"It's time for a controversial opinion! I've been playing Banjo-Kazooie again, thanks to the recent Rare Replay. I've always loved the game, but I was struck on this playthrough just how well-designed and memorable the game is, from top to bottom.
Playing so much Banjo-Kazooie led me to start playing Super Mario 64 again. And while Mario 64 is clearly the more important game to gaming history — it's the first truly great 3D platformer — the developers at Rare took that structure and improved upon it for their game (which came out a little less than two years later).
Banjo-Kazooie holds up remarkably well — which we mentioned in our Rare Replay coverage — but, more than that, it's one of the very few games that actually took its predecessor's formula and did nearly everything a bit better.
Check out our opinion video, which compares the two giants of the Nintendo 64 era and counts the ways in which Rare's approach makes for a better experience."
I don't really consider that to be a controversial opinion, but I think SM64 it's just slightly better than Banjo. Mario 64 simply has the smoother controls and I think the level design is also slightly better, but Banjo is still amazing thanks to its charm and due to the fact that it improved on some of the aspects that didn't work in Mario 64.
Article: http://www.polygon.com/2015/8/19/9175743/banjo-kazooie-super-mario-64-rare-replay-gameplay-video
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KefouzkH7k
---Member of the official Squeezol Fanclub---
