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"Rare's Unoriginallity"

With the $350m+ departure of British developers Rareware from Nintendo to Microsoft came the believe amongst almost-all X-Box and PS2 fans alike that the 3rd competitor in the console war, Nintendo's GameCube, would be on the road to nowhere, and would soon be caught sinking-fast without the support of the Brits. who saved the N64 (sort of...) with the sheer brilliance of GoldenEye, Banjo-Kazooie, and the rest. Rumours began to arise that Nintendo were to go in-search of a new replacement for Rare with all that spare-cash, while Microsoft's fans couldn't believe their luck at the thought of having Perfect Dark Zero available exclusively to their console ONLY. The GameCube's future was beginning to look very bleak indeed with only so-much little information and news we had on it's future plans...

But with the new year we've heard some great news on some fantastic new -- and exclusive -- titles for 2003/04 that would simply knock the likes of Mario SunShine, Pikmin, and Super Smash Bros. off of our game-clustered shelves.
We then came to realise that we weren't going to need Rare after all with the likes of Metroid Prime and Zelda: The Wind Waker coming-our-way VERY SOON, with sequels for unique individuals like Pikmin and the currently un-released Animal Crossing currently in development - awell as a new Mario games in the making too!
Why would we need Rare with this kind of 1st-party support for the next 12-months??!
And then there's the support of Capcom aswell....
And the list just seems to go on!


Back to Rare now then...
You can't deny the fact that they saved the N64 with some of the most enjoyable and well-designed games we have ever seen in gaming - even by today's standards with the likes of Halo and Grand Theft Auto:Vice City on-offer, on other formats.
I can still remember playing Conker's Bad Fur Day and laughing-so-hard while I realised I had simply never enjoyed playing a game like I had with this. It wasn't just all the bad language, it was everything! Right down to the little move-refferences and tie-ins that made you step-back and say "Aha!".
And then there was GoldenEye, along with Perfect Dark that followed a few years later. I can still remember enjoying all those great sniping-moments as James Bond - even if I was really no good at that game. And the array of weaponry, aswell as many of the missions, were all superb and different to the last. And I wasn't too-hot at that game either... But I still loved it!
And then I remember getting both Banjo-Kazooie and Donkey Kong 64 only last-year... DK may've only dissapointed really after the `Donkey Kong Country` series on the Super Nintendo, but with Banjo the Bear and Kazooie the scouse-talking Bird, I barely missed the thrills of Super Mario 64 (my very-first N64 title) one-bit!
So many memories... So many great and unique games like Jet Force Gemini and Blast Corps.... Even if the GameCube does have an impressive line-up for 2003, I still feel we will miss Rare dearly.

Thinking back to those days now, after having experienced the dissapointment of StarFox Adventures on the GameCube recently, I can't seem to think of one-good-explanation as to why Rare's games that grabbed your attention and sold the N64 (GoldenEye, Perfect Dark, Banjo-Tooie, etc...)...
It's not like they were that innovative or original or anything, even if they have come a long-way in their own ways since games of a similar style 10 years ago.
Infact, their only really original and highly-unique games were Blast Corps and Jet Force Gemini - and they hardly went and shot of the shelves in record numbers like what we saw in December with GTA: Vice City's PS2 release, did they...?
And it seems that the more-and-more I think about it, I can't seem to see how any other of Rare's N64 releases was anymore innovative than what Crash Bandicoot and Ty the Tazmanian Tiger are compared to Super Mario and Sonic the Hedgehog games....!


Let's look closely at this then, shall we?...
First of all, there were the 2 highly-popular `Banjo` games that became an instant-hit amongst Super Mario fans who were looking for something after Mario 64. Now the idea of 2 characters working-together as heroes to save the day isn't something that we haven't seen before. Ever played Sonic the Hedgehog 2 on the SEGA MegaDrvie as Sonic? While the speedy, blue, "rodent" was racing around grabbing gold rings, Tails (Miles Prower) was always hovering near-by to offer Sonic a helping-hand.
Just like Tails did with Sonic, Kazooie the bird offers Banjo the bear the chance to fly across those gaping gaps in each new zone/world, while also being able to assist him in combat to save Sonic's blue-behind when he's caught in those sticky-situations.
I hardly call that feature of the game "original", would you?
Yet still it proved to be one of the greatest factors in the gameplay of both titles, and we appreciated these games more partly because of the way the team-work.

When I first played Donkey Kong 64, I have to admit that I was impressed. I'd heard so-many bad things about this game, but I failed to see them when I first got-going with it only last-year. To me, it appeared as quite-simply Banjo-Kazooie/Mario 64 with Donkey and his Kongs as the main characters. But it was only once I'd really given this game a try that I realised it was A LOT like the first Banjo game, yet far-from what I had come to know and love as a Donkey Kong game several years ago on Nintendo's previous home console.
It looked like one of the Banjo games, but in a way, it tried to be Super Mario 64. And it failed. Miserabley! Although, at times, it wasn't all that-bad a game...
But after collecting all available tokens and bananas, and defeating the boss for the umpteenth time, it became clear to me that this was just like any other 3D platfromer in its day; trying to re-create Mario.
Rare may've been good in their days, but they should've known better and just left the `good-stuff` to Nintendo and Shigeru Miyamoto; a man who NEVER dissapoints us!

Having only had this game for a few months now, Diddy Kong Racing has fast-become one of the my all-time favourite N64 titles, and definitley one of the most enjoyable Rare games I have ever experienced - especially with mates.
But even with the likes of Diddy Kong, Conker the Squirrel, and Banjo the Bear sitting in the drivers' seats you can clearly see how obviously this game resembles the supreme multi-player racer of all-time; `Super Mario Kart`.
Racing round tracks pushing for first-place... Collecting items to chuck at opponents ahead of you from boxes along the track.... Doesn't all-this sound a little TOO familliar? I'll give Rare credit for the single-player mode though, that in it's own right showed good-innituitive sticking bosses in at the end of certain races, turning the game into more of an `in-car adventure` than another `Mario Kart-clone`.
This one too may've been a great joy to play, and the single-player mode did beat Mario Kart 64 to the gold medal, but overall this deserves only 2nd place for its blatant lack of originallity in so-many places.

The same could also be said for the un-recieved Mickey's Speedway, in some cases anyway... But even there it was basically the same old Mario Kart idea, only they tried to hide it with old Disney "has-beens" that couldn't sell a game in 100 years!

Perfect Dark and GoldenEye (especially) may've blown-us-all-away back in the late 1990's for many reasons, but was there anything there that really made these games THAT-different to the likes of Doom and Quake PC gamers had already been enjoying for the few-years prior to the N64?
Revolutionising and adding new ideas to a first-person shooter may not be the easiest thing in the world to do, but somehow Bungie managed to do something that has made Halo possibly the best available to-date.
All-credit to Rare for making a highly-succesfull game out of an equally-well-recieved film from it's time, but surely even they could've done more with it?
It was taken from a film after all - that's hardly and original concept. And then came Perfect Dark - a game that acted more like a futuristic sequel in a different time and place. COME-ON!! What were we really praising them for??!!


Like I said earlier, they deserve credit for the likes of Jet Force Gemini and Blast Corps in-which they exploited these un-tested genres and showed us what you can really do with ideas like these when you work hard at them...
But why couldn't they have worked harder and tried something like that in one of the Banjo games, or something that would seperate Perfecr Dark further-away from its predeccesor; GoldenEye? That would've shown they were really worth the $375m-odd Bill Gates forked-out on them.

If you ask me, Nintendo got the better deal!
All I can see now from the majority of Rare's games on the N64 is a lot of staleness, and a lack of real originallity with so-many ideas clearly stolen from the likes of Nintendo and SEGA who have shown us they know best for years.
And to think we wanted them to stay.... PAH!!
Go copy off of Microsoft, buy everything in sight!
It's clear to us after StarFox Adventures that you aren't worth the money after spending 4-years (apparently!!) on a very cheap Zelda-esque game.
Like I said before; leave the good-stuff to Nintendo!

Come to think of it, I don't like the look of that `Kameo: Elements of Power` game either...! I get the feeling that I've seen an idea like that "Poké"-ing and "Pik"-ing its way around these parts before....

Uri Geller was on about suing Nintendo a while back for making a Pokémon out of him, but nobody else really saw it, and just laughed at him.
But with Rare however... Perhaps Nintendo should go "have words" with Microsoft's new cronies before things get too out-of-hand...?
Send-in the Super Mario Bros.!


I'm glad Rare have gone! :)

Weird wonder wrote:
> Microsoft are goona have to do a lot of inventing to satisfy Rare...
> hey who knows they might get they're first RARE game within the next
> two years!

They're actually expecting five..

I'm also glad that Rare are gone, because it means no more 2 year delays, and because they took most of their ideas from Nintendo... i.e.

Nintendo's Mario Kart lead to Rare's Diddy Kong racing,

Nintendo's Mario 64 lead to Rare's Banjo Kazooie ad tooie and also partly to Conker's bad fur day.

But now with the money gained from the Rare deal Nintendo are on the verge of buying Capcom: the survival horror experts... and not forgetting that there is the triforce and Sega's Ami (i think that's what they're called) helped in making Shenmue and Shenmue 2, anybody that's played those games will know what I'm on about when I say that Shenmue was probably the best RPG of all time.

Nintendo are also innovative and make they're own gadgets... I didn't RARE making a Transfer pack... or even a memory pack thinking about it... and what's more without nintendo's innovation Donkey Kong and Perfect Dark wouldn't have been anywhere near as good as they were.

Microsoft are goona have to do a lot of inventing to satisfy Rare... hey who knows they might get they're first RARE game within the next two years!

WW

these topics were bound to pop up.

Maverick42 wrote:
> I'm not bitter. It was nice to have Rare's franchises to sell a few
> extra consoles, but they're just another developer now. I value the
> loyalty of the two teams mentioned above, CAPCOM and Konami much more.

Understatement of the year ? Sell a few extra consoles ? I think Goldeneye did more than that for the N64 somehow....

Oh well.

~~Belldandy~~

One devellopment team and the odd member left to join/form other companies.

It happens.

This "Rare have lost their magic" argument won't settle until Kameo comes out but in the meantime, you only have to look at games post-split - Jet Force Gemini, Perfect Dark, Conkers Bad Fur Day...

Even though Starfox had some pretty messed up game design flaws, the game engine itself was a technical masterpiece.
The graphics surpass Xbox games let alone other Gamecube games.

The design flaws are typical from when Rare try and do a Nintendo style game (DK64 etc). When they do their own thing (Goldeneye, Jet Force Gemini, Conker and Blast Corps) the results are normally pretty spectacular.

Rare split. People who made Goldeneye, Banjo Kazooie, Donkey Kong Country, and the bulk of games such as Perfect Dark left. They either set up the brilliant Free Radical Design (who are mainly the Goldeneye team) or joined with Silicon Knights, or Retro Studios.

I'm not bitter. It was nice to have Rare's franchises to sell a few extra consoles, but they're just another developer now. I value the loyalty of the two teams mentioned above, CAPCOM and Konami much more.

Maverick42 wrote:
> Nintendo don't need Rare, they got a MUCH better deal. Long live Free
> Radical Design - the real Rare.

ONE devellopment team remembered for ONE classic? There was a little more to Rare than that.
Come on! Rare were producing classics LONG before this team showed up.

Free Radical are good, but how the hell can you say that they are the new Rare when FR have only brought us 2 games, both in one series. Both FPS, both very similar games. I think you are also a little bitter that Rare have gone. Well, seeing as Rare hadn't released any FPS since the Free Radical people left, i'm imagining that these were the poeple that made Goldeneye and Perfect Dark. But, Rare have made some good titles since they left, good not brilliant. I hope Nintendo can buy Free Radical, seeing as the games that they have released are both brilliant titles. Nintendo do rule at making games, but they need a little help along the way. nintendo and Rare would help eachother along at times, so maybe Free Radical and Ninty will relight the little candle they had.

Nintendo don't need Rare, they got a MUCH better deal. Long live Free Radical Design - the real Rare.

Rare might make unoriginal games, but they are still better than 95% of the rest of the rubbish out there.