Misplaced Pages

#516483

136-612: Rare Replay is a 2015 compilation of 30 video games from the 30-year history of developers Rare and its predecessor, Ultimate Play the Game . The emulated games span multiple genres and consoles —from the ZX Spectrum to the Xbox 360 —and retain the features and errors of their original releases with minimal edits. The compilation adds cheats to make the older games easier and a Snapshots mode of specific challenges culled from parts of

272-466: A bidding war for ownership of Rare. Rare expressed interest in Activision's offer, but Microsoft offered more money. On 24 September 2002, Microsoft purchased Rare for $ 375 million (~$ 607 million in 2023). Rare became a first-party developer for Microsoft's Xbox . Character trademarks from games developed by Rare for Nintendo consoles, such as Conker of Conker's Bad Fur Day and Banjo of

408-453: A real-time strategy game involving cavemen, the game was re-imagined into a racing game prior to its release in 1997. It was one of the fastest selling games at the time, as recorded by The Guinness Book of Records . Diddy Kong Racing also features protagonists from some future Rare games, including Banjo and Conker . At the time, Rare was still working on the large-scale platform game. Originally codenamed Dream: Land of Giants , it

544-699: A "memorial" as an anthology since Rare had become "a shadow of its former self". He noted how the compilation's final games coincide with the Stamper brothers' exit from the company. Reviewers felt that the Stampers, Rare's founders, were a conspicuous absence from the compilation and Jaz Rignall figured that the compilation's stamps feature was a reference to the brothers. Reviewers praised the feature by which players could "rewind" time and reattempt difficult sections of ZX Spectrum and Nintendo Entertainment System games, which were known for their difficulty, especially in

680-424: A Kinect-based game; Kinect equivalents of Wii Fit and Professor Layton , a sequel to Diddy Kong Racing , and a sequel to Kameo: Elements of Power . Rare received numerous awards, including BAFTA award for "Best UK Developer" for its work on GoldenEye 007 . In 1997, Electronic Gaming Monthly named Rare "Most Promising Game Company", citing their high rate of success in putting out killer apps for

816-464: A consistent pace for five years. On October 14, 2024, Microsoft announced that Duncan will be promoted to head of Xbox Game Studios in November to succeed the outgoing Alan Hartman, with Joe Neate and Jim Horth to succeed him as studio heads. According to Mark Betteridge, one of Rare's main goals is to create games people will find enjoyable rather than just to earn profit. The Stamper brothers gave

952-507: A critical success for the company while less creativity and innovation were shown in them. When the Super Nintendo Entertainment System was conceived, Rare was not yet ready for the change. Rare limited their releases to some Battletoads games and decided to invest their significant NES profit in purchasing expensive Silicon Graphics workstations to make three-dimensional models. This move made Rare

1088-900: A crossover game between the two franchises. Rare released three Battletoads games in 1993, including Battletoads / Double Dragon: The Ultimate Team , Battletoads in Ragnarok's World and Battletoads in Battlemaniacs . The last Battletoads game from that era was released for the arcade in 1994. Several Battletoads games were also ported to some Sega 's systems like the Mega Drive/Genesis . Rare worked on licensed properties such as A Nightmare on Elm Street and Hollywood Squares , and ports including Marble Madness , Narc , and Sid Meier's Pirates! . The development of four of Rare's games were outsourced to Zippo Games, including Wizards & Warriors and

1224-569: A documentary about their studios at MundoRare's expense. The film, to celebrate Rare's 25th anniversary, would have been distributed on the internet and Xbox Live . Rare refused permission to shoot the film, saying that it was not "on message". MundoRare was shut down, and stated that the site could not support the company's new corporate direction. Rare's secrecy was criticised by Hardcore Gamer ' s Alex Carlson, as they thought that it made them "disconnected", and prompted them to develop games that "their fans don't want". When Duncan took over as

1360-527: A few specific video-game genres. They have also developed action-adventure games , including Star Fox Adventures and Kameo: Elements of Power ; fighting games , such as the Killer Instinct series; racing games , such as R.C. Pro-Am and Diddy Kong Racing , and beat 'em up - shoot 'em up games such as Battletoads and Captain Skyhawk . Since Rare has usually been associated with

1496-412: A focus on Xbox Live avatars. Rare also shifted their focus to Kinect. According to Henson, "Kinect will be the main focus for Rare going forwards as it's a very rich canvas. This is just the beginning of an experience that will touch millions of people". Rare's first Kinect project, Kinect Sports , was released in November 2010. Originally titled Sports Star , a more-complex sports simulation game ,

SECTION 10

#1732787371517

1632-412: A game remained fun and playable by modern standards. They wanted a wide and representative sample of "popular games that would hit that nostalgic beat that everyone likes". Deciding which versions of some of their most popular games to include also became a topic of debate among the team. Rare decided to include the updated Xbox 360 re-releases of Banjo-Kazooie , Banjo-Tooie , and Perfect Dark instead of

1768-596: A generic game with their intellectual properties. Everybody likes to create this narrative that Microsoft are evil, but that's not the case – they were very supportive. I guess there were a few people who have since left who thought: 'I wanted to be working on this game or my pet project, and I didn't get to.' And they've kind of painted a picture that it's all Microsoft's fault. — Gavin Price, former Rare employee and founder of Playtonic Games , about Microsoft. Ed Fries , head of Microsoft Studios' publishing division at

1904-625: A larger, more casual audience. The game received mixed reviews from critics, and was considered Rare's worst and least-popular game. At E3 2004 , Microsoft's Ken Lobb said that Rare had obtained Nintendo DS development kits and was working on two games for the Nintendo DS. Shortly afterwards, Microsoft issued a statement that the company and its studios had no plans for Nintendo DS development. However, in July 2005, Rare posted job openings for Nintendo DS development on its website and said that it

2040-429: A logo redesign, new website, and announcement of their upcoming game, Sea of Thieves . To select the final 30 games, Rare sorted through 120 games in their catalog. They rated each for fitness and prioritized those that featured characters and environments original to the company, choosing to exclude those based on licensed intellectual properties. Secondarily, Rare considered whether licenses were available and whether

2176-568: A mobile game company founded by Tim's son, Joe Stamper. Their first game is That Bouncy Thing! The Rubbishiest Game Ever for Android . Rare has developed a number of video games since its founding, with sales nearing 90 million copies by 2002. The company is best known for its platform games , which include the Donkey Kong Country , Banjo-Kazooie , and Conker series, and for its Nintendo 64 first-person shooters GoldenEye 007 and Perfect Dark . Rare does not adhere to

2312-565: A mobile-game studio, Flippin Pixels. Former Rare employee Lee Schuneman headed Lift London , a Microsoft studio. Phil Tossell and Jennifer Schneidereit founded Nyamyam and released Tengami . Playtonic Games was founded by several former Rare employees in 2014. They are best known for the Yooka-Laylee series, with the first game being a spiritual successor to Banjo-Kazooie . Rare founders Chris and Tim Stamper joined FortuneFish,

2448-626: A much faster speed. Ultimate NES Remix also has a new mode known as Famicom Remix , which is unlocked by getting all the stars from the original missions. It has all the missions from the original mode, but all the games featured runs on the original Famicom hardware. Aside from Nintendo World Championships Remix ' s online leaderboards, a good performance will reward players with stars and points. These accumulate to unlock new challenge stages and collectible stamps. These stamped graphical icons, along with NES Remix 2 ' s support for video recording, can add flair to Miiverse posts. Off-TV Play

2584-516: A musical history of the company's oeuvre, as told through small musical introductions to each Snapshot. The final opening was intended to evoke players' memories of Rare properties, and includes several Easter eggs . Rare Replay was announced during the Microsoft press conference at the June 2015 Electronic Entertainment Expo . The reveal was leaked in the hours prior to the show. The compilation

2720-479: A nod to their predecessor, Ultimate Play the Game. As reflective of the company's character and celebratory theme, Rare chose a papercraft art style and theatrical stage setting for the compilation. The chosen art style and use of 2D artwork also allowed the development team to more quickly create and implement new assets within the limited development time frame. Rare Replay became part of Rare's plan to simultaneously celebrate its past and introduce its future with

2856-546: A playable character in the 2013 fighting game Killer Instinct during a limited test period prior to the character's public release the following year. On June 25, 2019, Rare Replay became part of Xbox Game Pass and all of the Xbox 360 games excluding Jetpac Refuelled were enhanced to run at native 4K resolution on Xbox One X . On January 27, 2023, GoldenEye 007 was re-released on Game Pass for Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S , with digital owners of Rare Replay receiving

SECTION 20

#1732787371517

2992-410: A port upgraded its display resolution and frame rate. Rare Replay retains the local and online multiplayer modes of the original games, and includes all of their downloadable content add-ons. Games developed by Rare that were not their intellectual property , such as the Donkey Kong Country series and GoldenEye 007 , were not included in the compilation due to licensing issues, although

3128-793: A prominent second-party developer for Nintendo, which came to own a large minority stake in the company, with the release of Donkey Kong Country (1994). Throughout the 1990s, Rare started selling their games under the trademark name "Rareware" and received international recognition and critical acclaim for games such as the Donkey Kong Country series, Killer Instinct (1994), GoldenEye 007 , Banjo-Kazooie (1998), Perfect Dark (2000), and Conker's Bad Fur Day (2001). In 2002, Microsoft acquired Rare, which retained its original brand, logo, and most intellectual properties . Rare has since focused on developing games exclusively for Microsoft's video game consoles , including Grabbed by

3264-613: A racing game with vehicular combat elements, and Snake Rattle 'n' Roll , an action platform game with Tim Stamper developing the game's graphics. Rare also developed Battletoads , a beat'em up inspired by the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise. The game became known for its extreme difficulty, and upon seeing success, publisher Tradewest published multiple ports for the game, and tasked Rare to develop sequels. Tradewest also gave their own Double Dragon licence to Rare, allowing them to develop

3400-413: A remake of Conker's Bad Fur Day , in 2005 with updated graphics and a reworked multiplayer option. The game received generally favourable reviews but, similar to Bad Fur Day , was a commercial failure. Xbox successor Xbox 360 was released in 2005, and two of its launch games were developed by Rare: Perfect Dark Zero and Kameo: Elements of Power . Zero , a prequel to the first Perfect Dark ,

3536-496: A retrospective of the company's work in 2018. NES Remix The first game in the series, NES Remix , is composed of 16 vintage Nintendo Entertainment System games with a total of 204 challenges throughout; the second game, NES Remix 2 , features 12 additional NES games with a further 169 challenges. Mostly composed of vintage excerpts from games, these compilations also present special categories of stages called remixes to additionally concoct unique challenges not possible in

3672-542: A studio specialising in developing iOS games. Chris Seavor, director of Conker's Bad Fur Day , founded the Gory Detail studio along with Rare employee Shawn Pile. They released Parashoot Stan for mobile devices, as well as The Unlikely Legend of Rusty Pup on Steam. Starfire Studios were founded by four former Rare employees and released Fusion Genesis , an Xbox Live Arcade game published by Microsoft Game Studios. Another group of former Rare employees formed

3808-504: A video-game console manufacturer (such as Nintendo and Microsoft ), most of their games have been developed as exclusives for a particular platform . In 2018, Rare released Sea of Thieves , a pirate-themed open world sandbox game for Xbox One and Windows 10 . At Microsoft's X019 event, a fantasy action-adventure title called Everwild was announced. The company's cancelled projects include Dream: Land of Giants , which became Banjo-Kazooie ; Perfect Dark Core , originally

3944-438: Is now played reverse-mirrored from right to left. It features Luigi's higher jumping ability which had not been originally introduced until the 1986 Japanese sequel Super Mario Bros. 2 . Ultimate NES Remix is a Nintendo 3DS game featuring a select compilation of games and challenges from the first two Wii U releases. It uniquely features Speed Mario Bros. , which is the entirety of the original Super Mario Bros. running at

4080-496: Is supported. According to an IGN interview, the game started as a pet project by Nintendo EAD Tokyo 's Koichi Hayashida , after having directed Super Mario 3D Land . With approval from group manager and producer Yoshiaki Koizumi, Hayashida developed the first 100 challenges of NES Remix by himself. Also co-directing Super Mario 3D World at the time, Hayashida was later assisted by three additional members of EAD Tokyo. Nintendo additionally hired Indieszero to help finish

4216-450: Is very important to the company, thus they focus on trying out new technology, such as Xbox 360's Kinect. Historically the company has developed only for video game consoles, never for personal computers , with the Stamper brothers citing a preference for working on a stable standard format which is specifically designed for playing games. According to Duncan in 2014, Rare would only develop games that had unique ideas, and will never develop

Rare Replay - Misplaced Pages Continue

4352-556: The Banjo-Kazooie series, were retained by Rare; intellectual property created by Nintendo, such as Donkey Kong and Star Fox , were retained by Nintendo. This left Donkey Kong Racing , due for release for the GameCube, unreleased. 30 employees left Rare during the transition. Since Microsoft was not part of the handheld video-game console market, Rare continued to develop games for Nintendo handheld consoles after

4488-686: The Battletoads , Donkey Kong , and Banjo-Kazooie series, as well as games like GoldenEye 007 (1997), Perfect Dark (2000), Conker's Bad Fur Day (2001), Viva Piñata (2006), and Sea of Thieves (2018). Tim and Chris Stamper , who also founded Ultimate Play the Game , established Rare in 1985. During its early years, Rare was backed by a generous budget from Nintendo , primarily concentrated on Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) games. During this time, Rare created successful games such as Wizards & Warriors (1987), R.C. Pro-Am (1988), and Battletoads (1991). Rare became

4624-544: The Donkey Kong Land series. Nintendo's stake purchase allowed Rare to expand significantly. The number of staff members increased from 84 to 250, and Rare moved out from their headquarters at the Manor Farmhouse. Rare also developed a CGI arcade fighting game , Killer Instinct , on their own custom-built arcade machine . Killer Instinct was set to be released for Nintendo's own 64-bit system,

4760-464: The TimeSplitters series. The studio would be acquired by Crytek and renamed Crytek UK before its 2014 closure, with most of its staff moving to Deep Silver Dambuster Studios . Deep Silver briefly reestablished Free Radical Design from 2021 to 2023, with original founding members Steve Ellis and David Doak heading up the studio. Other former Free Radical and Rare staff formed Crash Labs,

4896-589: The Nintendo 3DS handheld system, adding that the development team required "some more machine power" in order to achieve the desired result at that time. Hayashida also noted that his familiarity with the Wii U architecture, having resulted from his work on Super Mario 3D World , lent itself well to the early development of NES Remix . However, a version of the game for the Nintendo 3DS, known as Ultimate NES Remix ,

5032-406: The Nintendo 64 in 1995, but was forced to release the game for the 16-bit SNES system, and had to downgrade the game's graphics. Killer Instinct sold 3.2 million copies, and was followed by a sequel, Killer Instinct 2 . Killer Instinct Gold , the console version of Killer Instinct 2 , suffered from a graphical downgrade due to the compression technology used to fit the arcade version onto

5168-547: The Nintendo Entertainment System , arcade, and Nintendo 64 games. On Rare Replay 's design, lead designer Paul Collins added that the Snapshot challenges were built to encourage players to sample all of the games, and that the rewind feature was to help all players finish the games without quitting in frustration. The compilation's opening musical number was a compromise from the original vision:

5304-561: The Nintendo World Championships Remix is unlocked if NES Remix is also purchased and its save file is present. This remix pushes players through three successive challenges in Super Mario Bros. , Super Mario Bros. 3 , and Dr. Mario , in order to achieve a ranking score on its new online leaderboards . Super Luigi Bros. is a Luigi themed remix of the entire Super Mario Bros. game which

5440-783: The Xbox One's backward-compatibility features , which Rare ultimately used in Rare Replay . The Microsoft team helped prepare Rare's nine Xbox 360 games for the release. Their discontinued online services were not restored for the compilation. Work on emulating the ZX Spectrum games was led by Gavin Thomas, a Microsoft engineer who had developed his own Spectrum emulator in his free time a few years prior. Code Mystics , who had previously ported Rare's Killer Instinct and Killer Instinct 2 to Xbox One, assisted with emulation efforts for

5576-439: The ZX Spectrum to the Xbox 360 (1983 to 2008), up until Rare's Kinect Sports series. The 30 games span multiple genres, including fighting , first-person shooter , simulation , platforming , racing , and skiing . The compilation opens with a musical number featuring Rare characters. Each game has a landing page with a variation on its theme music . While the core gameplay remains unedited, Rare added extra features to

Rare Replay - Misplaced Pages Continue

5712-571: The open world adventure game Black Widow , the player controls a spider-like robot equipped with missiles. The spider was expected to be recycled in Kameo 2 , an unreleased sequel to Kameo which was designed with a darker tone than the original. Rare also worked on The Fast and the Furriest , a spiritual successor to Diddy Kong Racing with vehicle customization and track alterations. The company's other planned intellectual properties included

5848-454: The survival game prototype Sundown and the airplane-based Tailwind . Other "Rare Revealed" videos include unused music tracks; concept art galleries; and trivia behind some game design decisions such as Blast Corps ' character design, the fate of Banjo-Kazooie 's Stop 'n' Swop features, and audio overrides built into Killer Instinct . Additional "Rare Revealed" featurettes not present in Rare Replay have been released since

5984-479: The trademark name "Rareware". The company was considered one of Nintendo's key developers and had enough recognition that Nintendo offered Rare the Nintendo catalogue of characters to create a 3D CGI game. The Stampers asked for Donkey Kong . The resulting game was Donkey Kong Country , which was developed by a total of 20 people and enjoyed an 18-month development cycle . Rare staff also visited Twycross Zoo , observing and videotaping real gorillas. The game

6120-530: The "frustrating" play control of the vintage Ice Climber , Tennis , or Clu Clu Land , or by making Pinball more "fun". IGN 's follow-up review for NES Remix 2 is also overall positive, rating it at 7.7 out of 10.0. While noting this sequel's fulfillment of their original request for leaderboards and for a superior selection of games, IGN says about the remix portion of the collection that "better games don't necessarily make for better remixes". They specifically commend Nintendo's "great job of revealing

6256-592: The Game team an unlimited budget for them to work on games for the Famicom platform. After they returned to England, they moved from Ashby-de-la-Zouch to Twycross , and established a new studio through Rare. They set their headquarters in a Manor Farmhouse. Rare also set up another company known as Rare, Inc., in Miami, Florida . Headed by Joel Hochberg, the American company was involved in maintaining Rare's operation in

6392-480: The GameCube. Game development costs gradually increased, and Nintendo did not provide Rare with more capital nor did they purchase the company's remaining stake. The Stampers were surprised that Nintendo did not directly acquire the studio. Rare looked for potential buyers. In early 2000, workers from Activision and Microsoft began visiting Rare with purchase offers. According to Microsoft's Ed Fries , Nintendo, Activision, and Microsoft then became embroiled in

6528-587: The Ghoulies (2003), Kameo (2005), Perfect Dark Zero (2005), and Viva Piñata (2006). In 2007, the Stampers left Rare to pursue other opportunities and, in 2010, the company's focus shifted to the Xbox Live Avatar and Kinect , releasing three Kinect Sports games. In 2015, Rare developed Rare Replay , an Xbox One -exclusive compilation containing 30 of its games to celebrate its 30th anniversary. Rare's most recent game, Sea of Thieves ,

6664-709: The Nintendo 64 multiplayer modes lacked the frame rate upgrades that their single-player modes received. Kotaku noted that the Xbox One had more Nintendo 64 re-releases than Nintendo's Wii U Virtual Console at the time. Its reviewer found the in-game Xbox One button prompts to be "delightful anachronisms ". Ars Technica 's reviewer commended Rare's choice of the Nintendo 64 version of Conker's Bad Fur Day over its updated but censored Xbox re-release. Initial reviews found Jet Force Gemini unplayable without dual thumbstick controls, which were later added. While Machkovech ( Ars Technica ) considered Rare's Microsoft games to

6800-431: The Nintendo 64 originals, as the developers realized the various quality-of-life improvements in these remasters were too valuable even to the purists on their staff. Conversely, they chose the Nintendo 64 version of Conker's Bad Fur Day over its Xbox remake, Conker: Live & Reloaded , which they felt had strayed too far from the original due to being less lenient on censorship. While Rare Replay 's designers made

6936-537: The Nintendo 64. However, Nintendo Senior Managing Director Shigeru Miyamoto suggested the team redesign the game as part of the Star Fox series for Nintendo's new console, the GameCube . Unlike previous Star Fox games, Star Fox Adventures focuses on ground-based, open world exploration. The game received positive reviews upon its launch in 2002. Star Fox Adventures was the only game developed by Rare for

SECTION 50

#1732787371517

7072-526: The Nintendo 64. Rare was awarded the BAFTA Interactive Entertainment Moving Images Award in 2000 for developing Perfect Dark . Tim and Chris Stamper were named as Development Legends in the 2015 Develop Industry Excellence Awards. Rare was included as Gamasutra 's Top 30 Developers of All Time, and was ranked as the 36th best video game maker by IGN . The Herbert Art Gallery and Museum curated

7208-466: The Spectrum game controls were difficult to decipher. The Ars Technica reviewer thought that the compilation did a poor job of explaining each game's controls, and wondered why Rare did not include introductory or how-to videos. Instead, he turned to YouTube videos and external FAQs before playing each game. Eurogamer and Ars Technica disagreed on the virtues of having the Spectrum emulator replicate

7344-534: The US and contacting major US publishers. Hochberg was previously the vice president of American arcade manufacturer Centuri . The Famicom was eventually released in North America and Europe under the name Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). My goal at Rare was to bring products that you wouldn't see for six to eight years and make it available as soon as possible. — Tim Stamper, founder of Rare. With

7480-421: The Xbox 360 emulation and game installation. Among its games, reviewers preferred Rare's Nintendo 64 games, especially Blast Corps , and disliked Perfect Dark Zero , Grabbed by the Ghoulies , and the Spectrum games. Some outlets lamented the absence, due to licensing issues, of the Donkey Kong Country series and GoldenEye 007 , while others thought the package was fine without them. Critics deemed

7616-520: The ZX Spectrum in the following year. The Famicom's manufacturer, Nintendo , claimed that it was impossible to reverse engineer the console. Using the information the Ultimate Play the Game team acquired from Rare, the team prepared several tech demos and showed them to the Nintendo executive Minoru Arakawa in Kyoto . Impressed with their efforts, Nintendo decided to grant the Ultimate Play

7752-475: The acquisition. In August 2003, Rare and Microsoft entered an agreement with THQ for THQ to publish Rare's games for the Game Boy Advance , including Sabre Wulf , a game based on an Ultimate character; Banjo-Kazooie: Grunty's Revenge , initially intended as a Game Boy Color game and It's Mr. Pants! , a puzzle game originally developed as Donkey Kong: Coconut Crackers . January 2005 saw

7888-506: The acquisition. He noted that Rare employees were attempting to "recreate the glory years", but their skills had become outdated and were no longer "applicable in today's market". Duncan insisted that there were still a lot of talented people working at Rare, and they will have a "bright future". Unlike other software developers, Rare acquired a reputation for secrecy; the approach to their office buildings, in Manor Park near Twycross ,

8024-448: The archival game content and developer interviews as among the compilation's best features, but were upset to see the content hidden behind time-consuming in-game challenges. Rare Replay became Rare's first United Kingdom all-formats charts bestseller since Banjo-Kazooie in 1998. Rare Replay is a compilation of 30 games developed by Rare and its predecessor, Ultimate Play the Game , over their 30-year history across platforms from

8160-409: The best since Valve 's The Orange Box . On the other hand, Jeremy Parish ( USgamer ) found the contemporaneous Mega Man Legacy Collection 's Criterion Collection -style presentation to be a more authentic appreciation of its original material. Chris Plante ( The Verge ) saw Rare Replay 's slight hardware improvements and added touches as a viable model for putting retrogames back on

8296-589: The cartridge of the SNES system, a process known as "Advanced Computer Modelling". Their progress with the 3D graphics on the SGI systems impressed Nintendo, and in 1994, Nintendo bought a 25% stake in the company that gradually increased to 49%, making Rare a second-party developer for Nintendo. Rare maintained autonomous operations, green-lighting and designing projects without significant involvement from Nintendo. During this period, Rare started selling their games under

SECTION 60

#1732787371517

8432-491: The company as it was more sophisticated than the Spectrum, it had a worldwide market, and its cartridges had no load times. As a result, Rare was established in 1985. Its main goal was to reverse-engineer the console and investigate the codes for Famicom's games to learn more about the console's programming. With successful results, the company decided to sell the Ultimate brand to U.S. Gold , and ceased game development for

8568-492: The company's games for Microsoft sold poorly and Microsoft decided to restructure the studio at the end of the decade. In March 2010, Rare opened a new facility at Fazeley Studios in Digbeth , Birmingham . Later that year, Microsoft confirmed that Scott Henson, a developer who had worked on the hardware and software designs of the Xbox 360 console and Kinect for Xbox 360, replaced Mark Betteridge as studio manager and announced

8704-674: The company's studio director. That year saw the release of Jetpac Refuelled , a remake of Jetpac for Xbox Live Arcade . Rare unveiled work on Xbox Live avatars , Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise (the next game in the Viva Piñata series), and Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts in 2008. Made by the core team that developed the first Banjo-Kazooie , Nuts & Bolts received significant criticism from players due to its focus on vehicle construction rather than traditional platforming. Though generally receiving positive reviews,

8840-507: The company. Rare incorporated four hardware emulators in the package, and worked with its parent company, Microsoft , to use its then-unannounced Xbox 360 emulation . Rare Replay released worldwide as an Xbox One exclusive on August 4, 2015. Rare Replay 's reviews were generally favorable. Critics appreciated the package's design and craft and called the release a new pinnacle for compilation releases. They commended its "rewind" and Snapshot features, but criticized technical issues in

8976-433: The company. Rare was also influenced by community requests to bring their catalogue to Xbox One, and by the Microsoft backward-compatibility team's progress on the feature. The compilation was one of several celebration ideas, but once it was chosen, the "30 years" theme led to the 30 game limit and US$ 30 price point. In the early planning stages, the studio initially settled on the tentative title Rare: Ultimate Collection ,

9112-476: The compilation's cohesion. He added that the emulated Xbox 360 experience was subpar compared to the unemulated experience. Rare (company) Rare Limited is a British video game developer and a studio of Xbox Game Studios based in Twycross , Leicestershire . Rare's games span the platform , first-person shooter , action-adventure , fighting , and racing genres. Its most popular games include

9248-411: The completion of this deal with the release of Banjo-Pilot , known as Diddy Kong Pilot before the Microsoft acquisition. In 2003, Rare released their first Microsoft game, Grabbed by the Ghoulies , a humorous action-adventure game set in a haunted mansion full of supernatural creatures. Originally intended as a free-roaming game, it was significantly streamlined in design and concept to attract

9384-401: The consoles via Xbox Live 's cloud sync features. Rare Replay uses the prior Xbox 360 ports of Banjo-Kazooie , Banjo-Tooie , and Perfect Dark rather than emulating their originals. However, Rare chose to emulate the original Conker's Bad Fur Day rather than using its Xbox remake Conker: Live and Reloaded (2005). Grabbed by the Ghoulies runs natively on the Xbox One, as

9520-476: The developer content more important than individual games. Polygon 's reviewer called the compilation "an essential piece of gaming history", while Kotaku 's critic noted that the features lacked a straightforward history of the company and hid Rare's significant, former ties with Nintendo. Whitehead ( Eurogamer ) wondered why Mire Mare and other early games were ignored in the bonus content. Machkovech ( Ars Technica ) found Rare Replay to be as much

9656-581: The development of a sequel, Kinect Sports: Season Two . In March 2011, Scott Henson announced that Craig Duncan, who had worked on Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing and the Colin McRae Rally series, was hired as senior studio director. Simon Woodroffe, who had worked at several studios (including Adventure Soft , Midway Games , Ubisoft , and Sega ), became the studio's creative director in April 2012. A Rare property, Killer Instinct ,

9792-505: The features were locked behind time-consuming in-game challenges. Sam Machkovech ( Ars Technica ) found himself stuck not even halfway through the stamp card progress after finishing the easiest achievements. This made the unreleased game footage particularly hard to access. Stephen Totilo ( Kotaku ) similarly became uninterested in finishing the stamp collection. He called the stamps the package's "sickest joke" in consideration of Rare's reputation for collectible-heavy games. Some reviewers found

9928-405: The final call, other Rare employees and veterans gave input and recollected old game development stories. The developers briefly considered including playable prototypes of unreleased Rare games such as Black Widow and Kameo 2 as part of the collection, but the work required to do so made this infeasible given the limited development time frame, leading them to produce "Rare Revealed" videos about

10064-628: The fundamental reshaping or combination of games, sometimes by blending in more modern graphical features of the Wii U, for a new experience that may even be technologically impossible on the vintage NES . For example: completing a darkened level which is lit only by a spotlight superimposed over the player's character; navigating upon disappearing platforms in Super Mario Bros. ; or playing a Donkey Kong stage as Link instead of Mario , challenged by Link's inability to jump. NES Remix 2 contains two particularly substantial remixes. Reminiscent of 1990's Nintendo World Championships tour across America,

10200-486: The game for free. Rare Replay received "generally favorable" reviews, according to review aggregator Metacritic . It reached the top of the United Kingdom all-format games sales charts—the first Xbox One exclusive to do so and Rare's first since Banjo-Kazooie in 1998. Rare Replay was also the first top-ranked budget game since Wii Fit Plus (2009) before it fell to sixth place the next week. Rare Replay

10336-439: The game was named Perfect Dark . Hollis left Rare for Nintendo 14 months after the start of Perfect Dark ' s development. Around the same time, numerous employees left the company and formed new studios. With major project leads departing, a new team took over its development and diminished the role of lighting in the game, making it a more straightforward first-person shooter. The game's troubled development did not affect

10472-472: The game was streamlined into what Microsoft executive Don Mattrick hoped would be the Kinect equivalent of Wii Sports . According to a former Rare employee, the team was worried about the game during its development because of Kinect's limitations. Its reviews were average, but it was a commercial success, selling three million units by May 2011. Rare and BigPark , another Microsoft studio, collaborated on

10608-481: The game's launch via the company's official YouTube channel. Rare began work on Rare Replay in October 2014 as a 30th anniversary celebration under the codename "Pearl", named after the traditional theme of 30th anniversary gifts. The company wanted to do something unique for what they considered a rare milestone in the video game industry and also to celebrate creative director Gregg Mayles 's 25th year working at

10744-432: The game. Hayashida stated that he designed NES Remix partly out of desire to play NES games at work; he did not get to play many of these games as a child, and he considered the game an opportunity to make up for lost time. Hayashida was also inspired to break the games up into minigames for similar reasons, because as an adult he did not have as much time as he did as a child, but he still wanted to play later "scenes" in

10880-471: The games. Hayashida expressed his belief that NES Remix should be completely authentic to its vintage roots. To this end, the compilation is based entirely on accurate emulation of the NES's hardware and on the original game software. This includes hardware glitches such as frame rate slowdown when too many characters are on the screen, and software bugs . Hayashida explained that these were intricate parts of

11016-492: The games. Player progress is rewarded with behind-the-scenes footage and interviews about Rare's major and unreleased games. The compilation was one of several ideas Rare considered to celebrate its 30th anniversary. Inspired by fans, upcoming Xbox One backward compatibility features, and a desire to link Rare's past and future, the company sorted through 120 games to choose those that best represented its oeuvre. It prioritized games with characters and environments original to

11152-422: The graphical glitches of the original console. Jaz Rignall of USgamer appreciated the added option to save game progress at any time for the Spectrum games, and wrote that the collection will remind players how difficult games used to be. Rare Replay 's Nintendo 64 emulation pleased critics. Ars Technica wrote that the polygonal upgrades compensated for the "blurry" and "pixelated" source material, though

11288-556: The greatest and most influential games of all time , though some fans and former employees have been critical of the company's output under Microsoft. Rare evolved from the company Ultimate Play the Game , which was founded in Ashby-de-la-Zouch , Leicestershire by former arcade game developers Tim and Chris Stamper . After multiple critically and commercially successful releases including Jetpac , Atic Atac , Sabre Wulf , and Knight Lore , Ultimate Play The Game

11424-583: The latter was provided to owners of the digital version of Rare Replay free of charge in January 2023. Some games also received minor edits to reflect Microsoft's ownership of Rare, such as the removal of Nintendo logos and omission of a music track from Blast Corps that originated in Donkey Kong Land . A bonus feature section, "Rare Revealed", contains over an hour of behind-the-scenes footage focusing on Rare's major and unreleased games. The player completes in-game challenges to collect stamps, which increase

11560-475: The least favorites were Perfect Dark Zero , Grabbed by the Ghoulies , and the early Spectrum games, which reviewers felt had aged the worst. Ars Technica , however, defended the Spectrum games for showing an experimental and unrefined side of Rare. Many critics regretted the implacable licensing problems that led to the exclusion of what they considered the company's best games— Donkey Kong Country , GoldenEye 007 , and Diddy Kong Racing —while others felt that

11696-498: The making of GoldenEye 007 was planned, but was left unreleased until being leaked in 2019. Unlike the usual product development cycle, which grows a concept into a final product, most of the development work in Rare Replay was in converging 30 games across six platforms onto one disc. The engineering challenge lay in the quantity of games and platforms being emulated rather than the emulation effort itself. Rare worked in close collaboration with Microsoft, who were secretly developing

11832-436: The market and slowing the tide of unlicensed downloads . Much of the commentary on the compilation focused on Rare's choice of selections and concluded that players new and old would find enough new treasures to outweigh the duds. Reviewer favorites included Blast Corps , Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts , the Viva Piñata games, and the Nintendo 64 titles (especially Banjo-Kazooie , Conker , and Perfect Dark ). Among

11968-460: The money went towards Gears of War , which is going to sell millions anyway. It was a bit of like, "What about the other franchise?" I think we got left in the wake somewhat. — Software engineer James Thomas, on the marketing campaign for Viva Piñata . In 2006, the company released Viva Piñata , a game involving gardening . Incorporating elements of several franchises including The Sims , Animal Crossing , and Harvest Moon , it

12104-578: The most technologically advanced developer in the UK, and situated them high in the international market. Their priority also changed at that time, as the team decided to focus on quality instead of quantity. Rare, using the SGI systems, created a boxing game demo and presented it to Nintendo. As the SNES at that time could not render all of the SGI graphics at once, Rare used the SGI graphics to produce 3D models and graphics, before pre-rendering these graphics onto

12240-517: The notoriously challenging Battletoads . Kotaku figured that Rare added cheats to make the esoteric and "crushingly tough" Spectrum games tolerable, and the Ars Technica review wished that this "rewind" feature had been extended to the Nintendo 64 games. Critics liked the Snapshot challenges and Polygon reported that they were crucial for learning basic game mechanics , though less accessible than those of NES Remix . Reviewers complained that

12376-403: The number of items the computer has to process on-screen. The Nintendo 64 emulation upgrades the games' polygon rendering and frame rate . The nine Xbox 360 releases install directly to the Xbox One dashboard separately from the Rare Replay compilation and require online activation before they can be played offline. The Xbox 360 games share player saved game and Achievement progress between

12512-457: The older games as challenges for the player, such as collecting a target number of points within a time limit in a set scenario, similar in function to the NES Remix series. Some Snapshots are connected sequentially as a playlist . The ZX Spectrum emulation retains the technical idiosyncrasies of the original hardware. For instance, their graphics fluctuate in render speed depending on

12648-412: The older releases. The player can toggle the visual appearance of scanlines and "rewind" up to ten seconds of gameplay in pre- Nintendo 64 games. The older games can be saved at will and autosave progress upon the player's exit. Rare also added an infinite lives cheat setting for some older games and fixed a game-breaking bug in Battletoads . The "Snapshots" feature presents small segments of

12784-405: The original and directly affect the difficulty and so they were not changed. Hayashida also spoke similarly about the controls; even if they were not considered ideal, he understood that they had been conceived that way for a reason and so they were unaltered for NES Remix . In an interview with gaming website IGN , Hayashida revealed that NES Remix would have been more difficult to develop for

12920-413: The original games. The purchase of both NES Remix and NES Remix 2 unlocks Championship Mode in the latter, sporting an online leaderboards system. Most challenges are simply excerpts from vintage games, involving timed tasks such as speedrunning , clearing an area without dying, or defeating a certain number of enemies while utilizing a given power-up. The remix categories are additionally based on

13056-429: The other games we're developing in the company, so it's really a group of games enthusiasts all working together to produce the best games they can – that's Rare. Though normally secretive, Rare allowed several exclusive tours of its studio by fansites Rarenet in 1999, Rare-Extreme in 2004 and again in 2009, as well as by the website Eurogamer in 2006. In 2010, Rare declined an offer by fansite MundoRare to film

13192-422: The overall change "positive", saying that Microsoft's capital could help Rare develop their projects. Former Rare employee Gavin Price said that some Microsoft executives, such as Phil Spencer , were supportive of the developer. Grant Kirkhope , a former composer at Rare, strongly criticised Microsoft following the acquisition. Former Xbox executive Peter Moore voiced his disappointment with Rare's works after

13328-483: The overlooked, clever design" of the Japanese Super Mario Bros. 2 , and summarily praise the overall collection by "officially demanding more". GameSpot assigns a 7.0 out of 10.0, calling NES Remix 2 "a delightful experience" with "more than enough content to keep you busy ... for a good while". On July 18, 2024, Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition , which features similar gameplay,

13464-552: The package was fine without them. Also omitted were Rare's Kinect Sports series, Nintendo franchise releases, Super Nintendo -era games, and " Mario Kart clones". These timeline gaps precluded, for instance, the player from understanding Conker as an edgy response to the "cutesy" characters of preceding Nintendo games . Despite these absences, Ars Technica 's critic was impressed by Microsoft's ability to license from publishers including Tradewest , Nintendo, Milton Bradley , and Electronic Arts . Eurogamer 's reviewer

13600-468: The player's rank and unlock the bonus features; to collect all the stamps, the player has to finish every game and Snapshot. The compilation automatically grants stamps for prior progress in the package's Xbox 360 games. Current and former Rare employees, such as Grant Kirkhope , feature in the documentary clips, though studio founders Tim and Chris Stamper do not appear. "Rare Revealed" unveils gameplay footage from several unreleased games: for example, in

13736-431: The progress of Rare's other teams. When Perfect Dark was still in development, Rare released two other games, Jet Force Gemini and Donkey Kong 64 . In 1999, Nintendo signed an agreement with Disney , and assigned Rare to develop several racing and adventure games featuring Mickey Mouse . The project later became Mickey's Speedway USA and Mickey's Racing Adventure . Perfect Dark eventually resurfaced and it

13872-406: The selections. Reviewers noted the quality and craft that went into the compilation's design. Jaz Rignall ( USgamer ) was impressed by the compilation's presentation and balance between frills and efficiency, and Dan Whitehead ( Eurogamer ) felt that the theatrical theme fit Rare's character. Reviewers considered Rare Replay a high-water mark for video game compilations — Kotaku called it

14008-414: The sequel to the first Perfect Dark ; Black Widow , an open world game that tasks players to control an eight-legged robot; Sundown , which featured a horde-like survival mode; The Fast and the Furriest , a mascot racer; Tailwind , an action game featuring helicopters ; Urchin , a Fable -style game which began development after the completion of Live & Reloaded ; Ordinary Joe ; Savannah ,

14144-434: The smaller Nintendo 64 cartridge. Rare then developed Blast Corps for the Nintendo 64 . The game sold one million copies, which was considered disappointing by Rare. At that time, Rare was split into several teams, working on different projects. A large-scaled platformer was set to be released afterwards but was delayed. As a result, Rare changed their schedule and released their smaller projects first. The first project

14280-426: The studio's head, he intended to change the culture of the studio. Rare's office was completely remodeled so as to facilitate idea sharing between team members. The studio also adopted a more open attitude to its community, with the studio inviting fans to take part in the development project of their latest game Sea of Thieves . Around 1997, a number of Rare employees left to establish separate companies. The first

14416-536: The team considerable creative freedom, although they would intervene if a product was technically flawed or under-performing. Some employees noted that working for Rare in its early days could be difficult, with staff members allowed 30 minutes for lunch and possibly working more than 60 hours a week. Nintendo worked closely with Rare, and their relationship was described as a "creative partnership" by Viva Piñata designer Justin Cook. According to Hansen in 2010, innovation

14552-521: The third instalment of the Jetpac series, Solar Jetman: Hunt for the Golden Warship . Rare eventually acquired Zippo Games and renamed them to Rare Manchester. According to Ste Pickford, a Rare team member through the late 80s and the early 90s, Rare just "wanted to make as many games as they could in their 'window of opportunity'". The huge library of games made large profits, but none became

14688-399: The time of acquisition, said that the company attempted to preserve Rare's culture so its staff could continue feeling that they worked for Rare rather than Microsoft. Rare employees differed about working conditions after the Microsoft acquisition. According to Star Fox Adventures lead engineer Phil Tossell, conditions became more stressful after an "imperceptible" start, and the culture of

14824-522: The two companies began clashing. Tossell said that Microsoft gradually imposed a corporate structure on Rare, including more performance reviews and meetings, to which some Rare members found difficulty in adapting. Some admitted that early changes, such as permitting team members to discuss projects they were not working on and allowing staff members to use the Internet or listen to music during work hours, were beneficial to team morale. Betteridge called

14960-411: The unfinished games instead. Interviews with current and former Rare staff members for the "Rare Revealed" featurettes took place over the course of several months in 2015. Several interview segments and "Rare Revealed" videos were omitted from the game due to time and disc space constraints; these were later released via the company's official YouTube channel. An additional "Rare Revealed" video focused on

15096-491: The unlimited budget, Rare could work a large variety of different games. The first project Rare worked on was Slalom , a downhill skiing game. The company then worked with various gaming publishers that included Tradewest , Acclaim Entertainment , Electronic Arts , Sega , Mindscape , and Gametek to produce over 60 games for the NES and several additional Game Boy conversions. They helped in creating new and original intellectual properties , including R.C. Pro-Am ,

15232-421: The weakest of the lot, Whitehead ( Eurogamer ) found them even more enjoyable in the context of Rare Replay . Reviewers noted frame rate and technical issues in the Xbox 360 emulation and did not like its separation from the rest of the compilation. Kollar ( Polygon ) called the Xbox 360 game installation process needlessly complex, and Marty Sliva ( IGN ) did not like how the Xbox 360 startup sequence interrupted

15368-598: Was GoldenEye 007 , a game based on the James Bond film GoldenEye . The project was led by Martin Hollis and development was conducted by an inexperienced team. Inspired by Sega 's Virtua Cop , Goldeneye 007 had originally been an on-rails shooter before the team decided to expand the gameplay and turn it into a free-roaming first-person shooter . New elements, such as stealth , headshot mechanics and reloading , were introduced. A split-screen multiplayer

15504-587: Was revived in 2013. The company had a supporting role in its development, assisting lead developer Double Helix Games . Another Rare mascot, Conker, was also featured in another Microsoft game, Project Spark as episodic downloadable content . Known as Conker's Big Reunion , it was cancelled in 2015. Are they gonna go: Rare is back? And what my answer would be is, Rare has never gone away. We've just changed and made different types of games. — Craig Duncan, head of Rare on their "next project" in 2014. Rare released Kinect Sports Rivals in 2014. The game

15640-402: Was Eighth Wonder, underwritten by Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, which did not produce any games before it closed. After Martin Hollis left Rare, he joined Nintendo before founding his own company Zoonami , releasing Zendoku , Go! Puzzle and Bonsai Barber . Several Perfect Dark team members, including David Doak and Steve Ellis, founded Free Radical Design and created

15776-459: Was a commercial success; in January 2020, Microsoft declared it the most successful IP it released in the eighth generation , with more than 10 million players. The game was also released on the PlayStation 5 , marking it as Rare's first product on a PlayStation console. Since 2018, Rare has been working with Dlala Studios on a Battletoads revival for the Xbox One and Windows, which

15912-510: Was a critical success, with critics praising the game's highly advanced visuals and artstyle. Donkey Kong Country sold over nine million copies worldwide, making it the third best-selling game in the SNES library . The game received several Game of the Year honours and was followed by two sequels, Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest and Donkey Kong Country 3: Dixie Kong's Double Trouble! , as well as several handheld spin-offs such as

16048-413: Was a game featuring a young boy named Edison and pirates. The protagonist was then replaced by a bear known as Banjo, and Rare expanded the role of Kazooie the bird . The two characters were inspired by characters from Walt Disney Animation Studios films and Rare hoped that they could appeal to a younger audience. Banjo-Kazooie was released in June 1998 to critical acclaim. A sequel, Banjo-Tooie ,

16184-432: Was acclaimed as innovative. The game's commercial performance was a disappointment, however, and some Rare team members questioned Microsoft Studios' large marketing budget for Gears of War and its relative neglect of Viva Piñata . On 2 January 2007, Rare founders Chris and Tim Stamper left the company to "pursue other opportunities". Former lead designer Gregg Mayles became Rare's creative director and Mark Betteridge

16320-479: Was added to the game by the end of its development. GoldenEye 007 was the first console first-person shooter developed by Rare and it was released two years after the release of the film. The game received critical praise and received numerous awards. Goldeneye 007 remained one of the best-selling games for two years, and sold more than eight million units worldwide. Rare then developed Diddy Kong Racing , their first self-published game. Originally intended as

16456-605: Was creating "key" DS games. Only two were ever released, with the first one being Diddy Kong Racing DS , a remake of the Nintendo 64 title Diddy Kong Racing which was released in February 2007, and the second being Viva Piñata: Pocket Paradise , a life simulation game , released in September 2008. Both games support the Nintendo DS Rumble Pak . Rare released Conker: Live & Reloaded ,

16592-428: Was eventually announced. IGN rated NES Remix at 8.0 out of 10.0. While they did find this first compilation enjoyable, they criticized the lack of multiplayer functionality and online leaderboards as a "startling oversight", and wished that a greater quantity and quality of titles had been included. They suggested that Nintendo could have more fundamentally altered certain vintage games, such as by improving upon

16728-635: Was eventually released in 2020. Rare would also reconnect with Nintendo in 2019 through the addition of Banjo & Kazooie as playable characters in the crossover fighting game Super Smash Bros. Ultimate for the Nintendo Switch as well as re-releases of their games on Nintendo Switch Online . At the X019 event in November 2019, Rare announced it was developing Everwild , an action-adventure game for Windows and Xbox Series X/S . As of January 2020, Rare had more than 200 employees, after growing at

16864-432: Was intended for a mature audience, and features violence , profanity and scatological humour . The game received positive reviews from critics, but was a commercial failure as the game was released at the end of the Nintendo 64's life cycle and was not actively promoted by Nintendo due to its crude content. After the completion of Diddy Kong Racing , another team was working on a new game known as Dinosaur Planet for

17000-437: Was monitored by cameras. The company was internally divided into different barns where employees worked exclusively on their group's game. According to Tim Stamper, Rare has a different philosophy. We don't really have much contact with other game development companies and we just do things the way they've evolved. We try to employ people who are great games players and games enthusiasts and they're really interested in seeing

17136-521: Was one of the biggest UK-based video game development companies. The ZX Spectrum home computer , the platform the company usually developed games for, was only popular in the UK, and they believed that working on that platform would not be beneficial to the company's growth as they considered it a "dead end". Meanwhile, the company inspected an imported console from Japan, the Famicom , and believed that it would be an ideal future platform of choice for

17272-465: Was originally intended for GameCube before its redesign as an Xbox 360 game. Rare removed several features to meet the game's release deadline in 2005. Kameo: Elements of Power was also intended for the GameCube. A new intellectual property , in it the player character shape-shifts to solve puzzles. Although both received generally positive reviews from critics and sold more than a million copies, they were considered disappointments. Yet, so much of

17408-437: Was released as an Xbox One exclusive worldwide on August 4, 2015. There are no plans for a Windows 10 release or downloadable content additions. While Rare's founders, the Stamper brothers, were not interviewed in the bonus features, Tim Stamper appeared in a Develop interview set to coincide with the compilation's release. Rare also added a tie-in wherein Rare Replay owners unlocked the Battletoads character Rash as

17544-520: Was released in 2000 to critical acclaim. The game sold approximately 2 million copies. Conker the Squirrel also had his own game, originally named Conker's Quest . It was later renamed Twelve Tales: Conker 64 ; however, the new game was criticised for being too family-friendly and too similar to Banjo-Kazooie . As a result, the team renamed the game Conker's Bad Fur Day and it was re-revealed in 2000. Conker's Bad Fur Day , unlike Banjo-Kazooie ,

17680-417: Was released in 2000. It was a critical success and it outsold the first game, selling 3 million copies. Upon the completion of Banjo-Kazooie ' s development, Hollis immediately began another project. Originally set to be a tie-in for Tomorrow Never Dies , Rare was significantly outbid by another publisher, forcing Rare to develop a new concept with new characters. With a major emphasis on lighting,

17816-508: Was released in 2018. Several former Rare employees have formed their own companies, such as Free Radical Design , best known for producing the TimeSplitters series, and Playtonic Games , best known for Yooka-Laylee (2017). Rare is widely acknowledged in the video game industry and has received numerous accolades from critics and journalists. Rare is also known as a secretive and seclusive studio. Several Rare games, such as Donkey Kong Country and GoldenEye 007 , have been cited as among

17952-569: Was released on 11 April 2017 with mixed reviews. According to Rare composer Robin Beanland , the year 2015 would be significant for the company. At E3 2015 , a new compilation game, Rare Replay celebrating the studio's 30th anniversary, was introduced; it was released in August. The compilation's thirty titles only included games to which Rare owned the intellectual property. Because of this, Rare's operations director Drew Quakenbush noted it

18088-460: Was surprised by Rare's consistent style across the selections, and compared the company's legacy to that of Cosgrove Hall Films . The Kotaku reviewer saw Rare Replay as "image rehabilitation" that would hopefully mark Rare's return to making "deep and daring games" in line with their historical reputation. Reviewers felt that the archival game content and developer interviews were among Rare Replay 's best features. Some were frustrated that

18224-453: Was the reason GoldenEye 007 's absence from the compilation. Rare Replay became the most pre-ordered game shown at E3 that year and received critical acclaim upon launch. A new game, Sea of Thieves , a multiplayer adventure game marketed as "The Best Game That Rare Has Ever Made", was introduced at E3 that year. It was delayed at the following year's conference and was released on 20 March 2018. The game received mixed reviews, but

18360-436: Was the sixth best selling game in North America for August 2015. The compilation had earlier been Amazon.com 's most preordered game of the 2015 Electronic Entertainment Expo. Reviewers liked its value proposition and low price. Many of the compilation's games already had long-established legacies, such that gamers who experienced the originals in their heyday—the target audience—were unlikely to be swayed by critical reviews of

18496-511: Was worked on by 150 staff members and a new game engine was developed for it. The game was a commercial failure and following Microsoft's announcement that Kinect would no longer be a priority, about 15 Rare employees were laid off. On 10 February 2015, a group of former Rare employees announced the formation of a new studio, Playtonic Games , and planned a "spiritual successor" to the Banjo-Kazooie franchise titled Yooka-Laylee , which

#516483