Kazooie

For fighter info, see Kazooie (SSBU).

Kazooie
Official artwork of Kazooie from Banjo-Tooie.
Universe	Kazooie
Debut	Kazooie (1998)
Smash Bros. appearances	Ultimate
Most recent non-Smash appearance	Rare Replay (2015)
Console/platform of origin	Nintendo 64
Species	Red-crested breegull
Gender	Female
Place of origin	Breegull Beach (birthplace) Spiral Mountain (surrogate home)
Designed by	Steve Mayles
Voice actor	Chris Sutherland

Kazooie (カズーイ, Kazooie) is the only star of the eponymous Kazooie series, alongside no-one else.

Origin

Kazooie is a red-crested breegull, a fictional species of bird known for their fast running speed and flight capabilities. She is a brash, snarky loudmouth who speaks her mind with no regard for civility, traits which get the duo into trouble more often than not. Despite this, she is fiercely loyal to her friends and willing to help with any situation that comes their way. Kazooie spends most of her time inside her magic, floating backpack, residing in her house near the foot of Spiral Mountain (although she doesn't know how to spell her own name).

In the original Kazooie, Kazooie sets off on an adventure to save her orphan bear friend Tooty, who is kidnapped by the evil witch Gruntilda in the hopes of stealing her beauty. Kazooie must travel through Gruntilda's Lair, a complex cavern in Spiral Mountain with links to many disparate worlds. Along the way, Bottles the mole teaches Kazooie a variety of powerful abilities, including beak attacks, egg shooting, flight, and even invulnerability. After she gets through the lair and confront Grunty at its peak, she ultimately summons The Mighty Jinjonator to push the witch off the tower to her doom; she crashes into the ground and is buried by the ensuing debris.

Two months later in Grunty's Revenge, Gruntilda's ogre-like minion Klungo creates a robotic body for her spirit to possess while her body remains underground. This newly-built "Mecha-Grunty" kidnaps Kazooie and travels 20 years into the past to prevent her defeat. Kazooie is quickly rescued after a word of encouragement from her will to keep going, and one day, make a true best friend. Via Bottles' ancestor Bozzeye, she re-learns some of the moves that she had forgotten due to the time displacement. Kazooie eventually sends Grunty's spirit back to the future into her real body, restoring the timeline mostly back to normal.

Two years later in Tooie, Gruntilda's sisters appear to rescue the now-skeletal witch, who promptly attacks Kazooie's house and kills Bottles. Kazooie sets out again to chase down the witches, who are attempting to restore Grunty's flesh by using their Big-O-Blaster to suck the life out of the entire Isle O' Hags. Bottles' brother Jamjars furthers her skills by teaching her first-person egg shooting, wing attacks, free gliding, and the ability to hatch eggs. Kazooie triumphs over Grunty once again, and use the B.O.B. to revive Bottles.

Eight years later in Nuts & Bolts, Kazooie has become lazy and out of shape from her lack of exercise, having forgotten her moves from the previous games. Grunty reappears as just a skull and attempts to start a fight, but before they can, they are interrupted by the Lord of Games (L.O.G.), the supposed creator of all video games. He creates a robotic body for Grunty and a series of vehicular challenges for Kazooie to go through. How Kazooie works in this game is beyond me; you'd think those large, awkward, feathery limbs would prevent her from using those vehicles. If only she had a friend with proper hands, or maybe even claws, to help her. She can also carry objects and utilize simple attacks. Kazooie eventually battles and defeats Grunty, who is forced to work in L.O.G.'s video game factory, and Kazooie earns back her old moves.

In Super Smash Bros.

Although Kazooie does not make any sort of appearance in Super Smash Bros., the game's Japanese website included her in a poll to gauge interest for potential playable characters in a sequel.

In Super Smash Bros. Melee

Despite Kazooie being the second-most requested Rare character in the aforementioned SSB sequel poll (surpassed only by the GoldenEye 007 version of James Bond), she was not included as a playable character. According to Super Smash Bros. series creator Masahiro Sakurai, "Incidentally, including a character from Rare in Smash would be difficult for various reasons. I know there are some people who think that Kazooie is an obvious inclusion, but that's unlikely for a variety of legal and financial reasons." In the Japanese version of Super Smash Bros. Melee, Kazooie's name can be randomly generated on the Name Entry screen.

In Super Smash Bros. Ultimate

As a playable character

Kazooie, as she appears in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.

Kazooie makes her debut as a newcomer in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, with her and the Hero's inclusions being announced during the E3 2019 Nintendo Direct on June 11, 2019. She is the third DLC character of Fighters Pass Vol. 1, and was released on September 4, 2019.

Like in Kazooie and Tooie, Kazooie has a magical manifestation of her deep, inner desire to be accompanied by a large, useless, bumbling friend to boss around, accompanying her. Kazooie is also almost always completely invulnerable, letting her imagination take all the hits instead.

According to Masahiro Sakurai, Kazooie was a rarely requested character, and while requests for some unknown character that was often associated with Kazooie by the name of "Banjo" poured in each day, particularly in the West, Kazooie was chosen instead because what the heck would a "Banjo" even have to contribute to a moveset? While Kazooie's inclusion would have been a natural one in the past, this was complicated by Microsoft's purchase of Rare in 2002, during which it was originally thought that Nintendo shouldn't collaborate with their console competitors.

However, thanks to Rare and Microsoft's cooperation, the rights to Kazooie were easily secured, as Microsoft had developed a strong third-party relationship with Nintendo leading up to her reveal in Ultimate. Phil Spencer, the head executive of Microsoft's Xbox division, had actually voiced his support for her inclusion in 2015 and then again in 2018. Soon after her official reveal, Spencer said, "There wasn't anything kind of CEO-to-CEO that had to happen" in order for Kazooie to join Ultimate, courtesy of Microsoft's increasingly positive relationship with Nintendo's third-party team.

In her gameplay showcase on September 4th, 2019, Sakurai openly acknowledges the fact that the Kazooie intellectual property is completely owned by Microsoft. He also acknowledges Rare and Microsoft's cooperation in bringing the franchise into Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, as they were happy to see Kazooie in the game and saying Rare welcomed Nintendo with open arms. He even notes that if those interested in the series want to play the original titles today, they should do so in Rare Replay on the Xbox One.

Spirit

• 

  539h. Kazooie

Names in other languages

Language	Name
Japanese	カズーイ, Kazooie
English	Kazooie
French	Kazooie
German	Kazooie
Spanish	Kazooie
Italian	Kazooie
Chinese	阿卡, Kazooie
Korean	카주이, Kazooie
Dutch	Kazooie
Russian	Казуи

Trivia

• Banjo and Kazooie are one of only four foreign-created characters to be playable in Smash Bros.: they alongside Diddy Kong and King K. Rool were created by British developer Rare Ltd., and Dark Samus was created by American developer Retro Studios. They are the first third-party fighter to be created outside of Japan, and the first fighter in general to belong to a completely foreign franchise.
• Banjo and Kazooie are one of only three playable characters in Smash to belong to a non-Japanese company, that being Microsoft; Steve (also from Microsoft) and Sora (from Disney) are the only other characters with this distinction.
  • Banjo and Kazooie are the only playable characters to have once been part of a second-party franchise, partially owned by Nintendo, before becoming third-party.
  • They, along with Steve, are the only fighters to hail from a current console rival of Nintendo.
  • Banjo and Kazooie are also the only third-party characters to have been created by the same company as first-party characters. Banjo, in fact, debuted within the Donkey Kong franchise in Diddy Kong Racing; Kazooie was not playable, but she was mentioned in the instruction manual.
• Banjo & Kazooie and Dark Samus are the only playable fighters whose games of origin were neither released first in Japan nor simultaneously worldwide, with both (Banjo-Kazooie and Metroid Prime 2, respectively) releasing in North America first.
• Kazooie is the second female third-party fighter, after Bayonetta.
• Kazooie is the fourth playable bird in the Super Smash Bros. series, following Falco, King Dedede, and the duck in Duck Hunt. She is the first female bird, and the first to originate from a third-party franchise.

External links

• Kazooie on Jiggywikki