Dream – Land of Giants

Dream - Land of Giants is a concept demo created by Rare that eventually became Banjo-Kazooie on N64. By: Evan G Last updated: September 20, 2026

Dream - Land of Giants, or Project Dream, is a lost Rare title that was first revealed by composer Grant Kirkhope around 2010. He released a bunch of music demos for an N64 version of this game on his website. He explained how this game started as a SNES title, and when he arrived at Rare in October 1995, development had already started. They had intended for the game to be an RPG. Kirkhope tells the story about how the game switched to the N64 and eventually morphed into Banjo Kazooie, which is most definitely not an RPG. The following is from the 2015 version of his article.

Dream: The Game that Never Was

I started at Rare in October 1995 and when I got there "Dream" was already going. The core team from "Donkey Kong Country" had given DK to another team to carry on with and was working on this game which was going to be Rare's greatest SNES title. It was very secret and Tim Stamper was leading the team, nobody outside the team knew anything about it. Dave Wise was doing the audio on it at the time, Robin Beanland was doing "Killer Instinct" arcade, Graham Norgate was doing "GoldenEye" and "Blast Corp" on the N64 and Eveline Fischer was doing "Donkey Kong 3" on the SNES, me being the new boy was given DK 2 to convert to the Gameboy.

I finished my Gameboy conversion just before Christmas and Graham asked me to take over "GoldenEye" as he was really busy with "Blast Corps". Graham showed me how to get music and SFX into the N64 and left me to it. I did this for quite a while and then was visited by Tim and Gregg Mayles, who listened to my "GoldenEye" stuff and told me I was to stop doing "GoldenEye" and to come and work on their game with Dave Wise. I was shown the demo of the game running on the SNES and was blown away; it looked beautiful and was obviously going to be a big step up from "Donkey Kong Country". I was moved from my chicken shed into the block with the rest of the team and got to know them all. I spent most of my time with Gregg Mayles and Tim I suppose. I was given all the Lucas Arts games to play, ("Monkey Island", "Day of the Tentacle", "Full Throttle" etc) as Tim and Gregg were huge fans of the music and the way it channel faded depending on which area you were in. I really loved playing those games and the channel fading was something I would go on to use in the Banjo games.

Tim was really adamant that he wanted to have a very theme based game so as you could tell what character was around just by hearing a few notes of their theme, this is called "Leit motif" and is credited to Richard Wagner who used it a lot in his operas. So this is why the pieces I've put up on the site are all named after people in the game. Also Tim wanted to have real speech which was a pretty tall order at the time.

Pretty soon after I joined the game it was decided that it was too big for the SNES and was converted over to the N64, plus we were going to be using the extra "bulky drive" add on, that Nintendo told us they had in development. About this time too Dave Wise left "Dream" as he was also doing "Diddy Kong Racing" with Chris Stamper and was getting really busy with it, it was thought that this was going to be a huge title for Rare and Dave needed to be full time on it. So I had "Dream" all to myself and a lot to prove!

The game was a huge RPG, which I loved as I was a huge "Zelda" fan, and I tried to write some really strong themes for all the characters. The demos that I've put on the site are all using proper samples as opposed to the N64 versions which were obviously not as good quality due to memory restrictions. I was just learning how to use the gear really, I had a PC, a copy of Cubase and an old Ensoniq sampler with 32 Meg of memory!! I ended up writing 107 tunes for "Dream" in the end, quite a few of them have turned up in various guises over the years, but it was a real shame that the game didn't make it.

I think the final nail in the coffin for "Dream" came from another one of Rare's teams. The "Killer Instinct" team had started "Conker" and it looked and played fantastically. In "Dream" we had this elaborate floor system that meant we could stretch the polygons into any shape to create some really great looking landscapes that really hadn't been tried before, unfortunately the N64 just didn't have the power to run it at a decent frame rate and we were struggling to make it work. The "Conker" team had gone more the tried and trusted route as used in "Mario 64" and had left us behind. I remember Tim trooping us all across the courtyard to look at "Conker" and our hearts all sank as "Conker" was really good.

So we went back to our barn and tried their method, "Dream" started to run great. Then Tim was unhappy with the whole boy/hero thing and said we should change it to an animal. A bear was our first creature and "Banjo" the bear was born. So now we had "Banjo" running around in an RPG, I really can't remember when we added the back pack and "Kazooie" but it was around this time. Again Tim still didn't think it was all good enough and after seeing how good "Mario 64" was and with Rare's platforming heritage it was decided to scrap "Dream" and do a platformer with " Banjo" as the main character. Because I was writing RPG styled music it just didn't fit, and I had to find a more humorous approach. The first piece I wrote for "Banjo" was "Click Clock Woods", the spring version actually. It was until later that I started experimenting with the oddball style that became the signature sound for the "Banjo" games.

So that's the story of the game that never was........ sad really, but if it hadn't have been canned we'd never had made "Banjo-Kazooie"!

Here is a selection of Dream music that I have found.Just click on the links to hear them.

Hope you like them. Cheers, Grant.

In 2015, Rare released a retrospective collection of their titles, called Rare Replay. As part of the this release, they put out a video discussing the making of Banjo Kazooie, from when it started as Dream for the SNES. Gregg Mayles was the designer, Ed Bryan was the artist, and Paul Machacek was the engineer who came on board after it switched to the N64.

The initial idea was to use the graphical style of Donkey Kong Country to make an RPG. It was going to be a mix of a Japanese-style RPG and a Lucasarts point-and-click adventure game. The main villains were pirates, which had a troll-like style to them. The story was that the pirates were after a material called "floaty" that would allow them to make a flying pirate ship to take over the world. His pet dog "dinger" had a large number of moves, and was meant to take actions independent of the player.

The details in the video are similar to what Grant Kirkhope described. Based on this interview, it is very likely that the demo shown below here was the final version before they moved to the N64. The concept of Dream continued for some time, but eventually it morphed into Banjo-Kazooie.

In July 2015, probably in preparation for the release of Rare Replay, Tim Stamper, the founder of Rare revealed a prototype of Dream on his Twitter account. In typical Rare fashion, the cart is equipped with googly eyes. The latter photo shows it with Stamper's autograph, and I wonder if he gave it to the person who posted the ROM image.

The front of the cart, with a label that mirrors the title screen artwork.

A peek into the PCB, which is standard SHVC-4PV5B-01 prototype board. No special chips!

The cart along with a bunch of scattered dev equipment. That PCB beside the SNES is a prototype of Killer Instinct 2, also unreleased for the SNES.

The title screen, which appears the same as the prototype ROM image

At this point, Stamper autographed the cart, and showed it off along with a prototype of the N64 version.

The ROM image

In September 2026, an anonymous person posted the ROM image of the SNES version of Dream on Archive.org:

Today, I’m releasing the SNES proof-of-concept alpha of Project Dream, the proto-type that would go on to become Banjo-Kazooie.

I’ve held on to this for years, it was fun to have something that only a handful of people had, and as I am several people removed from how it got out of Rare to begin with, I didn’t want to risk that it could somehow get someone else in trouble, (so how I got it is a story I don’t plan to share.) I will just say that I got it from someone who got it from someone, who got it from somewhere.

But with the current state of the industry and Microsoft's current heartless gutting and mismanagement of Rare and other companies it controls, plus with how long it's been, I feel it's more important to make sure this is properly preserved, and the ROM dissected by people with far more knowledge on how to do such things.

I hope by releasing this, that it also inspires other people to release what they have as well. I know the Twelve Tales Conker 64 prototype is out there somewhere, but sadly, this is the only thing that I have.

There is little joy left in the industry, as it relentlessly marches towards AI, layoffs, l anti-preservation and ownership tactics, and, in Microsoft’s case, the support and approval of literal genocide in Gaza.

Let’s get the last beautiful things hiding on our hard drives out there for everyone. That's all we have left.

Please delete Microsoft and Sony from your lives, install Linux, boycott Switch Game Key Cards and buy Nintendo Switch 2 titles that still come with the full game on the cartridge. Your dollar is the only thing that counts in our late stage capitalist hellscape.

The attached zip contains a .bin file of the raw dump, and then the same file renamed to a .sfc to work in emulators, as well as this text file.

If any game journalists choose to report on this prototype release, I would ask they kindly include the full contents of this text file as courtesy to me for finally getting this out to you all.

Be blessed, and love each other.

Signed,

FvckAsha&Phil

Obviously, this person intended to respect the fact that leaking something like this could potentially hurt someone (though I have not heard of anything like that for SNES prototype leaks). It is still an important consideration, even though 30 years has passed since the effective end of the commercial life of the SNES. The length of copyright is far too long.

To be honest though, I doubt anything on this prototype is going to cause any corporate entity to care. It is a simple four level demo, with essentially no action (press select to toggle the levels). The demo is stunning to see, very much done in the same way as Donkey Kong Country 3. The dinosaur foot coming out of nowhere to crush you is pretty neat. The style of the dog character seems a bit out of place. If this was developed into a game, assuming a late 1995 development start date, it probably would not have been out until 1997. By then, it would have been unlikely that retail stores would take a chance on what would have been a full priced SNES game. There should be no regrets this was abandoned, because Banjo-Kazooie is a great game.

Intro title screen, the same as what was shown in Stamper's Twitter photo.	Forest level showing the "troll" pirate.

The dinosaur squashing you.	The swamp level.

First time meeting Dinger the dog.	The dog follows you around.

The temple level, showing you can change weapons. Here is a club.	Here, with bare fists.

Find the ROM image on Archive.org.