Is the Ice Key ACTUALLY in Donkey Kong 64?!

[@dragon666777]

Considering Crystal Caves was one of the few playable levels at E3 1999, it really just makes me want to see that demo even more, to see if there are any additional answers to be gained regarding this room

[@zimtak6418]

So both in terms of graphics and functionality it didn't exist, but it did exist in terms of being in the game in virtually any way. Odd it was never connected to anything. Let's not forget that DK64 came out *before* Banjo-Tooie, so early on in development they thought the stop-n-swop idea was still plausible. I think the same way Sonic and Knuckles connected to more than just Sonic 3, Rare was trying to do the same approach with stop-n-swop.

[@dragon666777]

Rare has already confirmed that multiple games (DK64, Conker, even Perfect Dark) were intended to be compatible with Stop n Swop originally, rather than just Banjo-Tooie, it doesn't seem like the idea got any farther than the Ice Key being barely implemented into DK64 though

[@Gamerbielz]

I just don’t get how there’s no dialogue or code in BK. To my understanding, that was the one game that actually got released before Stop n Swop was fully dropped. If that’s true, you’d think there’d be a, “Swop cartridges now!” code leftover

[@1Hol1Tiger]

@@Gamerbielz The swop had to be done while the console was off

[@PizzamonkeyFGC]

Maybe the real Ice Key was the friends we made along the way.

[@ThePillowGamer]

Agree

[@zimtak6418]

LOL, oh jeez.😅

[@Mem3r]

Nah it was with us we was just blind

[@33legion]

Touching

[@aidenliveandreloaded2522]

Yes

[@Bismuth9]

4:58 and there's our culprit for the whole ice key debacle

[@expansionpackdeluxe636]

One of the Rare devs actually confirmed on twitter that DK64 was intended to have the Stop ‘N’ Swop feature.

[@Dark_Jaguar]

It would have been so easy for Rare to pull off Stop & Swop if only they'd abandoned doing it in the gimicky way they originally planned. All they had to do was add an option to Banjo Kazooie to save data to a memory pak. That's it, and it would have worked just fine. (Of course this implies coding it into DK64 and Tooie as well down the line, but the groundwork needs to start in BK.)

[@tawnlr6664]

I'd have loved seeing that.

[@Timic83tc]

We had the Ice Key all along

[@pirate_cove_man]

I, myself, do believe that the ?-Eggs were intended to be used in Banjo-Tooie, while the Ice Key was intended to be used in Donkey Kong 64.

[@anueutsuho7425]

The ice key was apparently meant to be used in multiple games, and each egg was mean to be used in a different N64 Rare game

[@pirate_cove_man]

@@anueutsuho7425 oh

[@Gruntilda-Winkybunion]

i just wish, that Rare would have more time to develope their games back then!

[@ShadwSonic]

"Stop 'N Swop was never implemented." That's only true on N64. The Xbox releases, due to hard drives being the new way game saves were stored, no longer had any reason NOT to put it in... and it was legendary enough that Rare knew that meant they HAD to. Of course, it's not entirely like it was originally planned. The Red, Blue, and Yellow Eggs, along with the Ice Key, were easy transfers from N64 requirements (find them in Tooie) to SNS requirements (find them in Kazooie), and thus unlock the same things. The other three Eggs, however unlock a dashboard theme (obviously not the initial plan), some avatar images (same), and... an item for Stop 'N Swop 2? Yes, Stop 'N Swop 2, with the other such items being earned for the Tooie locations of SNS items besides Yellow Egg (exploration check), turning into everything (including Dragon Kazooie, and thus another exploration check), dying a bunch of times in Boss Attack mode (why?), and obtaining a low combined time in Boss Attack mode (which doubles as a "beat the game" check). The icons for each look like signs or parts, and they do... NOTHING! That's right, they do absolutely nothing, as Nuts and Bolts only rewards up to cashing in the SNS 1 items in Tooie, and no later games have been made. Sadly, they joke about hopefully not having to wait another 10 years to use them, and it's been even longer than that... Now, as for what the other items were _supposed_ to unlock? That's much trickier. The only part of the theory I remember is that two of them were for features already present in the game as we received it, and the last one was for the completely cut Devil Bottles mode. This mode enables a second player to control enemies in an attempt to hinder the first player, and the plan was to control bosses in this manner as well... but only King Coal ever worked from that latter group. It can be accessed through Gameshark I believe, and was referenced in one of the avatars... but that's it.

[@Ballaam]

Yeah, I am aware of the implementation in the XBLA ports of the N64 Banjo titles. However, I'd be lying if I said I considered those as true implementations of SnS. SnS in Banjo-Kazooie was intended to unlock additional content in Banjo-Tooie (Which was never implemented in it's original form due to hardware restrictions). We're not sure as to where DK64 fits in that loop since there's not much mentioned about it at all outside of what we can get from memory hacking. It's interesting that the Bottles' Revenge Mode would have been a SnS feature, which I guess makes sense to some degree. It's a shame they ran out of time with Tooie, there are a lot of interesting concept designs they had which they had to scrap due to time restraints that I would have loved to have seen.

[@kirbinator4626]

I always wondered. Did the red klaptrap have any special properties? Like the purple one can only be killed by oranges. When I was a kid I always thought since the purple one can only die by orange grenades the red ones must only be killed by being shot.

[@RondoOfBloodX]

It’s interesting because in BK there’s a DK picture that was replaced with a Bottles one. This is the picture that leads to the Puzzle Challenges but what’s odd is that in the cutscene where you activate it before getting to Treasure Trove Cove Kazooie calls Bottles Barrel Boy which was most likely an insult meant for DK. So it’s possible when you beat all the puzzle challenges maybe you got some kind code that unlocked the BK stall entrance in DK64.

[@MAYOFORCE]

The ice key was for DK's Banjo-Kazooie fridge

[@christianvega646]

Interesting 🤔

[@Captain_Char]

Why is conker the squirrel narrating this?

[@Bee-N64]

This was a great video! You should make a video on the DK64 Kiosk rom that was found years ago, there was a tonne of work done on by the RareWitchProject

[@ricardocantoral7672]

At 4:42, jaw on floor.

[@MimickFox]

I love how Stop n Swop has been such an interesting mystery for so long that people have still been talking about it to this day. Even if it did or didn't get solved, I could see it be talked about for another decade or two, it's just that deep. Where were the other eggs in Banjo-Tooie? What would've happened if we were able to collect them all in 1998-2000? New characters? Extra levels? The only people that know were the original developers and creators from Rareware back then. I love this stuff.

[@BenRai2k]

I've been speaking to the creator of SNS on another YT video just recent. He said they had no prizes really planned at the time of Banjo Kazooie being shipped, just had SNS in place ready for the next 6 or so Rare games to be released. The ice key was for DK, but the mystery eggs were intended for other games.

[@MimickFox]

@goldengirlsben I remember hearing something about the ice key being used for DK64. It does make me wonder what the rest were gonna be for though.

[@BenRai2k]

@@MimickFox Yeah despite the Xbox version adding SNS, desktop backgrounds would not be the original idea. So I do still wonder what could have been. There is a vent in Perfect Dark 64s warehouse map on the roof with a ? on it, so it makes me wonder if originally that was associated with a ? egg. SNS was truly scrapped before BT, so remnants of it exist in DK as the ice key text. He also told me the sand castle codes for the SNS items were just a failsafe/backup plan he put in at the last moment.

[@MimickFox]

@goldengirlsben I also remember hearing about that sand castle code thing before. I wonder if there were any plans of it being implemented with Conker then too, since they had a Banjo-Kazooie Easter egg in that.

[@BenRai2k]

@@MimickFox He said it was intended to be implemented with the next few Rare games, so it was likely intended to link to conker.

[@lpfan4491]

My theory on what is going on would be that they wanted to make the room full of enemies and they have to be cleared out to collect the stuff there and they are just gone if the kong used the teleport from the treehouse. However, after the feature was removed from banjo tooies development because of the limitations, they saw no reason to keep the enemies there because it is kinda unfair without a way to remove them and they are causing a lot of framedrops. No idea what is going on witht hat cutscenewall or the inventorycounter tho.

[@cinnamonhunter6475]

God I love dk64.

[@heroknaderi]

Interesting.

[@Alexs23743]

2:52: Who Wants to be a Banjo-aire? (D, final answer.)

[@kip258]

There's a big pedestal in that room in Creepy Castle with nothing on it. It looks like something is supposed to be presented there, but there's nothing!

[@Ballaam]

I think a developer once said that there was something that you could do with the pedestal at one point during the game's development cycle. If the mechanic is still in the game, I haven't found it yet.

[@kip258]

@@Ballaam I think I remember what you're talking about. If I remember correctly, the Ice Key would have appeared here and then I bet the fridge would either spawn in DK's house or it could be opened. Maybe Crystal Caves was an ice level at one point :p I doubt the fridge would have always veen visible because seeing Banjo's face right at the start of a DK game would have been quite jarring.

[@HIVETIME]

Hi ballam. Is it ok if I use some of your points in your dk64 expansion pack video. Should I give you the credit? Thanks Btw I'm a big fan

[@Ballaam]

Of course you can use the points, please take into account the corrections pastebin that was posted in the description of that video ( pastebin.com/ZLmu2Py8 ). You do not have to give credit for the points as long as you're not using footage or significant amounts of the script from my video. If you do want to use some footage, then of course that's fine (as long as you're not directly copying masses and masses of the video), but please give credit.

[@HIVETIME]

@@Ballaam Thanks a lot dude. I appreciate it.

[@HIVETIME]

@@Ballaam I made the video on another channel. Could you check if the way I mentioned you is ok and let me know? Thanks kzbin.info/www/bejne/eYXCiZqggb-Iiac

[@JadeDeco789]

Man rosalina just said that's enough for today

[@gridline]

I think the ice key always showing 1/1 makes sense - getting the key probably only would have activated the flag to show the ice key in your inventory in the first place. Even if it was implemented correctly, you would never see "Ice Key 0/1" because it wouldn't be there if you didn't have it. As for the hidden enemies, I'd guess they're not meant to appear all at once, rather in groups of each enemy type, each group appearing one after the other.

[@Ballaam]

It's not that the ice Key would always show 1/1, it's more that the game sets your ice Key count to 1 as soon as you start the file

[@ujkloin]

4:32 AND FAIRYS! wait is it "fairys" or "fairies"

[@ventriloquistmagician4735]

What is the red klap trap like, compared to green and purple?

[@Ballaam]

Identical to the purple, drops a ammo crate upon death, can be killed with gunfire

[@aodfr]

Hmm, I think rare had an oversite in regards to stop and swap. They could have remade this system were instead of swapping out the carts they could have taken advantage of memory cards and stored a small save that has the SAS information on it and the other games like dk64, tooie, pd, etc could read through the contents of that save.

[@floatingonairandwater]

We didn’t make any oversight, we did this for a reason. Honestly folks, we’re not muppets. Anyway, the work i did on this is still being talked about and entertaining folks more than 20 years later so maybe it was successful!

[@Ballaam]

The work that the devs did for DK64 is incredibly interesting, and I'd definitely say the work on the game regardless of whether it ended up used in the final releases, was worth it (even though I might have a tendency to highlight the holes. However, given the troubles of deadlines within game development, some things are going to slip through that end up being found 20 years on which only occur under very particular circumstances). I hope the work that the glitch hunting community does isn't coming across to the devs as disrespect or us trying to make jabs at you for the things which slipped through.

[@HIVETIME]

Is there any discord I could get into about dk64. I'm trying to learn speedrunning and I already like glitch hunting

[@Ballaam]

discord.gg/qjBZTjM

[@hivevods2182]

@@Ballaam Thanks

[@looklook876]

WoC music is goat

[@TheSuperFox-Xlll]

Oh this is interesing

[@lxdicrous4413]

5:00 what the fu wHat

[@JunneClay]

Hey, do you think you could make a special video about the DK kiosk and maybe one about stop n swop?

[@Ballaam]

A video about Kiosk sounds like a good idea, might nab that one :P In terms of SnS, this is really my covering of SnS's inclusion in DK64 (unless you mean SnS as a whole in BK/BT/BK & BT Xbox/BK Nuts & Bolts)

[@JunneClay]

@@Ballaam Yeah I mean as a whole including DK 64.

[@brill4rill764]

So ur saying the ice key% wr for this game is 0:00:00.001 by the first person to boot the v1.0 japanese cart

[@Ballaam]

The first released version of DK64 was the US version. Japan was the final release interestingly enough.

[@brill4rill764]

O right .. rare bein a british studio & all (& NTSC still being the primary performance target)