It's been a long time coming, but finally it has happened: Banjo-Kazooie is coming to Super Smash Bros. Ultimate on the Nintendo Switch, as revealed by Nintendo's E3 Nintendo Direct

Banjo-Kazooie has long been one of those character additions that seemed perfect for Super Smash Bros., but there's always been one obstacle: Since Microsoft owned Rare, the company who made the games originally, Nintendo didn't have the rights to reproduce the character on a game solely designed for Nintendo consoles.

It seems as though those issues have been resolved. 

Banjo-Kazooie, in case you can't remember, is that weird bear and bird combination character from the Nintendo 64 era, who later starred in Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts a forgettable Xbox 360 game years later.

We've seen loads of surprising character entries into Smash -- Sonic, Pac-Man and Solid Snake from Metal Gear Solid among them -- but this is definitely one of the most memorable Smash surprises in recent memory.

Banjo-Kazooie is coming to Smash in Fall 2019.

But they're not alone. In conjunction with the western release of Dragon Quest XI, Nintendo is also bringing across characters from that game to Smash. But yeah, nothing on the level of the almighty Banjo-Kazooie!

All E3 2019 press conferences

Saturday, June 8

• Electronic Arts -- The game maker showed off 15 minutes of gameplay for its upcoming adventure game, Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order. It also announced new features for its free-to-download Apex Legends last-man-standing battle royale game, offering a new character and weapon to play with. The company also showed off a new paid update for The Sims 4, called Island Living, that brings the series to a tropical beach. Finally, the company did discuss drama over the mixed reviews for its Anthem action adventure game, saying it "learned a lot" and had more updates and features planned soon.
  

Sunday, June 9

• Microsoft / Xbox -- The gaming giant's biggest news was Project Scarlett, its next-generation Xbox, coming in 2020. The new device is up to 4x more powerful, the company said, and like the next-gen PlayStation it'll include a fast non-mechanical SSD hard drive, and it'll be powered by custom innards built with the help of chipmaker AMD.  The company also announced that Halo Infinite will launch alongside Project Scarlett next year. Meantime, Microsoft is starting public tests of its Project xCloud streaming service in October, promising people the ability to play high end games on their mobile devices while away from home. While fans wait, Microsoft announced an update to its Xbox Elite Controller Series 2 as well as a slew of new games. And action star Keanu Reeves, fresh off the success of John Wick Chapter 3: Parabellum, was on stage to announce his involvement with Cyberpunk 2077, which is coming next year.
  
• Bethesda -- Bethesda kicked off its event with humility over the mixed response to Fallout 76, but quickly went back on the offensive. Fallout 76 got a new Battle Royale mode, Wolfenstein Youngblood received a new trailer and a co-op mode. We got a new game called Deathloop from the clever folks behind Dishonored and Bethesda introduced us to Orion, a piece of tech from ID Software designed to make game streaming better on services like Google Stadia. The lion's share of attention, however, went to Doom Eternal, which looked fantastic in both single player and multiplayer.

Monday, June 10

• PC Gaming Show -- This annual PC Gaming Show is held at a theater a short walk from the Los Angeles Convention Center, but still draws a large crowd, filling the 1,700-person capacity Mayan Theater in downtown Los Angeles. Inside, the usual suspects, from Halo to Doom, were nowhere to be found. Instead, the crowd cheered for PC-centric games including Zombie Army 4, Baldur's Gate 3 and Terraria: Journey's End. (No, the game sequel problem isn't any better on PCs.) The highlight was a brief on-stage appearance by legendary game designer Yu Suzuki, responsible for classic such as Hang-On and Virtua Fighter. His long-awaited Shenmue 3 is expected in November, 18 years after Shenmue 2. 
• Ubisoft -- The French gaming giant announced its next big dystopian hacking adventure game, Watch Dogs: Legion, launching March 2020. The new game is set in near-future post-Brexit London, where the economy is failing and government is breaking down. The company also announced a new television show, called Mythic Quest, that will launch on Apple TV Plus. And it celebrated the 10th anniversary of its Just Dance party games. 
  
• Square Enix -- This was a huge franchise fair. The press conference started out with juicy details on Final Fantasy VII Remake, namely that it'll be a two-part game. The first part, an entire Blu-Ray disc, will be devoted to exploring Midgar. After a flurry of trailers and an in-depth look at Final Fantas XIV: Shadowbringers, we then got the main event unveil: Marvel's Avengers. 

Tuesday, June 11

• Nintendo (livestream only) -- 9 a.m. PT (noon ET)

We're there

CNET will be on the ground, covering covering E3 2019 alongside our sister site, Gamespot. We'll update this page throughout the show as more games are announced.

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