Stop 'N' Swop

From RWP Wiki

A completed Stop 'N' Swop inventory screen, featuring all of the eggs and the Ice Key.

Stop 'N' Swop is a scrapped hidden feature intended to be a transfer mode between Banjo-Kazooie and Banjo-Tooie. It also refers to a similar later feature between Banjo-Kazooie (XBLA) and Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts.

History and Development

At the end of Banjo-Kazooie, Stop 'N' Swop was mentioned explicitly by Mumbo Jumbo, who, if the player collected all 100 Jiggies in the game, showed animated photographs of Banjo and Kazooie returning to in-game locations - specifically, Sharkfood Island, Wozza's Cave and the mysterious closed door in Gobi's Valley, to obtain hidden items: two colored eggs and a key of ice. Mumbo explained that Banjo and Kazooie would be able to access the places in Banjo-Tooie.

However, in Banjo-Tooie, the player never returned to these locations. Three eggs and a key were in the game, obtained by shooting Banjo-Kazooie cartridges in Spiral Mountain and Jinjo Village, and the third egg was in Heggy's Egg Shed in Wooded Hollow. (Notably, all three eggs and key were smaller than their Banjo-Kazooie counterparts.) The eggs could be taken to Heggy and hatched to unlock some hidden secrets, although the Yellow Egg had to be hatched by Kazooie herself. The Ice Key was used to find the Mega-Glowbo, which in turn unlocked Kazooie's Dragon transformation. The Pink ? Egg unlocked a move called the Breegull Bash, which allowed Banjo to take Kazooie out of his backpack and slam her on the ground like a club. The Blue ? Egg unlocked a cheat code allowing eggs to home in on enemies, and the Yellow ? Egg unlocked a Jinjo as a character in the multiplayer mode. However, this was viewed universally as a disappointing cop-out.

Ice Mario and SubDrag later shocked the Banjo-Kazooie fanbase in 2001 by discovering seven cheat codes (see below) which granted access to not only these four items, but also three further eggs, making a total of six eggs and the Ice Key. After this, speculation about the original intention of Stop 'N' Swop became rife.

The original intended method of Stop 'N' Swop was to activate the secret areas (presumably by being told the codes in Banjo-Tooie), collect the items them in Banjo-Kazooie, and then to stop the game, turn it off and swap to Banjo-Tooie. This idea exploited the workings of the Nintendo 64's Rambus RDRAM -- the data in the memory would be retained for a few seconds after turning the console off, allowing the next game inserted to read information from the last game. However, in 1999, changes were made to the way the console handles its memory, cutting the window of cartridge swapping time down to around a second. This would have made Stop 'N' Swop next to impossible on Nintendo 64 models produced from 1999 onwards. Therefore, the feature was scrapped from Banjo-Tooie fairly late in development.

Another possible method would have been through use of the Nintendo 64 Disk Drive (released in 1999 in Japan via the RandNET service). Banjo-Tooie may have been planned to be released as an expansion disk for the 64DD, to be used in conjunction with the Banjo-Kazooie cartridge, this would have made the transfer quite easy. However, since the 64DD was anticipated to be a failure by Nintendo execs, the expansion system only featured 9 disks. Those that were planned were either made into their own cartridge games (Banjo-Tooie, The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, and various others), or were scrapped entirely.

Stop 'N' Swop Items

The following is a list of the Stop 'N' Swop items and the Sandcastle codes to access them in Banjo-Kazooie. Note that every cheat must be preceded by "CHEAT." Something to note is that during Banjo-Kazooie's 100-Jiggy ending sequence, Mumbo only shows the Pink ? Egg, Ice Key, and Blue ? Egg.

• Ice Key: NOW YOU CAN SEE A NICE ICE KEY WHICH YOU CAN HAVE FOR FREE
• Blue ? Egg: A DESERT DOOR OPENS WIDE ANCIENT SECRETS WAIT INSIDE
• Pink ? Egg: OUT OF THE SEA IT RISES TO REVEAL MORE SECRET PRIZES
• Yellow ? Egg: NOW BANJO WILL BE ABLE TO SEE IT ON NABNUTS TABLE
• Green ? Egg: AMIDST THE HAUNTED GLOOM A SECRET IN THE BATHROOM
• Cyan ? Egg: DONT YOU GO AND TELL HER ABOUT THE SECRET IN HER CELLAR
• Red ? Egg: THIS SECRET YOULL BE GRABBIN IN THE CAPTAINS CABIN

Revival

During E3 2008, Rare announced a port of Banjo-Kazooie to the Xbox Live Arcade, later revealing that the port would feature Stop 'N' Swop connectivity between itself and Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts, the third installment of the Banjo-Kazooie series. This version Stop 'N' Swop is accomplished between these games quite simply: BKXBLA detects a Nuts & Bolts save file and unlocks the Stop 'N' Swop item locations, the player collects the secret items in BKXBLA, Nuts & Bolts reads the save file, and crates appear in certain areas around Showdown Town waiting to be collected.

In addition, in Nuts & Bolts Bottles has an option in his information menu labled "Stop 'N' Swop Truth" to be bought for 6000 Musical Notes. It is not possible to actually buy this (there are 5,230 Notes in the game, 1,900 of which are counted in the totals menu), but the text string has been extracted from the game, revealing that if the option were to be purchased, Bottles says "I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill you, and we couldn't show that in a game with this rating. Put it out of your mind and think happy thoughts! Thanks for the notes!".

A port of a port of Banjo-Tooie is planned as well, and there is the possibility of a revival of the original incarnation of Stop 'N' Swop along with it, though this is yet to be confirmed.[1]

Prizes

The prizes for Stop 'N' Swop in Nuts & Bolts are as follows:

• Ice Key: Flag (x2)
• Blue ? Egg: Goldfish
• Pink ? Egg: Fluffy Dice
• Yellow ? Egg: Googly Eyes
• Green ? Egg: Beacon
• Cyan ? Egg: Mole-On-A-Pole
• Red ? Egg: Disco Ball

Legacy

The whiteboard in Grabbed by the Ghoulies.

Stop 'N' Swop is infamous among fans due to its mysteriousness. Though it is well-known that Stop 'N' Swop (in its original form) was scrapped, many fans of the series continue to speculate and theorize about it. This has lead Rare to make some humorous references to the dropped and feature for fans to find.

• In Grabbed by the Ghoulies, there is a whiteboard referencing Stop 'N' Swop. It shows some unintelligible overhead maps, an "equation" of "[egg] [egg] [egg] [egg] [key] = ?" and states

"HOMEWORK:

1. Collect Ice Key.

2. Collect Eggs

3. Activate secret level."

• In Banjo-Pilot, there is a "Stop 'N' Swap" option in Cheato's menu, which can bought for 999 Cheato Pages. When the player buys it, Cheato states, "So you want to know about Stop N Swap, eh? I hope you're ready. Here goes...Why don't you stop annoying me and swap this game for a nice book or something?"