Rare

[Prowler]

Rare is a British video game company that has been a studio of Microsoft since 2002. But back in the 80s and 90s it was mostly known for making games for Nintendo systems, most notably the Nintendo 64. They started their partnership during the SNES era still around 1994 and it ended around 2002 when Nintendo decided not to purchase the remaining stake of the company and then Microsoft came in and you know the rest.

I'm gonna start with the NES, since my first experience with Rare was on that system.

RC Pro-Am was a really fun racing game for its time and it even allowed up to 4 players. Not that the NES is known for having a lot of great racing games, but I prefer it to Rad Racer and Excitebike. Or to the NES version of Micro Machines. Micro Machines will always be synonym with the Mega Drive to me.

Another NES game I grew up with was Snake Rattle n Roll. What a fun, charming and charming game that one was! But also pretty damn hard.

Battletoads I've only played as an adult. Good game but very very difficult. Hard for me to love a game where I keep getting game overs early in it.

On the Super Nintendo, the Donkey Kong Country games require no introduction. Can't really decide which one is better between 1 and 2. 3 is fine but not as good as the previous two.

And now comes the N64 era, which is where Rare fully cemented its legacy in the video game industry.

Banjo-Kazooie was peak Rare in terms of platforming games go. That game was just magical when I was a little kid. I honestly must have preferred it over Super Mario 64 at a certain point. I replayed a big chunk of BK on the NSO when it came out on the N64 app some years ago and while I think it holds up well in terms of gameplay, it also has some frustrating parts nowadays. Not to mention the "magic" is gone, obviously.

When it comes to adult games, Goldeneye was the peak. That game was awesome back in the day. It was my first FPS game and it had stealth elements even and lots of fun cheats and stuff to unlock.Plus the multiplayer, of course. It made me realise it was possible to make great licensed games of movies after all.

And this merely scratches the surface. Diddy Kong Racing, Blast Corps, Killer Instinct and Donkey Kong 64 were all also pretty damn fun games back in the day. DKR still holds up, by the way. DK64 and Blast Corps... I don't know and I'm too "scared" to find out.

Not mentioning Conker, Banjo-Tooie or Perfect Dark since I never got those. And I doubt I'd find those that enjoyable nowadays as I might have when I was a kid.

Jet Force Gemini? Eh... hot take but i was not a huge fan of it. It was really dull at times. Another N64 classic I didn't like was Turok: Dinosaur Hunter. These two games just didn't click with me.

Haven't played any Rare games that came out after Dk64. Not even Starfox Adventures, which is a reskin of an original game called Dinosaur Planet. Why Nintendo decided to tell Rare to turn it into a Star Fox game is a mystery to me. It sidetracked the Star Fox series after the hit SF64 game. It confused consumers.

Was Nintendo right in "letting Rare" go? I can tell they've made some good games for Microsoft systems since then such as Viva Piñata, Perfect Dark Zero and that Conker game. But Banjo-Kazooie Nuts and Bolts seems to have disappointed people for being so different from what people expected out of a BK game.

Sea of Thieves seems to have been a commercial success, but I don't care enough to try it. Doesn't look appealing to me...

[neatoman]

I was kinda hoping this thread would provide some hopeful news, instead of it's just a sad reminder that the studio has been owned a giant corporation that don't seem to give a crap about the talent or IP for over 20 years...

Not counting compilations and glorified tech demos, there has been a total of two games based on old Rare IP and one game developed by the studio itself in the past 16 years. I know a lack of productivity is the main reason Nintendo didn't buy the studio instead but the lack of productivity during the 8 year period Nintendo had a stake in the company. And by lack of productivity I mean they produced at least five times as much productivity in half the time, so I do seriously suspect that Microsoft is to blame for Rare stagnating.

... I'm never gonna play the actual Banjo-Threeie, am I?

[sdp]

All the talent at Rare left, at this point whether Rare or another developer works on an IP from Rare doesn't matter, it'll still be a completely new team with next to 0 ties to what made Rare Rare.

Most of their franchises are just not relevant anymore, which is also why they haven't done much with them. Anything before their N64 days was already dated by the time the N64 launched. There's a reason we didn't see Battletoads 64 or Sabrewulf 64. Their n64 franchises is more of the same thing, great for the time but not so much after that.

Fighting games were dead, and when they did make a comeback in the 2010s, Killer Instinct was revived with a good budget, but it showed how much KI relied on 90s and style which no longer worked in a different era.

People say they want Banjo Threeie but did they want to? Cute mascot platformers clearly died barely making it through the PS2 era, Jak&Daxter had to evolve and even then died. Ratchet and clank tried to hold for a long time but couldn't. Mario is basically the only one that was able to survive, the exception to the rule. I don't see a world where Banjo could have done it.

I mean what else did they really have? Conker? They tried remaking Bad Fur Day twice I think and both times it bombed. Perfect Dark had tons of potential but after PD Zero failed they didn't care to have it compete in a very competitive and evolving genre. Hell the latest PD reboot looked awful so it was cancelled and it was likely for good. PD is really the only franchise I can see they could make big again but it'd need to be done well, it'd be very difficult.

Rare might've been one of the best developers in the 90s but their time has passed, it's nearly 3 decades since they were last relevant.

[Prowler]

Originally Posted by neatoman

I was kinda hoping this thread would provide some hopeful news, instead of it's just a sad reminder that the studio has been owned a giant corporation that don't seem to give a crap about the talent or IP for over 20 years...

Not counting compilations and glorified tech demos, there has been a total of two games based on old Rare IP and one game developed by the studio itself in the past 16 years. I know a lack of productivity is the main reason Nintendo didn't buy the studio instead but the lack of productivity during the 8 year period Nintendo had a stake in the company. And by lack of productivity I mean they produced at least five times as much productivity in half the time, so I do seriously suspect that Microsoft is to blame for Rare stagnating.

... I'm never gonna play the actual Banjo-Threeie, am I?

Banjo-Threeie has reached Half-Life 3 status at this point. For the record, there was a Banjo-Kazooie game that game out on the 360 called Nuts and Bolts. But fans if the series disliked it because it was nothing like the N64 titles. No one wanted to play BK in order to build karts.

Originally Posted by sdp

All the talent at Rare left, at this point whether Rare or another developer works on an IP from Rare doesn't matter, it'll still be a completely new team with next to 0 ties to what made Rare Rare.

Most of their franchises are just not relevant anymore, which is also why they haven't done much with them. Anything before their N64 days was already dated by the time the N64 launched. There's a reason we didn't see Battletoads 64 or Sabrewulf 64. Their n64 franchises is more of the same thing, great for the time but not so much after that.

Fighting games were dead, and when they did make a comeback in the 2010s, Killer Instinct was revived with a good budget, but it showed how much KI relied on 90s and style which no longer worked in a different era.

People say they want Banjo Threeie but did they want to? Cute mascot platformers clearly died barely making it through the PS2 era, Jak&Daxter had to evolve and even then died. Ratchet and clank tried to hold for a long time but couldn't. Mario is basically the only one that was able to survive, the exception to the rule. I don't see a world where Banjo could have done it.

I mean what else did they really have? Conker? They tried remaking Bad Fur Day twice I think and both times it bombed. Perfect Dark had tons of potential but after PD Zero failed they didn't care to have it compete in a very competitive and evolving genre. Hell the latest PD reboot looked awful so it was cancelled and it was likely for good. PD is really the only franchise I can see they could make big again but it'd need to be done well, it'd be very difficult.

Rare might've been one of the best developers in the 90s but their time has passed, it's nearly 3 decades since they were last relevant.

I think most of the talent was still around in 2001-2002. Some people left and joined other companies that would make game series like TimeSplitters, for example, but hardly a large hemorrhage.

Besides, 3D collectathon platformers peaked in the 90s and even Rare themselves wanted to move on from those types of games. So I'm not sure we'd be on Banjo-Kazooie 6 or Conker 4 as of today if they kept making games for Nintendo exclusively. Or if Perfect Dark would have become the biggest FPS game series on Nintendo systems after Metroid.

I haven't played any of their titles that came out on Microsoft systems since I don't own any Xboxes. But I notice that the Conker game they made for the 360 had good critical and fan reception. Fans also seemed to like Kameo. PDZ... some good reviews and fan feedback but also a lot of disappointment.

Battletoads is a beat 'em and that genre filed under the "deader than disco music" section on TVTropes in the late 2000s. I didn't know that Sabre Wulf went way back. It had a 1984 game for the ZX Spectrum, really? And well there was a Sabre WUlf game on the GBA... and the cancelled Donkey Kong Racing game was going to get turned into a game titled Sabre Wulf Stampede.

At least we have Banjo-Kazooie in Smash these days. And we got a Diddy Kong Racing remake on the DS. So I dunno what prevents Nintendo from putting DKR on NSO when they put GOLDENEYE on it, which requires a lot more effort and headaches in terms of licensing. So what's the deal with DKR when Nintendo owns Donkey Kong and Diddy Kong? Is it became Conker is in it as a racer or something?

Perfect Dark... I mean shooting games are a dime and dozen. There has to be some market for it, right? And Joana Dark is a really cool name for a protagonist, being a play on Joan d'Arc and all.

[Original TMNT Cartoon Fan]

Battletoads came to the Nintendo Switch NES Online in late November 2025.

[Barkworm]

I loved the DKC games back in the day, especially the second one. I never owned a N64 so I missed their golden era. Everything they made for Microsoft was irrelevant as far as I know and I was a huge XBox 360 fan.

[Prowler]

Like I said, their most successful game in the last 8 years or so was Sea of Thieves. That seems to be what's keeping them afloat.

No idea how well the 2020 Battletoads game did for them, but clearly it's not as much of a hit as, let's say, Streets of Rage 4 was as far as old school beat 'em ups getting modern versions go.