All Your History: Rare Part 3 – One of a Kind

By the late nineties, British developer Rareware was one of Nintendo’s most treasured assets.  After creating a slew of games for the original NES, their output on the Super Nintendo had been fewer in number but better in nature.  Games like the legendary platformer Donkey Kong Country and the respected fighter Killer Instinct put Rareware at the head of its class.  Their use of pre-rendered graphics on the Super Nintendo was groundbreaking, and ushered in the era of 3D modeling in video games.  So when Nintendo unveiled their new system, the Nintendo 64, the studio saw it as an opportunity to push boundaries once again, and explore the possiblilities of open environments.  Sadly, their first attempt, the bulldozing game Blast Corps, wasn’t the success that they hoped it would be.  And the showcase title they were working on, a family-friendly platformer, ended up being delayed longer than they thought.  In the meantime, all they had to release were a couple of their side-projects, lesser games with lower prospects.  Little did they know that one of these would become one of the most iconic, recognizable, and seachanging titles of its generation.

One of a Kind

In nineteen ninety-five, the first new James Bond film in years was released.  Called GoldenEye and starring Pierce Brosnan, it was seen by many as a return to form for a franchise in need of a rebirth.  As a part of the multi-media blitz around the film, the video game rights for it were licensed to Nintendo, an odd choice considering the Japanese company’s reputation as the kiddy-friendly company.  Indeed, Nintendo was specifically trying to prove that it could appeal to the adult, hardcore gamer as well.  To that end, they gave the license to their Western darling, Rareware.  The British studio had always showed good taste, and besides, Bond was British, too.  Plus, shooters were more of a Western genre.

Still, the license came with an inherent stigma.  Movie tie-ins were notorious for low quality.  In general, they were cheaply produced and made at the last minute, released alongside the film well before it was ready.  As such, Rareware didn’t want to throw its weight behind a project that might not be any good.  Still, one of the Killer Instinct programmers, Martin Hollis, asked to be given the project.  He wanted to prove himself: it would be his first time as gamer director.  For eight of the other people he brought onboard, it would be their first time making a game, ever.  That being said, Rareware’s executives, the Stamper brothers, didn’t want to release a crummy product.  So they told their inexperienced team to take the time they needed to make it good, even if it meant that the film would release before the tie-in.

Initially, the executives figured they’d make a side-scrolling 2D game for the Super Nintendo.  However, with the Nintendo 64 right around the corner, Hollis made the bold decision to reimagine the game for the new platform.  This would mean delaying the release until well after the film came out in November nineteen ninety-five.  It would also make it a much more technically complex project.  Fortunately for them, none of them knew how hard that would be, so they optimistically set off to make a 3D shooter.

To keep it easy on themselves, they originally wanted to make it on on-rails game, much like arcade shooters like Virtua Cop.  At some point, however, they chose to give the player freedom of movement.  This would put the game in line with hardcore 3D  shooters like the PC game Quake.  Trouble was, serious first-person shooters were only on the PC; they had never worked before on consoles.  The precision of a mouse just couldn’t be replicated on a simple d-pad.  However, the Nintendo 64 came with an analogue stick, which the team figured could be used for greater accuracy.

Another advantage of the PC platform was that developers could just make whatever they wanted.  By contrast, a console was a specific system, and any game for it had to conform to those physical limitations.  When Rareware began GoldenEye, they weren’t even sure yet what the system specs would be.  They had to write their code and design their game based on what they thought the Nintendo 64 would be, and then change it all once the final specs were announced.

You might think that, with all the technical complexities, the team would want to play it safe when it came to gameplay design.  Instead, the team decided to rewrite the first-person shooter.  Of course, just by putting it on a console they were being different.  On top of this, they came up with a crazy idea: what if each part of the body was treated separately?  For instance, what if a gun did more damage if it shot somebody in the head, as opposed to the arm, or wherever else?  This concept was unheard of at the time.  Previously, a gun simply did a set amount of damage to a target.  Now, accuracy and precision would be rewarded — ironically enough, on a console and not the more-precise PC.  Additionally, Rareware wanted their campaign to be more than just “walk into a room and kill everyone.”  They wanted to reward careful and stealthy players, and so included a guard detection system.  The more shots a player fired, the more guards would be alerted.  If players could be sneaky, and pick off guards in one shot, they could get through with barely any resistance.  Also, mission objectives would emphasize sabotage and information-gathering, and not just mindless slaughter.  And as if that wasn’t enough, they kept one left-over from the game’s on-rail shooter days: the player would have to reload.  No FPS had done this before; only on-rails games like Virtua Cop forced a player to reload.  GoldenEye would be the first.

Unbelievably, it all came together into a great package that truly felt original and satisfying.  This inexperienced team had somehow crafted a gorgeous, complex action game with fantastic mission design and innovative features.  They were almost ready to release.  And then, at the last second, just to round out the feature set a little, programmer Steve Ellis threw in four-player splitscreen multiplayer.  But who was interested in that?  As a loving tribute to Bonds past, they added the ability to play as Sean Connery, Roger Moore, and Timothy Dalton as well as Pierce Brosnan in the multiplayer.  Sadly, the powers that be asked them not to include anyone but Brosnan.

GoldenEye 007 released for the Nintendo 64 in August nineteen ninety-seven, two years since the film GoldenEye had left theaters, and only four months before the next Bond movie, Tomorrow Never Dies.  It was a first-person shooter on consoles.  It was made by a bunch of first-timers.  It was a hardcore game on a Nintendo.  And so, like everybody figured, the month after launch, the game didn’t sell that well.

But… it kept selling.  Month after month, sales just didn’t drop.  Where most games sold most of their units in their first few months, GoldenEye kept chugging along years after it first released.  Despite all the points against it, once gamers actually tried the game, they immediately told all their friends they had to check it out.  Astonishingly, while the campaign was well-received, that wasn’t what kept gamers up all night.

It was the last-minute addition, the multiplayer, that had them calling their friends over.  It was fast-paced and furious, but completely accessible.  A wide variety of different game modes and guns kept it all fresh for months on end.  The game that had aimed for hardcore gamers hit them right in the head.  And indeed, the “headshot” has gone on to become synonymous with first-person shooters, as has the concept of reloading.

In time, GoldenEye would come to be seen as the game that began the FPS genre’s migration from PC to console, which in itself makes it one of the most influential games in the industry.  By the end of its run, the slow-starting movie tie-in sold a phenomenal eight million units.  It was the best-selling Nintendo 64 game in the United States.  Not bad for a couple of guys on their first game.

Of course, as GoldenEye sold over the years, Rareware was also releasing their other games.  November nineteen ninety-seven saw the launch of another of their smaller titles, Diddy Kong Racing.  While clearly a Mario Kart clone, many critics considered it an improvement on the genre and its best entrant so far.  This was impressive, because when the team had begun, they were making a caveman RTS — so, it changed a little in development.  They decided to make a racer instead, and call it Pro Am 64, after their long-dormant Pro Am franchise.  Late into the process, no less than Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto told them to make it a Diddy Kong game.  While the guys rejected this notion at first, they eventually got onboard, and Diddy Kong Racing became reality.  While it had some familiar characters like Diddy Kong, it also had a number of original characters.  It also had a squirrel named Conker and a bear named Banjo.  Rareware was giving their audience a taste of things to come.

But not everything was going well.  The insane hours and tough working conditions that Rareware had become famous for were finally taking their toll.  In nineteen ninety-seven, a large group of employees quit en masse, a public sign of protest against the Stamper brothers.  It was a devastating blow, and another taste of things to come.  The ex-employees banded together to form Eighth Wonder, which produced exactly zero games before shutting down a few years later.

Meanwhile, after numerous delays and employee defections, Rareware was putting the finishing touches on the game they wanted to define their Nintendo 64 experience, the one that the Bond and Diddy games had just been opening acts for.  In June nineteen ninety-eight, Banjo-Kazooie finally released.  It had gone through quite a few changes, originally called Dream and starring a boy named Edison and his animal friends.  However, Edison was eventually replaced by his bear friend, Banjo.  Over time, the bird friend, Kazooie, also became more important, until they became the title characters.  In terms of genre and personality, Banjo-Kazooie was a return to the Donkey Kong style, but bringing it all into the third dimension.  Like Diddy Kong Racing, it too had an obvious Mario predecessor, in this case Super Mario 64.  And also like the racer, the platformer was considered by many to be an improvement on the genre and the best entrant in it to date.

Once again, Rareware’s quality shined through to the tiniest details.  From vibrant colors, to wonderful music, to fluid animations, to the the varied world, everything about Banjo-Kazooie was a joy to behold.  The story was pretty basic, involving Banjo’s quest to save his sister from the evil witch, but told with the same sense of humor and childish wonder that had made Donkey Kong such a hit.  And of course, the Rareware reputation didn’t hurt anything.  Banjo-Kazooie went on to be a hit, and in time became one of the company’s signature games.  The sequel, Banjo-Tooie, released a few years later, with critics generally citing it as an improvement on what was already the best platformer around.  If there was a flaw to be found, it was that Banjo didn’t bring anything dramatically new to the table, unlike the redefining GoldenEye.  But with such a high level of polish, nobody really minded.

Going into nineteen ninety-nine, Rareware was still on top of the world.  GoldenEye was still selling for the hardcore crowd, and Banjo-Kazooie was great for casual fans.  But as it happened, the next few years would see their employee problems get much worse, while their days at Nintendo came to an end.

Tune in next time to see Rareware’s last stand

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