Nostalgia 64 Creator Tells Us About The Worlds The Game Features

The Nintendo 64 holds a special place in the gaming world. It’s not one of Nintendo’s most successful, but it steered the company into the 3D era in style, and its polygonal graphics left a mark on many. One of those whom the N64 touched was Mark Kurko, also known as Kurko Mods, a prominent modder in the Banjo Kazooie community.

In his 10 years of modding, Kurko has created a range of Banjo Kazooie projects, ranging from full titles like Banjo Kazooie: Jiggies in Time, a crossover with The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, to a handful of smaller experiences. His latest project may well be his biggest, though, with Nostalgia 64, a full N64-style Banjo Kazooie game in which the Bear and the Bird visit worlds made famous by other N64 titles.

Ahead of its release, we spoke to Kurko, who shared details about the N64-inspired worlds that Banjo and Kazooie will be visiting.

The Worlds Which Made It

Nostalgia 64 will play like a traditional Banjo Kazooie game. Players will control the famous duo on a quest to collect Jiggies; however, rather than exploring locations from the Banjo Kazooie games, they’ll be heading to worlds plucked straight from other Nintendo 64 titles.

With work starting back in 2021, Kurko shared that players will set foot in over a dozen worlds from a variety of different games. Initially, Kurko had created standalone locations from Super Mario 64, Bomberman 64, Donkey Kong 64, Diddy Kong Racing, and Conker’s Bad Fur Day. This was intended to be a “small” project, Kurko told us; however, after creating nine worlds, “it occurred to me that I could create a hub world that connected everything.” And thus, Nostalgia 64 was born.

Alongside creating his own worlds, Kurko shared that a Pokemon Snap level was made by Bynine, who recently released their own N64-style platformer, Cavern of Dreams, on Steam and the Nintendo Switch.

After a break, Kurko returned to the project, adding four more worlds: one from Yoshi’s Story, one that’s a recreation of the Banjo Kazooie beta and two which he would “prefer to keep secret so as not to spoil the surprise.”

But full, expansive locales aren’t the only areas in the game. Secret levels inspired by 2D NES, SNES, and Game Boy games will also feature. These include Super Mario Bros 1 and 3, Donkey Kong Country 2, Battletoads, Donkey Kong Junior Arcade, Bomberman, Conker’s Pocket Tales, and Pokemon.

And The Ones That Didn’t

Kurko was full of ideas for Nostalgia 64. Unfortunately, they weren’t all feasible.

Initially a Blast Corps section was planned, which would allow Banjo to transform into a Bulldozer, like the various transformations in the original Banjo games. The scope of this proved too much though, as modding tools for Banjo Kazooie are “much more limited for those than Mario or Zelda” and adding new animations, mechanics and abilities “can only be done with code, and it’s something quite difficult that very little people know or are interested in doing.”

A Kirby level was also in the works, but was promptly repurposed into the Yoshi’s Story world and a Goemon level was also on the table, but Kurko “couldn’t find ideas I liked, so I scrapped it.”

Nostalgia 64 will be available for download later in 2024, and our full interview will be live with Kurko next week.