All Your History: Rare Part 5 – Unique

The games of Rareware are some of the most beloved in Nintendo’s legendary library.  Donkey Kong Country brought 3D models into the video game world forever, well before anyone else in the industry was thinking about it.  GoldenEye stands as the finest movie tie-in game in history, and redefined the first-person shooter forever.  Banjo-Kazooie and Donkey Kong 64 were some of the best open-world platfomers of their time.  Going into the new millennium, the British developer seemed on top of the world.  But despite appearances, Rareware needed more money.  Even with their past successes, development costs were rising dramatically and the studio’s owners, the Stamper brothers, were looking to sell.  The result would bring to an end one of the greatest runs in Nintendo’s history, and change Rare’s direction forever.

Unique

Nintendo owned a forty-nine percent stake in Rareware, but hadn’t shown any interest in purchasing the remaining shares.  Very quietly, and sticking to their famous secrecy, the Stamper brothers began looking at other potential buyers.  In the early Two Thousands, two main candidates emerged: publishing giant Activision, and wealthy newcomer Microsoft.  While Microsoft was trying hard to acquire great developers for its new Xbox platform, Activision initially made the better deal.  It helped that Activision could publish games for all platforms, something Rareware hadn’t been able to do with Nintendo.  Microsoft would just make them another platform-exclusive.

Microsoft had all but resigned themselves to losing the bid, when suddenly, the Activision deal fell apart.  The reasons for this have never been made public, but Microsoft pounced on the opportunity.  However, there was still another hurdle to cross.  Once Microsoft made a formal offer, Nintendo legally had a right to buy Rareware for the same price.  Knowing this, and being one of the richest companies on Earth, Microsoft simply made an offer so huge that even Nintendo balked: three hundred and seventy-seven million dollars.

With that, both Nintendo’s forty-nine percent stake and the Stampers’ fifty-one percent stake all went to the Redmond giant, for a grand total of one hundred percent all for Microsoft.  The software-maker crowed that this was a huge boost for the Xbox, and more great games like GoldenEye would soon be coming from the British studio.  And in the process, they’d be going back to their old name.  Once again, Rareware would be just Rare.

The deal was formally completed in September Two Thousand Two.  Up to this time, Rare had sold an astonishing ninety million games altogether.  Of course, they would have to part ways with some of their beloved franchises, since Nintendo owned many of those characters.  Accordingly, Rare’s current project, Donkey Kong Racing, never saw the light of day.  In a pleasant surprise, however, Nintendo allowed all of Rare’s own IPs, such as Banjo-Kazooie, to go with them to Microsoft.  And so, with more money and a new console, the newly-minted Rare set off to work.

The first game of their new era was Grabbed by the Ghoulies in Two Thousand Three, a lighthearted beat-em-up with a cartoony art style.  True to Rare’s youth-oriented games, Ghoulies featured a pretty simple premise: young lad Cooper must rescue his girlfriend from the haunted mansion.  The gameplay, too, was pretty basic: move Cooper with the left stick, and attack with the right stick.  In order to throw in some difficulty, Rare put in a Rule for each level, for example, don’t kill a certain kind of monster.  Breaking any rule would summon the Grim Reaper, who would immediately kill Cooper if he touched him.

Sadly, the Grim Reaper became the figurehead of Ghoulies’ problems.  The mechanic ended up being more frustrating than fun, as did the gameplay in general.  The fact that combat was controlled by one stick made it feel shallow and boring.  Most critics saw the game as simply too simple for its own good, and while it had its moments, Grabbed by the Ghoulies was mostly ignored by audiences.  In hindsight, it is generally looked on as one of Rare’s worst games.  Not a good start for their new console.

Oddly enough, over the next few years, Rare made a number of portable games.  Only problem was, Microsoft had no portable system.  So Rare convinced their new bosses that, if they were going to make these games, they should release them on the most popular portable around.  It just so happened that this was the Game Boy Advance, which was made by their old bosses, Nintendo.  Amazingly, Microsoft agreed, and Rare would make a number of small games over the next few years, such as Sabre Wulf and Banjo-Pilot.  In Two Thousand Five they went out on a limb and unleashed the truly bizarre It’s Mr. Pants.  Originally meant to be a puzzle game starring Donkey Kong, the game needed a new hero after Rare lost the DK rights.  Mr. Pants, meanwhile, had become Rare’s accidental mascot.  He’d been drawn in thirty seconds flat as something to show on their website’s new survey page.  Never meant to be a star, the drawing was so utterly strange that Rare fans took to it.  And so it was he got his own game.  Called It’s Mr. Pants.

Also in Two Thousand Five, a new Rare game came to the Xbox, which was actually an old Rare game.  Conker: Live and Reloaded had the exact same single-player campaign as Conker’s Bad Fur Day, but added Xbox Live multiplayer.  The thinking was that the original Conker was a great game that had simply been a victim of circumstance, ending up as the studio’s biggest flop.  Now, on a new and adult-friendly console, with online multiplayer, the game’s genius should be recognized and Conker should finally be a success.  They weren’t.  Conker flopped miserably a second time.  Players just didn’t like drunk squirrels.  To be fair, just like the first game, Live and Reloaded released at the end of its console’s life cycle; just a few months later, the Xbox 360 would release.

And for that release in November Two Thousand Five, Rare would have not one, but two games ready.  They had only made two games for the first Xbox’ entire life; now, they’d be releasing that many on day one of the 360.  As it happened, both of these titles had originally been in production for the Nintendo GameCube, but had been shelved after the sale.  The first was part of an earlier series; the second, and all-new experience.

Perfect Dark Zero was a prequel to the studio’s N64 game, and once again featured freelance superspy Joanna Dark traveling the world shooting bad guys.  In true Rare fashion, it featured a wide variety of environments, tight gameplay, and a barely-there story.  It didn’t particularly push any boundaries from where the original game had gone, but certainly the Xbox 360’s superior hardware allowed for much better visuals at a decent frame rate.  Critics broadly praised the game, and generally predicted that it would be the shooter game to beat at the console’s launch.  It wasn’t.  Seemingly out of nowhere, Infinity Ward’s Call of Duty 2 utterly destroyed its competition.  Even though the first game in the series hadn’t been on consoles, it was by far the best-selling Xbox 360 game in the console’s first month on the market.  Perfect Dark Zero only sold an estimated sixty percent of what the World War shooter had, and as time went on, that gap only got wider.  Despite all the hype, the game ended up being the last of the Perfect Dark franchise.

Selling even less was Rare’s other launch title, Kameo: Elements of Power.  A colorful open-world adventure, the game clearly took its cues from Banjo-Kazooie and Donkey Kong 64.  Much like those titles, the gameplay largely revolved around gathering certain items in order to progress.  At the same time, it featured its own distinct art style that was widely praised as one of its stand-out features.  In addition, the main character, Kameo, could change into any one of a number of animal forms, each having their own abilities.  While adding variety, these new forms also allowed the player to advance into previously inaccessible areas.  Players found their time split between combat, exploration, and puzzle-solving.  Unfortunately, there wasn’t much time to split.  For such an epic-feeling adventure, it was over suprisingly fast.  Without any multiplayer to extend the replay value, most gamers chose to give it a pass.

All in all, the launch of the Xbox 360 was something of an embarassment for Rare and Microsoft.  Microsoft had spent nearly four hundred million dollars acquiring the British developer, and so far, had only gotten underperformers in return.  For Rare, their reputation for making trendsetting titles was being challenged.  GoldenEye and Banjo-Kazooie were a long time past.  Even Perfect Dark, a critical darling, simply wasn’t gaining any traction with modern audiences.

But Rare seized their good name back with a game that combined their signature personality, color, and wild ideas.  Viva Pinata hit store shelves in November Two Thousand Six, a wildly innovative title about… gardening.  But somehow, Rare managed to make it an addicting and involving experience, in which players could not only grow crops, but attract colorful pinata creatures.  Over time, players could attract an entire colony of pinatas, that would then start breeding the next generation.  And that was pretty much it.  No combat, no intense action, no assassinations.  Just… pinatas!  It was absolutely nuts.  And critics agreed it was Rare’s best game in years.  Wild.

The game generated a lot of buzz for its sheer originality and quality.  It gained enough attention to get its own animated TV show, the second time a Rare game had done so.  Unfortunately, for all that attention, Viva Pinata did not end up selling very well.  November Two Thousand Six also saw the release of another Microsoft-published title, Gears of War from Epic Games.  The publisher had thrown all its marketing muscle behind the big action shooter.  Apparently, grey tones were more marketable then colors.

Clearly, things had changed.  Rare was no longer the juggernaut they’d been in the Nintendo era, and Microsoft’s focus had shifted to other developers.  So it was that in January Two Thousand Seven, almost immediately after the Viva Pinata fiasco, the Stamper brothers left Rare behind.  Sticking to their famous secrecy, the brothers didn’t say why, although Microsoft said they wanted to “pursue other interests.”  It’s possible they were simply ready to move on.  Either way, the two driving forces that had lead Rare for twenty years were now gone.

But that didn’t slow the company down any.  Two Thousand Eight was an incredibly busy year for the company.  First up was something no one saw coming: Xbox Avatars, cartoonish sprites tied to each individual Xbox account.  The hope was that this would give some personality and identity to the Xbox experience.  Of course, the Avatars came two years after the similar Miis on the Nintendo Wii, and many simply saw them as a knock-off.  As a matter of fact, however, Rare had been working on the idea in secret even before Nintendo unveiled their Miis.  The competition simply gave Rare’s bosses at Microsoft a reason to greenlight the idea.  The Avatars became a central part of Microsoft’s major dashboard redesign for the year, entitled the New Xbox Experience.

September of that year saw a Viva Pinata sequel, Trouble in Paradise, and the first new Banjo-Kazooie game in years, Nuts & Bolts.  The Pinata game was essentially an updated and expanded version of the original, while the new Banjo game put the emphasis on building custom vehicles.  It made Nuts & Bolts a very different kind of game, less of a platformer and more of a construction kit.  While Pinata was highly praised, Banjo received mixed reviews.  Some loved the construction mechanics, while others missed the platforming.  Whatever their strengths, however, November Two Thousand Eight also saw another Gears of War, and once again, Microsoft put most of their muscle behind the chainsaws.  Neither Rare game sold very well.

It all led to Microsoft’s February Two Thousand Nine announcement that it was restructuring the studio.  By this time, it had been estimated that all of Rare’s games for Microsoft combined had earned about one hundred million dollars, only about a quarter what Microsoft had paid to acquire them in the first place.  Something had to give.  So it was that Redmond ordered Rare to drop work on a number of its current projects, and focus on their brand new device, codenamed Project Natal.  Natal was a motion control system that would read players’ movements and voice, no controller required.  Rare would be Natal’s flagship developer.

Fan reaction wasn’t positive, to say the least.  The Natal was looked upon as a kiddie toy and not a hardcore gaming device.  To many, it seemed like a fall from grace, the moment that the studio that had brought GoldenEye, Perfect Dark, and Banjo-Kazooie to the world ceased to be the company they’d once been.  Of course, another way of looking at it is that Microsoft could have picked any developer they wanted to spearhead their new device.  Of them all, they picked Rare for their consistent excellence and quality.

Their first game for the new system, now renamed the Kinect, released alongside it in November Twenty Ten: Kinect Sports.  Much like its obvious influence, rival Nintendo’s Wii Sports, the game featured a number of different sports games in a vibrant and cartoony world.  And of course, Rare’s own Avatars were the star of the show.  It was one of the signature games of the launch, and by April of Twenty Eleven, it had sold three million units.  This made it Rare’s biggest commercial success since the Microsoft buy-out, and proved beyond a doubt the Kinect’s selling power.

Going forward, Rare’s new studio head Scott Henson has promised that the company is now entirely focused on the Kinect.  Kinect Sports Season Two will release in late October Twenty Eleven, developed with some help from BigPark, another Microsoft-owned studio.  Even without the Stamper brothers, they are still as secretive as ever. Nobody knows what else they might be working on, alhtough rumor has it they are developing a brand-new hardcore mature game for the successor to the Xbox 360.

Regardless, Rare has nothing left to prove.  In their storied career, they have developed games for five generations of consoles, brought 3D graphics into the gaming world, redefined the first-person shooter, crafted some of the most enduring platforms of all time, and helped rewrite how players interact with their games.  There is no one else quite like them.  That’s what makes them rare.

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