205: Grant Kirkhope on How Banjo-Kazooie Got Into Super Smash Bros Ultimate
The Kit & Krysta Podcast
The Kit & Krysta Podcast
4.7 • 544 Ratings
🗓️ 16 January 2026
⏱️ 145 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Get 25% off monthly or annual Patreon memberships now through January 31 at http://www.Patreon.com/KitAndKrysta with code KITANDKRYSTA
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Hello and welcome to episode 205 of the Kit & Krysta Podcast! We're so excited because we have video game music icon Grant Kirkhope with us today to talk about so many things including his time at Rare, how Banjo-Kazooie got added to Super Smash Bros. Ultimate and why he STILL hasn't seen The Super Mario Bros. Movie. Also in this episode, we react to some sales information we have about Nintendo Switch 2's first ever holiday. What does this mean for the future of Nintendo? We're also playing some new games including a party game that actually might be better than Mario Party! All this and more is coming right up!
0:00 - Cue the Goldeneye pause music!
10:00 - News! (Reacting to Nintendo Switch 2's holiday sales, new Pokemon Lego sets, Call of Duty coming to Switch 2 rumors, Xbox Developer Direct)
48:29 - Games we're playing (Ghost of Yotei, Death Stranding 2, Big Hops, Suika Game Planet, Lego Party)
1:18:48 - Welcome Grant Kirkhope!
Patreon Shoutouts!
- All Hail the Final Boss - Aaron Hash
- Thank you Super Stars: MaruMayhem, Eigenverse, Mike Chin, Roy Eschke, vgmlife, Link The Hero of Winds, Angela Bycroft, Thomas O’Rourke, Kyle LeBoeuf, Andrew Youhas, Chilly, krashuri, Master Discord, Travis Torline, EchoLadair, MSMPokeGamer, RBurns, KITT 10K, Adrien, Nafon Clover, TheSharkAmongMen, RainTech, KissMyFlapjack, Paul Gale Network, Cameron, Fredrik Ulf Konradsson
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-Kit & Krysta
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Today we have a very special guest video game music icon. |
| 0:13.3 | Grant Kirkholt. |
| 0:15.3 | You believe it? |
| 0:16.2 | It's amazing. |
| 0:17.5 | I can't either. |
| 0:18.3 | But we're such huge fans of Grant. |
| 0:20.2 | He has agreed to come on the podcast today to tell us all sorts of stories about what was it like, getting a call for Mr. Sakurai himself to add Vanjo Cazui and to smash. |
| 0:30.9 | I was there for that. |
| 0:31.8 | Wow. |
| 0:33.1 | All the work that he did when he was with Rare, the iconic music he wrote with Rare. Why? He still hasn't seen the Super Mario movie. Oh, it's stings. Oh, it's... Salt in the Wound! And how he feels about the DK Rep all these years later. Wow, that's a lot of stuff. Amazing stuff. We're so excited. Yeah, I'm so excited to get into that topic of like the old rare days because you know it was only about like I think it's maybe like 10 years before you joined the company. You joined a little before I did. But it just seems like it's eons in the past. Yeah, the golden era. And things were happening so differently then. Yes. The company was run so differently. That relationship with wear is like something that seems so different than how Nintendo operated when we were there. And I just happened to be playing a lot of Nintendo 64 games lately. I know. So I was like, this is what I want to talk about. You just got your analog 64, so you've been deep in your 64 era. |
| 1:29.3 | So yeah, it is an era that I kind of skipped out on a little bit too, but there is this |
| 1:34.8 | mystique around it and I feel like I get a lot of fomo when people talk about it. |
| 1:41.0 | I'm like, I wish that I was there for that a little bit more. I mean, I definitely played Nintendo 64, but it wasn't an owner of it. So, yeah, I can't wait to hear. I'm fascinated by all this video game history stuff and rare being in the countryside. I need to know everything. I need to know it all. There's always a bit of FOMO when we, you know, decide we want to contact somebody to do these interviews because there's some people we know, and some people we don't. We don't know Grant Kirk Hope. So it was like, it was like a shot in the dark. It was like, well, you know, go through his website, fill out a form. It's like, does he even gonna see this? Yeah. You brought back to you so fast. He did. So that was a great release. |
| 2:18.0 | And then I realized that I did know him. |
| 2:20.3 | I don't want to talk about that. |
| 2:21.4 | That other. Is he even going to see this? Yeah. You brought back to you so fast. He did. So that was a great relief. And then I realized that I did know him. I don't want to talk about that. That annoyed me. But there's always like, oh, here comes the big rejection of like, I do podcast, but not yours, loser. You know, there's always going to be something like that. It's a little bit of anxiety. Yes, there is. Your fear of rejection. Everybody fears rejection. Here it comes. The big thumbs down. But you got to, you know, what do they say? You miss 100% of the shots you don't take. Kitt and Krista, I've listened to those in this, loser. Fat Al. No, we're Wieners. I mean, winters. We are. So look forward to that coming up in this |
| 2:54.7 | episode and we just earlier this week put out our big 2026 update talking about everything that's going on. |
| 3:03.0 | We did. It's new and fresh and exciting for us in this year. Hope you've checked it out. |
| 3:09.5 | If not, please take a look. |
| 3:13.4 | Some exciting things are happening that are already like underway. |
| 3:13.9 | Yeah. |
| 3:20.7 | So if you haven't heard, Patreon is getting Nintendo Storytime exclusively from here on out. |
... |
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