red feathers. Kazooie can use these to fly! But what was stopping her in the first place? I can understand not allowing the player to fly whenever he or she wishes, but to limit the amount the player can fly seems to impose an arbitrary obstacle on them. I understand she's lugging around a giant bear, but I doubt ordinary feathers are going to help.

Blue eggs. Kazooie can fire these either forward like a cannon, or backwards like a bouncing ball. Really, these were never useful outside the context of a puzzle. They do piss-poor damage, the aiming is non-existent, and 100 is more than you'll ever need. So why not just give you infinite eggs and call it a day?

Gold feathers make sense, because the power is quite useful and should be regulated. The power makes you invincible, destroying most enemies simply by touching them. I would probably have given the player an Energy Bar that drains when they use Kazooie's powers - Eggs eat up a small amount of energy, flight takes up a small amount over time, and invulnerability burns up a lot of energy over time. Then, just have the bar slowly regenerate when the pair isn't using it.

Notes are really annoying. They only exist to block our heroes progress. You need a certain amount of them (collected within the stages) to open certain doors in the lair. But, the game already has you running around everywhere looking for Jiggies, puzzle pieces that unlock new stages. My idea? Toss out Notes entirely and have Jiggies open the lair doors. Then, simply leave the stage doors unlocked and waiting.

Jinjos are a simple idea. Find 5 of them in a stage, get a Jiggy. But why not just give us an additional challenge in the stage and cut Jinjos out entirely? The ending depends on them, but they could simply find a new way to include them. For example, have them locked up throughout the lair, and put the cage triggers inside the stages - when the player triggers these cage triggers, unlock the cage and let the Jinjo out. He or she then leaves you a Jiggy inside the cage to pay you for the effort.

Mumbo Tokens are plentiful, but useless. By the time you stumble across Mumbo, you'll have plenty of these to afford his services - barring the initial meeting. Why not just make his services free?

Extra Honeycombs. Earn 6 of these and gain an extra Health-box thing. There are 2 in each stage, giving you 4 more by the end of the game (you get 6 of them in Spiral Mountain for completing the tutorial). And, right before the final boss fight, you can trade in 4 Jiggies to double your health! My idea is to simply give Banjo one additional health-box per stage. Start with 3, end with 12, no doubling at the end. These would come in the form of a Beehive or Royal Jelly or summat. Just hide them well in each stage.

Lives. Get rid of them entirely. In a game such as this, reloading the game and climbing back to the stage you just came from is the only punishment for losing all your lives. Why not just give Banjo infinite lives and be done with it?

Gold Bars, Acorns, Caterpillars, etc. These are found within their respective stages and used therein. They act like Jinjos, giving you a Jiggy when you've found all of them and returned them to their owner. I actually have no qualms about this one. They make the levels feel more interactive somehow.

The game has tonnes of charm and wonderful level design, but the levels are so cluttered with pick-ups that they seem more artificial than normal. I would attempt to cut back on the sheer number of TACOs by integrating powers into the character and removing objects that only exist due to genre conventions. In Rare's future titles they show they've learned to live without the clutter, and in Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts they poke fun at these conventions as if to say, "Sorry!"