Inside The Score - Banjo-Kazooie - Bottles' Puzzle Challenge

Jiggies against the clock

The good ol’ mini games within the games. How could they not be present? They seem to be an elemental constituent of various video game genres. And here we reach the classic timed mini game, which is a gamplay change of pace that requires the player to complete a task within a time limit. They serve to add variety to the proceedings and are usually just optional distractions, as in the case for the Bottles Moving Picture challenge. Even if the ludic difficulty can be high, players know that the stakes of failing are not high.

The game from Bottles is even difficult to find since you have to go back to the beginning of the adventure after having obtained the Jiggy from the Sandcastle in Treasure Trove Cove, which serves as a password input system inside the game that for some reason is on a particular level instead of a more impartial location like the hub world or Spiral Mountain. The mini game plays with the natural conclusion of the whole Jiggy setting by consisting on actual dynamic puzzles that have to be completed; this system will be fully implemented in the sequel in order to open each of the words.

The music for these occasions is usually based around pleasant and simple major tonalities melodies with arrangements that emphasize the unrelenting march of time, adding tension by going to higher pitches in sequential fashion and increasing the tempo as the time passes. They often have elements from carnival settings—where we play the equivalent mini-games for the real life game—and circus music; something like the gallops we hear when performers are doing dangerous stunts:

Grant is not the only one fond of mallets apparently

Musical Analysis

Structure: Section 0 / Section 1 / {I -AB – I’ – A’B}

Tempo: 110 (Section 0); 130

Melodic and Harmonic Profiles: F Whole Tone; C Chromatic; F Ionian/Major; F# Ionian/Major

The Banjo one has a more classical feel thanks to its motifs based around the semitone ornamentations one would hear from Mozart and the like. The piece does not have the usual eccentric elements and harmonies expected from Banjo-Kazooie; it is a well behaved major tonality piece firmly in the mini game tradition. It seems that its main motif was the basis for two different tunes inside the game, the other being the music for Nabnut the squirrel:

Same opening motif to its phrases

Nevertheless, thanks to the I – ii chord progression the music has a little melancholy sprinkled in due to the minor chord as opposes to, say, a I – IV – V more common one.

In tradition, the motif is transposed to higher and higher registers, like a ballon expanding and expanding and only the ends of phrases deflating it before starting again. The piece then gets transposed as a whole one semitone up in order to keep the illusion of the tension rising and rising indefinitely. Grant Kirkhope cements the connection between the mini games and the cheat codes of the sand castle from Treasure Trove Cove by actually ending the phrase from the A section with the same melody heard at the ending of the C’ Section from that beach level.

Section B is the more major tonality sounding one (the one using exclusively major chords) and has a more carnivalesque atmosphere thanks to the clarinet mimicking the calliope from fairs. This is what a true cute mascot platformer would have sounded if it wasn’t Banjo-Kazooie. The harmony for the different sections seems to go like this:

[Intro]:

C – G7 – C7

[A]:

F – Gm – C7

Gm – C7

[B]: F – C7 – F

F – G – C7

Then the same a half step up.

The woodblock is obviously meant to mimic the clock ticking for the player. The original cue from the game increases tempo exponentially as the timer approximates its end. It is one of the few themes not based mainly around C.

The other sub intros that accompany this cue are more like sound effects for entering a kind of magical world of puzzles, as seen by the use of whole tone scales played fast on the strings, beginning at different times to create an even bigger sense of disorientation, and the use of theremin playing a chromatic whirlwind as if this was the moment Bottles scrambles all the puzzle pieces.

And from one of the most happy tunes we now go in the direction of the decadent underworld accompanied by street musical troupes accustomed to the seedy life.