through radical changes. Edson was replaced twice, first by a rabbit and later by Banjo the bear, who became the main character of Banjo-Kazooie. The final version of the game was a linear platformer in the vein of Rare's Donkey Kong Country games, and bore little resemblance to the earlier versions. Development After Nintendo released the SNES, Rare used the profits they made from Nintendo Entertainment System games to invest in Silicon Graphics workstations. Rare used this high-end technology to develop Donkey Kong Country (1994), which was a critical and commercial success, becoming the second bestselling SNES game behind Super Mario World (1990). After finishing Donkey Kong Country, Rare staff decided to apply the technology to a new game that was not a platformer. They settled on developing a RPG, as they were all fans of the genre. The codename Dream was chosen because they wanted their RPG to have a fantastical, magical feel. Dream used Donkey Kong Countrys graphics technology to an advanced level. It was inspired by Japanese RPGs and LucasArts adventure games; the team wanted to combine those games to create one with a "Rare flavour". Dream was developed by Rare's Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest (1995) team and was announced in 1995. As development progressed, the team felt it was too large for an SNES cartridge and the introduction of the N64 rendered the Silicon Graphics technology obsolete. Thus, Rare made the decision to switch development to the N64. After this transition, the fantasy theme gradually was dropped. According to Rare's Gregg Mayles, the team did not want the game to be too childish. They brought the pirate theme from Diddy’s Kong Quest, as Rare staff felt they "could have a lot of fun with it" and believed it would have a broad appeal due to Mayles’ love of the Golden Age of Piracy. While some aspects were kept in the transition to the N64, Dream became a much larger RPG. As the game changed, Rare began to feel Edson was losing his relevance and began looking for an alternate protagonist. He was replaced with the rabbit and eventually Banjo. The decision to use Banjo, who was already in the game as a minor side character, was made by Rare cofounder Tim Stamper. Banjo was designed to have human qualities and was given a backpack to put items in. Some time passed, and the