Between Rare's Donkey Kong Country and Banjo-Kazooie, the developer was working on another project, Dream, a rarely-seen, pirate-themed role-playing game. Today, Rare offered a close look at Dream in a new video that shows the game's evolution from the SNES to N64 — and how it inspired Banjo-Kazooie.
Designer Gregg Mayles, artist Ed Bryan and engineer Paul Machacek discuss the creation of the RPG, codenamed Dream: Land of Giants, which originally used the graphics rendering technology of Donkey Kong Country to present an isometric, "fairy tale-esque" adventure. Rare later switched development of Dream to N64, spending about 16 months working on the game.
Eventually, Dream's main character, the young boy Edson, was replaced with a rabbit and then a bear, Banjo.
Rare says Dream was "too ambitious" and that the studio simply couldn't find the fun in the game it was trying to make. So Rare rethought its adventure, playing to its platforming strengths and shifting to Banjo-Kazooie. You can see the transition for yourself in the nine-minute video above.
Clearly, Rare hasn't given up its affection for pirate-themed adventures. It's currently working on an Xbox One and Windows PC game with a similar theme, Sea of Thieves, for 2016.
