Banjo Threeie (Cancelled Game)

Banjo Threeie is a game with quite a lot of mystique. Very little is known about it - that is, until now. This is another game I have been graciously allowed to play, and let me tell you, the experience felt like I imagine the Israelites felt when they were graciously provided with Manna and Quail. The game was completely fascinating. Contrary to popular belief, it was not meant for the Game Cube or Nintendo 64. It was in fact going to be a Gameboy Advance game, and quite an ambitious one at that. It is likely that aspects of the engine used for this game were used for the later released Grunty's Revenge.

The image of Grunty in Hell. Heed the
good Lord's word.

Getting to details of the actual game, I must say, it seems the developers decided to go with the commercially profitable route of appealing to a more mature audience. The game would've definitely been rated at least T. The first sign of this was in the introduction. The introduction was composed of various images, and, I'd assume that they were going to have text later, but in the game's state as I played it, there was absolutely no text in the introduction. The first image that appeared is what I assume to be Grunty in Hell, after she had died in Banjo Tooie. After this image, it cut to Banjo sitting in the recliner in his house. He was asleep, and there was a dream cloud over his head showing what looked like a really low-resolution image from Banjo Kazooie or Banjo Tooie. After this, it cut to Kazooie, who appeared to be asleep on Banjo's bed. She had a dream cloud over her as well, inside it was an image of the Stop-n-Swop eggs. The screen went black for a few seconds, and cut to an image of Banjo, Kazooie, some Jinjos and Bottles standing around a stone, going up to about Banjo's waist-line, in the shape of a Mumbo Token. All of the characters were looking down, and in the background the sky was clearly a dark overcast. The image changed to the characters walking away from the stone; Banjo and Kazooie walking together, two Pink Jinjos walking away together, one Black Jinjo walking away and Bottles walking away alone.

This scene, along with his absence from the rest of the game, seems to imply they were at a funeral for Mumbo. I'm really not sure how he could have died or what, but, he was gone, and there was no imagery relating to him or any mention of him past this point. After this, the game started in Banjo's House. To my surprise, it was a sidescrolling 2-D game. I was expecting it to be similar to Grunty's Revenge at the time, with an overhead view, but it seems they were going for something different with this game. Outside of Banjo's House was Spiral Mountain, which looked oddly apocalyptic. Everything was reddish, the sky was a dark cyan and there was no music. Of course, some of these

 aspects were probably due to the game being early in development. Weird, unfinished looking graphics are to be expected with such things, and a lack of music isn't unusual at all. I kept playing the game, and it mostly had areas from the previous two games, but of course with major design changes due to the game being 2-D. I remember Mumbo's Mountain, which was simply called Mountain, having no enemies, and the termite hill was entirely omitted. The level was really bland, no content to be found in it, which I guess is because the game was in such an early state. After a while of

exploring in Grunty's Lair, I found something that lead to one of the most fascinating aspects of this game. There was a small airplane. Now, I suppose this next section was used for Banjo Pilot, due to it using exact sprites from that game and being highly visually similar. When Banjo jumped into the plane, it instantly teleported him into the middle of some desert. You could fly around freely, and as I said the gameplay was similar to Banjo Pilot. There were many areas you could find; I remember finding a forest that contained the Fungi Forest level, which had enemies from the level from DK:64 and other such things. You could find Jiggies, but they really had no value as you could go to literally any level you found. In the desert, I found a pyramid, which I flew to and it took me to a level where there were giant scarab enemies outside of a pyramid that you would go inside. The pyramid was rather large, containing some platforming areas that lead to Jiggies, and a few mini-bosses like this large mummy's hand and a giant scorpion. The weirdest part of the pyramid was that you could find Tooty in a cage with a giant mummy guarding her. I fought the mummy for a while (the battle was very standard; he just walked back and forth and would damage you if he ran into you) until I beat him, and upon doing so nothing happened. Another thing interesting was that, when

A dark tower in the distance.

 flying around, randomly a timer would appear. I'm really unsure what this timer would do, but I think you either had to reach something or collect a certain amount of notes or honey combs or something within its limit to unlock something. I never successfully completed any of these timed segments, probably due to them being unimplemented, but they were kind of fascinating. When they were activated this fast ticking sound would start playing for their duration, replacing one of the channels of the music.
There was clearly much to see in this game, and a lot that I sadly didn't. I remember seeing many distant objects while flying around, almost entirely making me forget that you could fly back to Grunty's Lair and that there were levels to be seen there, too. When you would fly around, you could find small little areas to enter, which were comparable to the random battles of Zelda 2. You'd have to make it to the end of a section where you either platformed or fought standard enemies, Some of these areas you could enter and leave freely, and they simply had things like temples and pyramids with closed entrances that I really had no idea how to open. I remember one of these areas in  particular having Easter Island heads that brought up dialogue saying things like "Find the tower!"
or "Reach the homeland!"
I got tired of playing when I seemed to have reached the "end of the world" so to speak, meaning you could not go out any farther and at random points the game would crash along this area.

EDIT: Added footage. It's from one of the random platforming sections.