Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts came out on the Xbox 360 in November of this year with one BIG problem. Rare, the developers behind the title, had only designed the game to be viewed on High-Definition TV sets. Unfortunately this meant that when owners of Standard-Definition sets tried to view text in the game, it was too small to read — a huge problem because most of Nuts & Bolts’ vital tutorial information is, in fact, delivered through its text.
Xbox 360 had this exact issue with several of its very first titles titles including Dead Rising and Lost Planet. But since those early games, developers have generally increased the size of the text in their games to ensue that users with SDTVs were able to enjoy their products as well. Therefore, when Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts was released, the gaming community was rightfully perplexed at seeing the re-emergence of this antiquated design flaw.
Well, skip forward a month and it seems as though Rare has quietly released a patch to repair the text in their game. This new patch allows owners to select either large or small text through the options menu. I assume that the reason Rare chose to remain quiet about the fix, is that the game is only a month out and the majority of its potential buyers are probably waiting until the December Holidays to buy it. Calling attention to the fact that there was ever a problem might dissuade future customers from their purchases.
All text issues aside, Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts has been one of the highest critically rated family games of the year. This new patch seems to insure that the game can be additionally enjoyed by the millions of Xbox 360 owners who have not yet been able to purchase HDTVs.
I’ve been playing BK Nuts & Bolts
on a SD TV without any problems, it’s an old 28″ tube TV and i have poor eyesight so that’s probably the same as somebody with good eyesight using a smaller SD TV.
If the patch makes things better then all well and good but i didn’t notice any problem in the first place.
The only game so far that i’ve struggled a bit reading text on SD has been Dead Rising but it wasn’t that big a deal, i just had to learn forward closer to the screen.