Kazooie

For fighter info, see Banjo & Kazooie (SSBU).

Kazooie
Official artwork of Kazooie from Banjo-Tooie.
Universe	Banjo-Kazooie
Debut	Banjo-Kazooie (1998)
Smash Bros. appearances	Ultimate
Most recent non-Smash appearance	Rare Replay (2015)
Console/platform of origin	Nintendo 64
Species	Red-crested breegull
Gender	Female
Place of origin	Breegull Beach (birthplace) Spiral Mountain (surrogate home)
Designed by	Steve Mayles
Voice actor	Chris Sutherland
Article on Wikipedia	Banjo & Kazooie

Kazooie (カズーイ, Kazooie) is one of the two titular protagonists of the Banjo-Kazooie series, the other being Banjo.

Origin

Kazooie is a red-crested breegull, a fictional species of bird known for their fast running speed and flight capabilities. In contrast to Banjo's gentle and kindhearted temperament, she is a brash and snarky loudmouth who speaks her mind with no regard for civility, traits which get the duo into trouble more often than not. Despite this, she is fiercely loyal to Banjo and willing to help with any situation that comes their way. Kazooie spends most of her time inside Banjo's backpack, residing in his house near the foot of Spiral Mountain.

The first mention of Kazooie is in the instruction manual of Diddy Kong Racing, although she does not appear in the game. Her official debut was in Banjo-Kazooie. In this game, Kazooie alerts Banjo that his sister Tooty is being kidnapped by the evil witch Gruntilda, who wants to steal her beauty, but Banjo wakes up too late to respond. Once he awakens, the duo set out to rescue her from Gruntilda's Lair, a complex cavern in Spiral Mountain with links to many disparate worlds. Along the way, Bottles the mole teaches Kazooie a variety of powerful abilities, including beak attacks, egg shooting, flight, and even invulnerability. After the pair get through the lair and confront Grunty at its peak, they ultimately summon The Mighty Jinjonator to push her off the tower to her doom; she crashes into the ground and is buried by the ensuing debris.

Two months later in Grunty's Revenge, Gruntilda's ogre-like minion Klungo creates a robotic body for her spirit to possess while her body remains underground. This newly-built "Mecha-Grunty" kidnaps Kazooie and travels 20 years into the past to stop the two from meeting, thus preventing her defeat. Kazooie is quickly rescued by Banjo, whom their friend Mumbo Jumbo has sent back in time to chase down Grunty. Via Bottles' ancestor Bozzeye, she re-learns some of the moves that she had forgotten due to the time displacement. The duo eventually send Grunty's spirit back to the future into her real body, restoring the timeline mostly back to normal.

Two years later in Banjo-Tooie, Gruntilda's sisters appear to rescue the now-skeletal witch, who promptly attacks Banjo's house and kills Bottles. Banjo and Kazooie set out again to chase down the witches, who are attempting to restore Grunty's flesh by using their Big-O-Blaster to suck the life out of the entire Isle O' Hags. Bottles' brother Jamjars helps the duo learn to work independently, which is a huge boon to Kazooie; without Banjo weighing her down, she can move significantly faster and jump higher, while retaining almost all of her offensive abilities. Jamjars furthers her skills by teaching her first-person egg shooting, wing attacks, free gliding, and the ability to hatch eggs; however, she cannot swim underwater or grab ledges as Banjo can. Banjo and Kazooie triumph over Grunty once again, and use the B.O.B. to revive Bottles.

Eight years later in Nuts & Bolts, the duo has become lazy and out of shape from their lack of exercise, having forgotten their moves from the previous games. Grunty reappears as just a skull and attempts to start a fight, but before they can, they are interrupted by the Lord of Games (L.O.G.), the supposed creator of all video games. He creates a robotic body for Grunty and a series of vehicular challenges for Banjo and Kazooie to go through. Kazooie continuously complains about being given the shaft in the game; her only use comes from a magical wrench Mumbo has given her, which allows her to carry objects and utilize simple attacks. The pair eventually battle and defeat Grunty, who is forced to work in L.O.G.'s video game factory, and earn back their old moves.

In Super Smash Bros. Melee

Banjo & Kazooie were collectively requested by fans in a poll on the first game's Japanese website, gauging interest for potential playable characters in a sequel. They ranked eighth overall, with 33 votes, and second among Rare characters.

Despite this, Banjo & Kazooie were not included in Melee, as Sakurai stated the ability to feature Rare's characters was more logistically challenging than fans would expect. While they were accordingly not planned as playable fighters, they were intended to at least be featured as trophies. However, even this was not possible due to the difficulties presented by the game's tight development schedule and Rare's headquartering in the UK, which greatly complicated the communications and approval processes between them and HAL.

In the Japanese version of Super Smash Bros. Melee, Kazooie's name, as well as Banjo's, can be randomly generated on the Name Entry screen.

In Super Smash Bros. Ultimate

As a playable character

Banjo & Kazooie, as they appear in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.

Banjo & Kazooie make their debut as newcomers in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, with their and the Hero's inclusions being announced during the E3 2019 Nintendo Direct on June 11, 2019. She and Banjo are collectively the third DLC characters of Fighters Pass Vol. 1, and were released on September 4, 2019.

Like in Banjo-Kazooie and Banjo-Tooie, Kazooie provides the majority of the duo's maneuvers, such as the Talon Trot for their dash and Feathery Flap for their two double jumps, before quickly retreating into Banjo's backpack in order to avoid retaliation. Despite adhering to a tag team-oriented playstyle like the Ice Climbers and Rosalina & Luma, Kazooie usually does not possess a hurtbox like the partner climber and Luma do. As a result, she essentially functions as a disjointed hitbox, and will only gain a hurtbox while dashing or using up tilt.

Banjo & Kazooie were behind only Sora as the most heavily-requested characters in the Smash Bros. Fighter Ballot,, with particularly strong support in the West, but their current ownership by Microsoft in the years since Melee posed greater challenges than other fighters. However, Xbox's publishing team had a history of healthy third-party relations with Nintendo; discussions with Rare facilitated by Minecraft and a meeting between Nintendo and studio head Craig Duncan at E3 2018 created the opportunity for Kazooie's much-anticipated appearance. Xbox executive Phil Spencer had affirmed this olive branch during the Ballot, expressing his support for their potential appearance, with Sakurai later agreeing that the spirit of mutual cooperation to please fans ultimately transcended the companies' hardware rivalry.

Sakurai would acknowledge Microsoft's ownership of Banjo-Kazooie and express gratitude for his and Rare's cooperation in their gameplay showcase, and even note that if those interested in the series want to play the original titles today, they should do so in Rare Replay on the Xbox One.

Spirit

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  1,337. Banjo & Kazooie

Names in other languages

Language	Name
Japanese	カズーイ, Kazooie
English	Kazooie
French	Kazooie
German	Kazooie
Spanish	Kazooie
Italian	Kazooie
Chinese	阿卡, Kazooie
Korean	카주이, Kazooie
Dutch	Kazooie
Russian	Казуи

Trivia

• Banjo and Kazooie are one of only four foreign-created characters to be playable in Smash Bros.: they alongside Diddy Kong and King K. Rool were created by British developer Rare Ltd., and Dark Samus was created by American developer Retro Studios. They are the first third-party fighter to be created outside of Japan, and the first fighter in general to belong to a completely foreign franchise.
• Banjo and Kazooie are one of only three playable characters in Smash to belong to a non-Japanese company, that being Microsoft; Steve (also from Microsoft) and Sora (from Disney) are the only other characters with this distinction.
  • Banjo and Kazooie are the only playable characters to have once been part of a second-party franchise, partially owned by Nintendo, before becoming third-party.
  • They, along with Steve, are the only fighters to hail from a current console rival of Nintendo.
  • Banjo and Kazooie are also the only third-party characters to have been created by the same company as first-party characters. Banjo, in fact, debuted within the Donkey Kong franchise in Diddy Kong Racing; Kazooie was not playable, but she was mentioned in the instruction manual.
• Banjo & Kazooie and Dark Samus are the only playable fighters whose games of origin were neither released first in Japan nor simultaneously worldwide, with both (Banjo-Kazooie and Metroid Prime 2, respectively) releasing in North America first.

External links

• Kazooie on Jiggywikki