Toys For Bob ‘would love to work on a new Banjo-Kazooie’
The beloved Rare franchise has been missing for over a decade
Toys For Bob has said it would love to work on a new Banjo-Kazooie game.
In an interview with content creator ‘Canadian Guy Eh’, Toys For Bob studio head Paul Yan was asked which developers or IP would the studio love to work on.
“There’s so many, and that’s one of the exciting possibilities of being independent,” said Yan.
“One company we’d like to work with is one we’re already working with; Team Xbox. They’ve been a great partner and they also have a very interesting roster of characters that Toys for Bob could have a lot of fun with. The honey bear is the first one that comes to mind. I think we all can agree Banjo’s been hibernating long enough, right?”
The Rare-owned platformer hasn’t seen an instalment since Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts, which was released for Xbox 360 15 years ago.
However, the classic franchise has been more prominent in recent years. Last year, the first game in the series was added to Nintendo Switch Online, and Banjo and Kazooie were added as playable characters to Super Smash Bros Ultimate.
In 2020, Spencer said that any revivals of classic Rare franchises were up to Rare itself. However, speaking to VGC this summer as part of an extended interview to mark Banjo-Kazooie’s 25th anniversary, a group of original Rare team members said they weren’t expecting a new game anytime soon.
Despite a $3 million Kickstarter and over 1 million copies sold for their spiritual successor, Playtonic Games’ Yooka-Laylee, composer Grant Kirkhope questioned whether the audience was truly there for a new game.
Toys for Bob was founded in 1989 and developed such games as Star Control, Pandemoniom and The Unholy War before it was acquired by Activision in 2005.
In recent years, the California studio has assisted with development on the Call of Duty series, but is best known as the studio behind the Skylanders series, as well as 2020’s Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time and 2018’s Spyro Reignited Trilogy.
