A fan-made PC decompilation project for Banjo-Tooie has drawn public criticism from related developers. The project creator stated that AI tools generated a substantial portion of the code and were also involved in engineering and review tasks.
The developers voicing criticism had previously contributed to N64 decompilation tools and related porting projects for The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask and Banjo-Kazooie. Previously, N64 decompilation tools were used to create a 60 FPS PC version of The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, followed by a similar port for Banjo-Kazooie.
Developer Dario explicitly stated that this Banjo-Tooie project is unrelated to his team, emphasizing that their own projects strictly avoid using AI. He mentioned that the team had previously expressed interest in creating a Banjo-Tooie port in the future and hoped to take sufficient time to polish it.
Dario believes that the new project leverages the team's long-accumulated frameworks, renderers, and game research results, yet outsources a significant amount of work to AI, which he finds disrespectful. Another developer, Reonu_, also criticized the project for hastily releasing an early version with known issues.