Banjo-Kazooie Creator Unveils Expanded Details on the “Stop ‘N’ Swop” Feature, Including Links to Donkey Kong 64

Gregg Mayles, the director behind Banjo-Kazooie and a veteran at Rare, has unveiled the original design document for the elusive Stop ‘N’ Swop system, which interestingly included Donkey Kong in its plans.

After departing Rare earlier this year following the cancellation of Everwild amid significant layoffs, Mayles shared a document on Twitter that detailed the “Coldswap” mechanic, originally known as Stop ‘N’ Swop in Banjo-Kazooie. This document not only confirmed that Donkey Kong 64 was intended to be part of the system but also indicated that Donkey Kong would be an unlockable character in the multiplayer mode of Banjo-Tooie.

For those unfamiliar, Stop ‘N’ Swop was a proposed feature in the original Banjo-Kazooie where players would gather eggs and an Ice Key, with the promise that these items would unlock something in Banjo-Tooie by physically swapping cartridges while the N64 was still running. However, when Banjo-Tooie launched, this feature was absent, leading to years of speculation and urban legend status. It wasn’t until the Xbox 360 ports that the concept was revisited, rewarding players with items like Avatar images and content in Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts. The feature’s absence was reportedly due to a hardware revision that limited the time players had to swap cartridges from ten seconds to just one.

Previously, it was unclear how Donkey Kong 64 fit into this puzzle, but Mayles’ documents clarify that players would transfer items from Banjo-Kazooie to DK64 and then into Banjo-Tooie, with hints of extending this to something referred to as “Next N64 Game,” which Mayles noted wasn’t tied to any specific title. The Stop ‘N’ Swop has long been one of gaming’s greatest “what if” scenarios, and learning that it could have been even more expansive only fuels curiosity about what might have been.

Before Banjo-Kazooie’s iconic bear mascot, and after he was a human, the N64’s original mascot was actually a rabbit, as revealed by a former Rare developer.