"[W]hen you pre-order Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts n Bolts (from selected retailers) you will receive a code which allows you to gain access to the classic Banjo-Kazooie game via the Xbox Live Arcade for FREE and before it is released to the general public.

The deal is actually pretty sweet, with the rest of the Xbox Live members having to wait till after the retail game launches which will be "a couple of weeks" after you gain access to it.

One of the biggest advantages to pre-ordering the game..."

"Very sad news from Redmond, Wash. Melissa Batten, 36, a software development engineer in Microsoft's Xbox division, was murdered by her estranged husband, who then shot himself to death, earlier this week.

Batten, a Harvard-educated lawyer, was a Software Development Engineer in Test for Microsoft, supporting Rare on its 360 titles work. She had worked for Microsoft since 2002, earning credits in Halo 3 and Gears of War as an SDET. Earlier, as a lawyer, she had been a public defender for t..."

"As a game, I still don't feel like I get BK:NaB. In the sliver I was playing I got a sense that I needed to win some races to collect some puzzle pieces, and that frankly wasn't enough to inspire me to keep playing.

Sure, it looked really gorgeous, with zero pop-in and tons of color, a welcome respite from a lot of the grays and browns I'd been seeing during the week. Controls were pretty solid too. Some of the vehicles were disorienting at first, but they didn't take too long to get a hol..."

"The original N64 classic, Banjo Kazooie, will be coming to Xbox Live Arcade this Holiday season. Along with Banjo Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts, Rare fans will now have two platforming games to look forward to. Though one will include a little more vehicles than the other."

"Back to button mashing for Kazooie. Microsoft has sent along a brief statement allegedly clarifying what Microsoft Game Studios creative director Ken Lobb meant when he said, "you twist the controller around and it'll move different things in [Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts]." The explanation goes a lil' something like this:

"There is no truth to this speculation. Ken's comment is in reference to rotating the left analog stick while hitting the X-button to move different things in the game.""

"In a post over on the Xbox.com forums, Rare community manager George Kelion (under his XBL gamertag Monkeythumbz) has offered an insight into the "blocky" visual style seen in the developer's upcoming Xbox 360 video game Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts.

"Banjo's new look is meant to be self-referential," explained Kelion. "Videogames have developed their own visual language - from the pixels of 8-bit gaming, through the parallax backgrounds of 16-bit to the blocky, low-poly designs of 32 and 6..."

"The first images from Rare's upcoming Banjo-Kazooie 3 (said to be called Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts) have been leaked online, showing off the art style and a vehicle creation screen for the very first time.

As we reported last week, Microsoft is rumoured to be showcasing this year's Christmas line-up tomorrow at a North American media summit.

Banjo 3 was tapped to be unveiled, along with Fable 2 and Gears of War 2. Unfortunately for Microsoft, the bear has jumped out the door prematurely."

""Bottles' family have left him, as the trauma of seeing him killed and then resurrected was too much for them to take. The mole has been a regular sorry sight at Jolly Roger's Inn, attempting to drown his sorrows with Blackeye's 'sea sickness' drink." However... "Tiptup will indeed make an appearance, complete with wooden acting skills." Did he just give away the secret Sunset Beach level? ZOMG PR CATASTROPHE"

"A mysterious website usually means we’ll actually be given something interesting within a few weeks. Who knows?"

""Spiral Mountain will indeed be making a third appearance. We've just copied the old level from the previous games and tried to tart it up a bit with some lens flares and lots of blowing grass, hopefully you won't notice.
"The 'voices or mumbling' debate went on for some time, but we have decided that... ... ...THE MUMBLING WILL REMAIN! Banjo is known for the mumbling so it seemed odd to change it to 'proper' speech just because we could."