20th Anniversary of BK - truth behind infamous SNS
 

RFDB: So you were the mastermind behind Banjo’s infamous Stop N’ Swop. How did it come to be, why was it canned, and what was the overall plan for it?

Paul Machacek: …..One day Tim asked me if there was a way to transfer an unlock code from one game to another without using standard codes that could be “printed and typed in”. He wanted something that meant you physically had to have two cartridges to do the transfer (which might boost sales). I quickly came up with a technique based on residual data surviving a power outage on RAM, which I’d got from some effects we used to experience with home computers a decade or more earlier. I wrote a demo the same day, and that night Tim, Gregg Mayles and I sat in my room and went nuts swapping cartridges back and forth and examining the results. Someone subsequently christened it ”Stop ‘n Swap” and we found that a heavily error checked data packet could survive a journey of up to 24 seconds of total power loss. There are multiple reasons why this worked, but one of them is easily demonstrated if you disconnect a power brick for many gadgets from a wall socket and a little light on it carries on running for some time afterwards before fading out. We did a lot of testing on as much hardware as we had to ensure it was good. The feature was born. Assets went in, a plan was hatched to initially have 8 unlockables within BK that would connect to a notional sequel.

BK was written so that if you completed 8 tasks in the game then codes were dropped into RAM so that this (currently unnamed) sequel could recover and unlock features. However, we then wanted the sequel to send things back, so we got BK to look for incoming codes, and if they were found then they’d unlock access to a bunch of assets we’d baked into the game (seven Easter eggs and an ice key). However, BK was late (should have launched as Nintendo’s Christmas #1 in 1997, but was replaced by Diddy Kong Racing in the end), and Nintendo only found out what we were trying to do right at the end as we were trying to get a final build of the game to them for launch. They didn’t like what we had done, felt it was too risky, and told us to disable it. However, it was way too late to do anything about all the visual assets in the game, so they got left behind and a legend was born. Sorry about that. We did have a backup plan BTW, there were a series of long text codes we implemented that you could “type” in using the quiz board at the end of the game. Eventually some hackers found them I believe, but it meant that even if the feature hadn’t worked, we could have published the codes and allowed people to unlock things.

There’s one more aspect too; we weren’t just thinking about a sequel. We had a plan to connect six games together, each would pass codes to the next and if you completed the “full circle” by getting the last game to send codes back to the 1st (BK), then there was supposed to be an extra special bonus (which we never actually worked out). I don’t recall the exact order that the games needed to be played, but the six titles would have included Banjo Kazooie, Tooie, DK64 and Conker. My memory is hazy right now on the other two, but possibly Blast Corps and Perfect Dark , but can’t fully recall right now.

Just think if this interview could be posted in let's say 2004 then there could be more than 10 pagies of replies :p

The seven eggs may had been a forget on their end, because there are only 6?

I think from the way he's speaking that he just forgot the exact number of eggs.

Aygs.

I was wondering this, too. Was it a mistake on Machacek's part or a was an egg eventually removed before Rare released the game?

Are you threatening my beautiful RGBCYM? Do not joke about these things.

Stuck in the wildmill in Conker's, do'h

Update with info from Twitter:

- Cold Swap trick was discovered during Spectrum/C-64 era,

- Cold Swap could allow transfer data between N64 games in 24 seconds,

- Stop 'N' Swop featured 8 items - 7 eggs and ice key,

- SNS was planned as link between 6 games - Banjo-Kazooie, Banjo-Tooie, Donkey Kong 64, Conker 64, GoldenEye 007 and Blast Corps. After doing of full circle a "Extra Special Bonus" was planned to be activated. Rare never worked on it,

- sandcastle codes for ice key and eggs were included as a backup plan if feature couldn't work as planned,

- Nintendo didn't know about feature untill Rare give them the final build of the game. Ninny didn't like Rare's idea and wanted them to disable feature at the very last minute of BK development so Rare didn't have a time to remove ice key, eggs and Stop 'N' Swop screen,

- Stop 'N' Swop was never fully activated in Banjo-Kazooie,

- Prizes for Banjo-Tooie were supposed to be designed after release of BK,

Still 6 eggs, and it would probably take a long time to implement sns across all those games. I would've liked to see that!

I knew you would solve SNS BanjoPL

bobbynicjr I didn't :p Hey i remember You from Team SFS. That was a great time :)

Alakazam Rare man said that there wasn"t any possible hardware damage because of cold swap. Nintendo just said no.

Uh, just a stupid question, but, what were the color of the eggs? And what were the colors in b-t and what did the specific colors unlock. I know the prizes but what did, like, the link egg unlock

GamerMan23 There are cyan, pink, blue, green, red and yellow eggs in B-K. Now we know that there was 7th egg at once. There are only pink, blue and yellow eggs in B-T howewer BK Base Egg (hacked texture for eggs) changes into all 6 colours.

@ Ghouly Boy said that they coded SNS in DK64 and the next game for it could be Jet Force Gemini but then Nintendo decided to canned the feature. Howewer in Banjo-Tooie Tepid Seat, published in June 1999 (so a year after SNS was cancelled in B-K), Rare still promised a connection and said that B-T could open secrets in B-K and those secrets could be used in B-T. My guess is that the next option after cold swap failure was 64DD.

I don't think it would had been any particular person or group at Nintendo to say no...

Rather, when they in general realized Rare was going to use an unintended hardware glitch they said no.

It's interesting that 20 years later—despite modern games all essentially have a "shared" save data space—the only games I can actually recall taking advantage of that are the BK/BT rereleases on Xbox.* If a game were to do this today, I would probably still think it's extremely cool. But why do that when they could sell you the unlockable instead. :rolleyes:

[COLOR="Gray"]*I'm sure consoles have software restrictions in place to prevent one game from wrecking havoc with another game's data. If they're anything like iOS, though, software from a developer could read and write data of another piece of software by the same developer.

You can transfer items and game status from Shenmue to Shenmue II.
You can transfer characters from Lego Star Wars to Lego Star Wars II.

But IMO the best connection between two video games are Transfer Pak features in Mario Tennis. You can transfer GBC characters and text to N64 version and also unlock some courts. Then you can transfer N64 characters to GBC version. It works great.

Why didn't Nintendo just add that to the GameCube since it could hold way more data?

The real question is why Rare didn't use Controller Pak for the feature...?

Yeah... that is a big question. It was almost like it was designed to allow data to be saved between consoles and game packs... :|

Hi guys, I'm Fabio from Italy! Sorry but I have not found the lobby for introducing myself :)

The series of Banjo-Kazooie it is one of my favourite, the best, recently I have picked up again so I have decided to join RWP. I remember in my childhood, when the Nintendo 64 was my first console ever, and BK was the second videogame that I've ever played before Super Mario 64.

If the BK game is amazing, with the most original soundtrack, gameplay and story, the Stop n Swop background twice. I remember that damn ICE KEY first and after the ending scene on Hammeread Beach that day by day I was looking for reach the secret items, even in the sequel BT.

In every moment during gameplay I knew that something was strange with Sharkfood Island, Wozza's Cave, with the closed door in Gobys Valley and the barrel in Mad Monster Mansion.

So thank you for the new amazing news about the SnS, unfortunately I have missed the good old days of this amazing website and forums that discovered so many things about the background, I only imagine the surprise when IceMario and SubDrag discovered the secret codes. Nothing compared for sure with Rare Replay revelation (Except Dream).

IMHO I think that we have reached most of the information about the game and SnS, and I suppose that every code of the cartridges/roms gets analyzed but maybe some of the theories, especially the Grabbed by the Ghoulies one was not so wrong, maybe it's crazy but I have always believed that there was a secret level or something like that to uncover again, Rare did not tell us everything. ;)

Hi, thank you Alakazam! I agree with you, I think the same! :D

BanjoPL information about secret levels was very interesting, why the post it is no more visible? Some Rare hacker engineer that want to cover secrets? :p

Another update (with new info from Twitter)

- SNS was planned as "transfering the codes" feature between Banjo-Kazooie and few upcoming Rare games (Donkey Kong 64, Banjo-Tooie, Conker 64, Jet Force Gemini and Perfect Dark) after doing "full circle" player was supposed to return to the first game (Banjo-Kazooie) and access super special bonus - 6 eggs and ice key, it was planned as cold swap feature - player could have 24 seconds to shift cartridges and transfer "the codes" between games, at some point it was coded into Donkey Kong 64 and next planned game was Jet Force Gemini, Nintendo told Banjo Team to disable the feature at the very last minute in Banjo-Kazooie because they saw it as dangerous idea for N64 hardware,

- sandcastle codes were a backup plan if "connecting all Rare games" plan would be impossible - if so Banjo Team had an idea to release them at the right time so players could still have access to the secrets in Banjo-Kazooie and use them in the sequel,
.
- Controler Pak was never planned for the feature,

-PD Team was unaware that Banjo Team had a plan to connect Banjo-Kazooie and Perfect Dark in future, everything releated to SNS was only in the minds of Banjo Team,

-prizes for Banjo-Tooie were not designed during development of Banjo-Kazooie - it was left for later,

A lost or removed SNS egg would make sense. I always thought that there was a removed sandcastle cheat given the games code. If my memory serves I think that Subdrag and Ice Mario found 59 sandcastle codes in total which seemed like an odd number . It may have either been related to the Toxic Waste in Rusty Bucket Bay or the Transformation room door ( as there is a pretty big blank space behind that door). It's also been backed up by another rare employee that that transformation room door was meant for something https://www.gamekult.com/forum/t/int...rareware/72170

Not been on here for a while, but Banjo on Smash has bought back some great memories.

Congratulations to runehero123
He figured out how SNS works in Banjo-Kazooie few years ago. He even menaged to emulate Cold Swap by hacking. He figured out that Banjo-Kazooie is looking for flags during boot-up. He confirmed that there aren't SNS flags in Donkey Kong 64 and Banjo-Tooie. This interview confirmed everything what our hero already found.