Yooka-Laylee: The ‘90s 3D platformer is back

Yooka-Laylee's Gamescom 2016 trailer.

COLOGNE, Germany—It's midnight and my friends and I, intent on staying up all night, have just downed our fifth Coca-Cola of the evening. Laid out in front of us, between a pile of unwashed sleeping bags and half-eaten chocolate bars, are four Nintendo 64 controllers and a copy of GoldenEye and Banjo-Kazooie. Brushing the sleep from my eyes, I pick up Banjo-Kazooie, slide it into the cartridge slot, and stare in awe at a blocky banjo-playing bear. Having never played on a Nintendo 64 before (I was very much s PC gamer), the bright and colourful Banjo-Kazooie was a revelation. And though it would sometimes get swapped out for sporadic bouts of Golden Gun mode, for the next 12 hours, Banjo-Kazooie was all that mattered.

The tiny booths in the back halls of Gamescom's Koelnmesse might not be as cosy as my living room floor, but there's no denying it: Yooka-Laylee is one heck of a nostalgia play, and 12-year-old me couldn't be happier.

Indeed, squint hard enough, and you might just mistake Yooka-Laylee for Banjo-Kazooie. Led by a team of ex-developers from Rare—creator of the Banjo-Kazooie series amongst others—Yooka-Laylee is an unashamed love letter to the colourful '90s platformer. The titular Yooka and Laylee, a lizard and a bat, can double-jump, float, roll, and swim much like their '90s counterparts. The levels they explore, while larger and more like the open worlds of modern games, are similar too, being made up of intricately designed platforms that shine a vibrant green where most games are content with being a dull brown.

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