Early this morning, Banjo-Kazooie and Blast Corps which were seemingly scheduled to release today for the Wii U Virtual Console, but the excitement was quickly put to an end after Nintendo removed the listings and published a notice that the games were included by mistake. However, it does seem suspicious that two Rare games would be accidentally included in the official Nintendo release schedule.
Although Banjo-Kazooie unexpectedly made their way into the popular Nintendo fighting game Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, not a single Rare game has ever made its way onto the Nintendo Switch. Rare has made some smash hits over the years including the Banjo-Kazooie series, Conker's Bad Fur Day, Perfect Dark, and Battletoads. Rare was even responsible for the development of Donkey Kong Country and Diddy Kong Racing which stars two of Nintendo's most well-known characters. However, Rare has yet to release a game on any modern Nintendo consoles.
It's not hard to imagine how excited fans of Nintendo and Rare were when it had seemingly been revealed that Banjo-Kazooie would be coming to the Wii U. It perplexed some as the Wii U has been obsolete for some time, but it would still give Nintendo fans a way to play Banjo-Kazooie on a Nintendo system released within the past decade. The calendar entries were reported by Japanese gaming news source Gematsu who tweeted screenshots of the calendar in English. Shortly after the entries were discovered, Nintendo removed them and posted a notice at the top of the release schedule that states, "'Banjo-Kazooie's Adventure' and 'Blast Corps' have been posted as Wii U software delivered on December 30, 2020, but they will not be delivered."
It's safe to assume that if Banjo-Kazooie was to make its way onto a Nintendo console it would likely be released on the Switch and not the Wii U. Additionally, Rare has worked to curate a collection of its greatest games in the form of the Rare Replay collection which is exclusively available on Xbox consoles. Even if Microsoft and Rare were going to release a title on the Nintendo Switch, it would make more sense to release the Rare Replay than to release a standalone version of Banjo-Kazooie.
That being said, it's peculiar that an incident like this would even occur. How could an employee of Nintendo make a mistake like this if a Rare title isn't planned for release in the near future? It would be able as an honest mistake is it were just Blast Corps that had been listed, but it was two Rare titles, one of which is one of the most iconic 3D platformers of all time. Maybe it was just a mistake... or maybe Nintendo fans can expect a surprise Banjo-Kazooie announcement soon.
Sources: Gematsu, Nintendo Japan
