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...