Can You Beat Banjo-Tooie Without Backtracking?

UPDATE: So a friend informed me of a method to get the Cheato Page in the Ancient Swimming Baths without backtracking, by using solo Banjo and the Pack Whack Jump to reach the ledge with the page. I qualify this as a shortcut so as long as you count those, it is possible to collect all 25 Cheato Pages without backtracking! (Thanks to Neotornado for pointing this out!) ALSO guys, I get it: you can get the Cheato Page on the sign in Glitter Gulch Mine by using the rope, I literally talk about that later in the video, watch the full thing before commenting on stuff that I "forgot" please.

I've always made the argument that backtracking isn't a problem in Tooie because you can ignore most of it and it technically becomes post-game content. Good job making the perfect video to explain that. I would've never gone this far to explain it. This video is pure gold.

The Jinjo analysis was unbelievably thorough. Great video!

You could argue that the Jinjo at the Glittergulch Mine entrance doesn't count as backtracking because you get the necessary move inside the mine and once you leave it you are automatically right in front of the Jinjo anyway. This would make it almost impossible to not have enough Jiggies at the end.

5:41 Wait, THAT’S how you were intended to get that? I always thought you just had to jump off the rope and grab it like that. Every walkthrough I’ve seen has people get it that way so that’s how I always did it

The backtracking is what the game makes so much fun. There are two game structures, I'm not a big fan of (basically the most popular single player Switch games): - everything is linear, no reason to go back to a place you already have been to (Mario Odyssey) - no hard limits to go anywhere, you basically could go everywhere in any order (Zelda BotW) Having some complex dependency graph is the most important thing for a game to me. That's why I like metroidvania so much.

I actually started trying this challenge a while ago, but the concept of "detour Jiggies" as you call them and, of course, Grunty Industries, stumped me so much that I wasn't sure how to proceed. Glad you figured out a rule set that works for you!

Banjo Tooie is my favorite game ever, I don’t mind backtracking at all!

Congrats on making a cameo appearance in the newest Game Maker's Toolkit video! (29:40 in the new Boss Keys video on Banjo-Kazooie & Tooie)

Great breakdown of all the information, especially the Jinjos section! Add the fact that the worlds have shortcuts to other worlds inside them and that makes most backtracking collectibles simple quick detours. Tooie is one of my favorite N64 games

This video popped up in my feed the other day, and without watching it I decided to play through Banjo-Tooie and answer the question for myself first, just focusing on getting 70 Jiggies. Here are my thoughts/rules I came up with: -I had looser rules about the Isle O'Hags; since it's required to go through each area of the isle multiple times, I didn't consider anything you do in them to be backtracking. (I did not go back into Spiral Mountain for anything though, since you're not required to go there again.) -I didn't consider leaving a world to go to the isle and going back into the same world to be backtracking; I see that more as sidetracking than backtracking. So I got the Styracosaurus family Jiggy, since you can take the train to the Cliff Top, use Mumbo, and then take the train right back to Terrydactyland. -If you consider the first two points to be valid, they solve the issue of needing to backtrack into Terrydactyland to take the train into Grunty Industries, since you can just call the train to the Isle O'Hags stop instead. -I avoided the same detours that you did, and I got 71 Jiggies (with 3 Jinjo families incomplete on my playthrough). -I have thoughts on the detours though. Even though I chose not to get them when I played in order to see how many Jiggies I could get under the strictest definition of "don't go back into a world once you've entered another", I don't really see most of them as truly backtracking. This is because a lot of them go into a blocked-off room in their world, where you can only access it via another world. So for example, the Hailfire Peaks oil drill Jiggy is technically backtracking, but you're just entering an otherwise inaccessible room in Grunty Industries and then going right back to Hailfire Peaks. So I think you could get that, the Mayahem Temple treasure Jiggy, and the 2 Jinjos through the pipes in Jolly Roger's Lagoon, as they're not what people think of as an annoying kind of backtracking. -The biggest different between your rules and mine seems to be that you define no backtracking as "once you leave a world you can't enter it again", whereas I define it as "you can't go back into a world once you've entered another". Neither definition is really better than the other, but I chose that definition because I think it gets around the type of backtracking that puts some people off while also not putting up any unnecessary hurdles for yourself (which is what I think the strictness around Isle O'Hags does, although I understand your reasoning for doing that in the context of this video). I think the way I did it will allow people who want to avoid annoying backtracking get the needed Jiggies with some wiggle room built in while also getting the most enjoyment out of the game. I write this wall of text as someone who loves the backtracking and interconnctedness of the worlds; it's probably the number one thing I love about the game. But it's always a neat challenge to try playing games in a different way, so thanks for putting this question out there, I had a lot of fun thinking about it and doing it.

It’s my all time favorite n64 game I really hope they put it in the Nintendo 64 expansion pack !

As a fellow Banjo-Tooie lover (there are dozens of us! Dozens!!), this was a really great video!

Tbh, when people criticize a game that's non-linear it's "backtracking" and when they criticize a game that's too linear, it's "overly simple" but games each have their own intentional design and should be judged by if it accomplished that well. In banjo kazooie, they introduced shortcuts in gruntilda's lair as a way to reward progression, and in my opinion this concept was expanded upon in BT with the more overt train system that you unlock. So, in my mind it's hardly "backtracking" and more of an intentionally designed interconnected overworld that required a little but of meta problem-solving to totally complete. That's honestly why I think it's the better game in every way. They expanded this 3D open world platforming concept to reward high level thinking and exploration.

Love Banjo Tooie, superior to the first one for me. Excellent video, and didn't know quite the few of these shortcuts. The one on Mayahem temple, the glideless jiggy on Jolly Roger Lagoon and plenty on Grunty's Industries. Fantastic work.

Great video, I loved watching this experiment. Unfortunately, the main problem that I have with BT remains the same. Just because you theoretically "can" skip the backtracking doesn't mean you will be able to remember all these steps, especially on your first playthrough. Even after just watching this video and learning all these tricks, the odds are that by the time you play Banjo-Tooie again (after spending dozens or even hundreds of hours on different games), you forget most of it after the third world or so. I'm fine with backtracking in games, but the issue is that every world in BT takes a long time to complete (even longer than CCW in BK) and it compounds to making the player overwhelmed with the amount of things that must be remembered for later, not to mention the necessary steps for the jiggies that require either Mumbo, Kazooie or Banjo to be split, special transformations, advanced moves or a combination of these, in a specific order. That on top of the later worlds being supersegmented into smaller areas separated by loading screens, instead of the more open designs of the BK levels. And you having to find the mostly hidden Jam Jars silos in order to learn these advanced moves using solo Kazooie or Banjo, up to the final world of the game! That by itself makes me don't want to explore every world on the first go, before grabbing all the moves, because I can waste time on dead ends that require a move only learned on the next world, and that will require me to remember its location for a later visit, because probably I will already collected the notes that were in the way, which were a clever way to mark the places that you haven't visited yet, back in BK. Replaying BT for me is like completing Majora's Mask, while playing BK is like playing ALTTP. The first requires a completely different mindset and preparation than the second, which I can just go from start to finish in a couple hours, and even though I love both BK and BT, as I get less time for gaming, I certainly prefer the more streamlined experience of BK.

AGREED BEST GAME EVER! WE NEED BANJO THREEIE!

This is a really well put-together video. Thanks for the info!!!

I honestly expected the number to be a bit higher without backtracking, but that’s still a fair number, I recently replayed the game and did get a bit surprised it doesn’t have as many jiggles that require backtracking despite what people say

This made my day! What a great experiment. Next do Majora`s Mask without masks :D