With the holiday season approaching and many people getting time off from their regular routine, you might be looking for something to do. Well, Rare has come up with something for you to spend your time on.... Building contraptions in Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts.

So, why spend your precious time making some awesome contraptions? Because Key members of the Banjo team will be poring (pawing?) over the uploaded photos in a quest to track down the seven very best player-built contraptions. And what do you get for your hard work if chosen? Only the sweetest award that can be bestowed on a gamer: in-game immortalisation. Though it's currently a secret (to everyone) as to how they'll pull off this deed they do promise us it will be very cool and probably not how you might imagine.

So, here are the details of the competition:

Deadline for entries is January 4th 2009, 12 midnight PST. This gives players the whole holiday to get creative on us.

Anybody with a copy of Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts and an Xbox LIVE account can enter.

You can submit as many contraptions and photos as you like; just remember that the cream always rises to the top.

Wow us! Shock us! Just don't post dodgy contraptions (don't play coy, you know what we mean). The entry must be your own original work, infringe no copyrights and reference no third party trademarks, music, logos, names or images.

In order to be included you'll need to allow Microsoft rights to distribute your entries, letting the widest possible audience marvel at your machinery.

Just to be clear, this is not a competition with some kind of tacky physical memento as a prize. We're not giving away our secret by saying what the reward is just yet...

You can read Rare's news article on their site here.

Happy creating everyone!