Two years after Banjo and Kazooie defeat Gruntilda in the game's predecessor, two of her sisters arrive and free her from beneath the boulder.

Tooie is controversial for being significantly harder than the first game in that, besides tougher obstacles and platforming challenges, it places a higher emphasis on puzzle-solving and backtracking, often requiring the player to revisit previous worlds to complete them.

The ending sequence in Banjo-Tooie suggested the title of a third game would be Banjo-Threeie, with early press releases tentatively calling it Banjo-Kazooie 3.

), the grand creator of all video games, compete with Gruntilda in a series of challenges to claim control of Spiral Mountain.

The newly created "Mecha-Grunty," infused with a transferred Gruntilda's spirit, travels back in time to prevent the first meeting of Banjo and Kazooie.

Banjo and Kazooie, with assistance from their shaman friend Mumbo Jumbo, stop her plans and send her back to beneath the boulder in Spiral Mountain.

Both re-releases were included alongside Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts as part of the 30 game compilation Rare Replay, released for Xbox One on 4 August 2015.

In Grabbed by the Ghoulies, pictures of the characters and levels are seen throughout the game, along with monster versions of Banjo and Kazooie's heads mounted on the walls.

[8] Banjo and Kazooie also appear as a single playable fighter via downloadable content in the 2018 crossover fighting game, Super Smash Bros.

[9] Phil Spencer, head of the Xbox brand, stated that negotiating the characters' inclusion was an "easy deal to make" thanks to their strong third-party relationship with Nintendo.

[10] The characters were released on 4 September 2019, along with a stage based on Spiral Mountain and Banjo-Kazooie musical arrangements, including one by original composer Grant Kirkhope.

Though it was shown in an ending sequence in Banjo-Kazooie, evidence suggests that it was never fully implemented due to the Nintendo 64 revisions completed in 1999 that kept the feature from being practical.

Nintendo released a statement on the matter expressing that the feature "was not implemented in the game, and although we know there is a code that opens this menu, it does not do anything at all.

"[17] In 2004, a patent filed by Rare was published which suggests that Stop 'N' Swop involved swapping cartridges with the power off to transfer data.

In a 2007 interview with Retro Gamer, Rare employees told the magazine reporters that they may have to wait until the release of Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts for the details of Stop 'N' Swop to be revealed.

[13] Paul Machacek, a Rare software engineer, clarified that Nintendo shut down Stop 'N' Swop before Donkey Kong 64's release, anticipating the aforementioned circuitry changes as well as fearing hardware damage (a fear which Machacek claimed was unfounded[21]), although the "Swopping" system was never fully removed from Kazooie.

Rare did not initially plan to implement cheat codes for accessing the items, fearing that they could be shared with players that did not own Tooie.

[23] In Nuts & Bolts, Bottles' shop also offers a "Stop 'N' Swop Truth" item for 6000 music notes, more than is possible to obtain in the game.

"[citation needed] On 27 January 2009, Rare announced that Banjo-Tooie would be released in April on XBLA and that the "original plan" for Stop 'N' Swop would be implemented.

[24] It was revealed that the eggs and key in the XBLA version of Banjo-Kazooie would unlock bonus vehicle parts in Nuts & Bolts such as fuzzy dice.

[25] In Nuts & Bolts there is an imprint of the ice key on top of Boggy's gym and drawings of the eggs throughout Showdown Town.

In the XBLA port of Banjo-Tooie, the six eggs and key from Banjo-Kazooie unlock the bonuses included in the original N64 version, as well as new content related to the Xbox 360.

In 2018, Paul Machacek clarified that Stop 'N' Swop was not only going to involve the two Banjo-Kazooie titles, but also other Rare titles planned for release on the Nintendo 64, including Donkey Kong 64, Conker's Bad Fur Day and Blast Corps (the latter was initially planned to release after Banjo-Kazooie as it was slated for Christmas 1997 before being delayed).

[21] In a 2020 interview conducted by Rare Gamer, Machacek stated that the six eggs included in the final release of Kazooie were each meant to correspond to a different Rare title, and that if a player could transfer the Ice Key through all of the games and back to Kazooie, some sort of "super-code" would be unlocked for a final, grand bonus.

In early 2015, a group of former Rare employees who worked on Banjo-Kazooie announced their formation of a new studio named Playtonic Games, planning a spiritual successor called Yooka-Laylee.

[43] The game was released for Microsoft Windows, MacOS, Linux, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch in 2017 to mixed reviews.