Rare. Past. Present.... Future.

[Adam Stone]

So, Rare....

I did orginally write up my thoughts, mostly praise, love... coated by a deep deep sadness...

But then I thought I'd rather hear what you guys think. My reflections can come later.

I bring this up now because my new boss is actually the previous Boss of Rare, which is interesting. It had me thinking about all sorts of things.... like how much I used to adore the company but feel very sad about their past circumstances yet now incredibly excited for their future. I have a sneaky feeling we may yet see more of that Classic Rare magic, I hope so at least.

So! Do you miss them?! Did you even care? Want to see Killer Instinct return? Is Conkey's underrated? Are Rare now doomed forever? Is Kinect Sports enough for them?

I'm very interested to hear what you think about the company then, now... and your thoughts on their future efforts.

Now...off to Ebay to purchase another N64!!! I suddenly need to play Goldeneye....

[EvilBoris]

ah Rare, god Bless you

Battletoads, RC Pro Am and Goldeneye are the ones that hold the fondest memories. Despite being a mega N64 fanboy for years I never owned anything else they made other than Goldeneye and Perfect Dark! I borrowed many of their other games and the magazines treated them with such love that it felt like I have played them all from start to finish.

I actually thought that the original Xbox days were their weakest years, Grabbed by the Ghoulies and Conkers BFD remake didn't really do it for me.

the 360 Years brought me an enjoyable new Perfect Dark game on launch (guilty pleasure) Viva Pinata and Banjo Kazooie Nuts and Bolts which were probably 3 of my favourite games of the generation.

I've heard rumours that they are working on some amazing stuff and I am hopefully that one of the Rare Studios (they have 2 now I think) can bring us something beyond Kinect Sports.

[Charlie]

Yeah, I miss 'em. They were second only to Nintendo during the N64 era and were consistently brilliant.

[MisterBubbles]

Well Goldeneye, RC Pro Am, Killer Instinct, Banjo-Kazooie, where all classics, sadly and dont take this the wrong way Adam, i highly doubt they can return to their heyday of the 90's, but its was good while it lasted.

[originalbadboy]

Nuts & Bolts was one of the best games this generation ... sadly Rare no longer exists other to do Kinect crap. I would love to be proved wrong but I doubt it.

[Sketcz]

I bring this up now because my new boss is actually the previous Boss of Rare

The Stamper bros? I thought they moved to some resort island bought for millions. Notoriously difficult to get hold of.

As for Rare...

A while back I read an article with quotes from an interview, where more than one member of staff mentioned they were feeling suicidal due to working on Kinect games.

Gregg Mayles, Rare designer and one of the longest-serving Rare employees, made a very strong comment in the latest Rare Life saying, ?I have seen friends quit. I watched Tim and Chris walk away. I can?t bring myself to quit because I am one of the last original Rare employees here. I would rather kill myself than continue to work on this Kinect Sports bull.?

Younger brother of Gregg Mayles and Rare artist, Steve Mayles, affirms his brother?s sentiments. ?I used to add googly-eyes to everything and people laughed at me for how stupid it was. People now long for those days,? he laments, ?Everything Rare has done has now been plastered with those lifeless avatars. I swear to god I will kill myself if I have to work on another Kinect anything game.?

Mark Betteridge, veteran Rare developer, has grown weary towards Rare?s future. ?I helped Tim and Chris out from the beginning,? he says, ?We created Banjo, Conker, Perfect Dark and so much more together. This Kinect sports **** is not the future we envisioned for Rare. Maybe I?ll just blow my brains out next time I?m asked to work on another sports game.?

Newly minted Rare creative director, Simon Woodroffe, has already been fatigued by the Kinect Sports series. ?I entered this company under the impression that this would be my chance to show the world my creative prowess,? he explains, ?Instead, Microsoft forced me to create a new Kinect Sports game under threat of termination. How about a threat of suicide Microsoft? Will you change your mind now??

[Dogg Thang]

I think I'm one of the few gamers who just was never into Rare stuff. Goldeneye was great, of course, and I have in my memory that I enjoyed Perfect Dark, although I can barely remember it and I'm absolutely certain I never completed it. But I hated Killer Instinct with their memory combos and giant heads and really didn't like their prerendered sprite style for things like Donkey Kong Country. Lacked all the charm of of the drawn pixel sprites of just about every other game around that time for me.

But there is no doubting their place in gaming history. They were huge for a couple of gaming generations and have ended up defining Donkey Kong's appearance and world.

[Mr Ono]

Wondering what actually happened to the Stamper bros. I once saw a picture of Louise Stamper (their sister) in a C&VG collecting a Golden Joystick and had a crush on her. LOL.

[Decider-VT]

Working on Kinect games is such a waste of their talent but they should really leave if their work is making them suicidal. I doubt you'd be looking for a job for long with Rare on your CV.

It also begs the question as to why Microsoft would bother spending millions on them to get them to churn out generic Kinect crap. Surely there are hundreds of other studios that could've been bought for less to do the same thing? It's as if MS were making a statement of intent and bought into the heritage of the company when they were making the purchase but simply didn't know what to do with them afterwards. Still, hardly the first confused and destructive move MS have made with the Xbox 360.

[Wools]

I had no affection for Rare whatsoever in the old days as their output never really appealed to me.

GoldenEye changed everything of course, it remains one of the finest console developed FPS's and my favourite 4 player & single player experiences I've had. Perfect Dark was good but not the same & their Microsoft era of development has seen a return to form, as I loved Viva Pi?ata & Banjo Nuts & Bolts.

Kinet has changed the company's focus but maybe this next generation will see the company regroup. Rare have never been an open developer so I would love to see who's heading them up & some of their ideas.

[dataDave]

lol Mark Betteridge!

Perfect Dark is still the best game of all time, at least the best FPS anyway.

[Neon Ignition]

Given the success they'd forged on Snes and N64 I always found Nintendos reasoning for selling Rare more interesting than MSs reasoning for buying them, to me it suggested that Nintendo had an inkling that things were going on the slide. Whilst I liked the games to an extent Perfect Dark Zero was behind the FPS curve and Kameo was never a game with mass appeal with both having quite drawn out developments. In hindsight selling them was probably one of the best business decisions Nintendo has made.

Nuts and Bolts held some hope the old Rare was buried in there somewhere but I'm not sure in what form. A proper Conker or Banjo sequel would be amazing (though I suspect Banjo is dead for good now too). I hope they don't make an FPS as the key minds are long gone and it's a different market now and I don't feel Rare can cut it, same for Killer Instinct. Love it for what it was but there's little basis for a modern fighter with it, especially for one that's top tier. It'd be nice to see something new from them but with the charm of their old games... Or Blastcorps 2!

[kryss]

Perfect Dark is still the best game of all time, at least the best FPS anyway.

Yes, this. I had to buy the Japanese N64 version the other week. Will be playing that on my new TV quite happily

[Pikate]

I don't think they're worth eulogising, Kinect Sports and it's "Gems" aren't too bad, there is a market for that stuff, it's obviously not on this forum but it exists. I also question how much of the quality of Rare's Donkey Kongs, Banjo Kazooies and Goldeneye is down to Nintendo's input?

I don't think it's a coincidence that Rare's decline correlates with Retro Studio's emergence with the Metroid Prime series and later handling Rare's Donkey Kong Country series and whatever the secret project they're working on now is. Nintendo obviously saw that Western and Japanese devs have different standards and sensibilities so they adopted Rare to cover their bases with Western gamers, Microsoft then bought Rare and Nintendo replaced them with Retro Studios.

Rare are the dev they always were, what's missing is Nintendo's golden touch.

[QualityChimp]

how much of the quality of Rare's Donkey Kongs, Banjo Kazooies and Goldeneye is down to Nintendo's input?

Rare are the dev they always were, what's missing is Nintendo's golden touch.

I disagree with this, specifically over Goldeneye.

It started off influenced by Sega's Virtua Cop.

Nintendo had very little to do with making it. In fact, the N64 didn't even exist for the first year and a half of development. The team was using SGI Onyxs, hugely expensive Silicon Graphics machines, guessing at what the specs of Nintendo?s new console might be and using a butchered Saturn controller to playtest.

They had more input, support and restrictions from EON (Bond license owners), who asked them to take the likeness of the other Bond actors out. However, they also gave them lots of access to the Leavesden Studios and made several trips to photograph the sets, including the walls to make textures!

The biggest influence Nintendo had was to give them a copy of Mario 64 and they copied the technique of putting in objectives:

?When Mario arrived it was clearly a step forward. Martin was obsessed with the collision detection, which was obviously doing it in 3D and GoldenEye was essentially using a 2D method. And our story was only about shooting stuff ? we needed other things. We started putting in objectives, like meeting people in a level and back then that involved some complicated AI."

"Finding Boris, guiding him through and making him decode something? that wasn?t easy! Other levels, you could hear the barrel being scraped ? collect five arbitrary pieces and go here, but Mario had plenty of that ****, which is pretty boring. We punctuated it with stuff like go and blow this thing up! Like the canisters at the end of Arkhangelsk."

It's easy to forget how many ideas Rare pioneered with Goldeneye as there's so much crammed in there:
The sniper rifle, the gun disconnected from the camera, the civilian AI, the enemy AI (shoot the guard going for the alarm first?), the 3D explosions, the environment mapping (look closely at a shiny surface and you?ll notice a low resolution reflection of your surroundings), the stealth radius, body-specific hit reactions, dual-wielding weapons, different difficulty-related objectives and playing an story-driven FPS could work on a console.

Some great articles I've quoted:
http://www.nowgamer.com/features/921...goldeneye.html A nice making-of article with the four main developers.
http://blog.hardcoregaming101.net/20...-ken-lobb.html An interview with Ken Lobb ("Klobb").
http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1016460...rtem-GoldenEye Video of Martin Hollis' GDC '12 talk.
http://www.zoonami.com/briefing/2004-09-02.php Hollis' 2004 European Developer?s Forum talk.
http://www.rllmukforum.com/index.php...-by-dave-doak/ Report from somebody who heard Dave Doak's talk in 2005.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GoldenEye_007_%281997_video_game%29#Development