Nathan Little
Paratroopa
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Yeahthis u?
i will not let this viva piñata slander standAnd almost all of it has been a gigantic waste since the Microsoft buyout.
Grabbed by the Ghoulies is still their best post buyout release by far. Genuinely solid title that got unfairly maligned for being the wrong game on the wrong console, at the wrong time. But otherwise? It’s mostly just been a sea of disappointment for 20 years.
I know that there are people that may not want to hear this, but I feel it was questionable how much longer the Rare of that era would have maintained their golden touch. The studio in that era was rife with mega-crunch and by that point, staff had started moving on.Wow. What an incredible case of the greed of someone really having a negative effect on the future of not one, but two companies. I know a lot of people don’t like to hear this, but Nintendo took a hit themselves for a long time without Rare. Didn’t have their go-to prime partner to fill in software gaps. Had they been around still, would have had less software droughts on the GameCube, Wii and Wii U.
That is an interesting thought, Rare Replay as it was on Xbone would absolutely never happen under Nintendo's watch lol. We'd just get rom dumps of Rare's old games on Virtual Console and NSO and that'd be the end of it.We also got banjo kazooie and tooie in 4k, at 60 fps, with qol enhancements, something we would not have gotten from nintendo
I know it was always unlikely, but i really wish nintendo gave mario 64 the same treatment in 3d all stars. Higher res, better frame rate, qol improvements like a more cooperative camera.That is an interesting thought, Rare Replay as it was on Xbone would absolutely never happen under Nintendo's watch lol. We'd just get rom dumps of Rare's old games on Virtual Console and NSO and that'd be the end of it.
Funnily enough we kinda ended up getting the best of both worlds, with Xbox getting the fancy HD remasters while NSO gets the original games as they were back in the N64 days.
If I remember right there were at least 3 DK spinoff games at Rare for GCN/GBA that were canceled following the acquisition. Some were reworked like Diddy Kong Pilot being remade into Banjo Pilot, others like Donkey Kong Racing never saw the light of day.
With the exception of Conker’s Bad Fur Day, Rare’s game sales were still doing great numbers. Perfect Dark and Banjo-Tooie sold over 2 million; Jet Force Gemini sold over a million; the “supposedly much hated Donkey Kong 64” sold around 5 million. A game not “setting the world on fire” doesn’t make it bad nor does it equate to a sign of developer problems or what have you. Conker’s poor sales was likely due to a) being a mature game with hardly any marketing whatsoever and b) releasing at the tail end of the N64 life-cycle (GameCube launched 8 months later). Starfox Adventures still sold nearly 2 million as well.I know that there are people that may not want to hear this, but I feel it was questionable how much longer the Rare of that era would have maintained their golden touch. The studio in that era was rife with mega-crunch and by that point, staff had started moving on.
More to the point, later Rare had some clunkers, at least by their standards. DK64 is the sort of collectathon platformer that people joke about. Jet Force Gemini is heavily flawed game and didn't exactly light the world on fire. Conker's Bad Fur Day was a product or its time and known more for being extraordinarily crass than anything.
Star Fox Adventures, while a heavy rework of Dinosaur Planet, had its weird issues of its own, including a nonsensically large collectable count.
And then looking at the Rare games in the immediate years after the Microsoft buyout...if Grabbed by the Ghoulies had stayed a GCN game, good lord, that would have not likely been received well.
I get it. People miss Rare's Nintendo golden age. But setting aside the business conflicts and interests that led to Nintendo never buying in and MS buying Rare instead, the kind of output people have rose-tinted views of was probably not going to be sustainable. We'd have likely either seen more true clunkers out of a Rare suffering talent attrition or fewer games as a Nintendo-owned Rare took more direct oversight.
And they would not necessarily have made DK games in perpetuity.
Also, Rare would not have saved the Wii U. Goodness gracious. If they were still making Nintendo titles then, they'd have been shifted over to Switch dev at the earliest opportunity.
Perfect Dark and Banjo-Tooie sold over 2 million;
Rare would have inevitably made fewer games over time, particularly with the move to HD and the increased amount of staff and time necessary to make even one game. They were never going to keep up that output they had on the N64.With the exception of Conker’s Bad Fur Day, Rare’s game sales were still doing great numbers. Perfect Dark and Banjo-Tooie sold over 2 million; Jet Force Gemini sold over a million; the “supposedly much hated Donkey Kong 64” sold around 5 million. A game not “setting the world on fire” doesn’t make it bad nor does it equate to a sign of developer problems or what have you. Conker’s poor sales was likely due to a) being a mature game with hardly any marketing whatsoever and b) releasing at the tail end of the N64 life-cycle (GameCube launched 8 months later). Starfox Adventures still sold nearly 2 million as well.
And I disagree wholeheartedly about Grabbed by the Ghoulies. It would have fared much, much better on the GameCube as the audience it was tailored to would have bought it up. That audience was not on the Xbox, but exclusively Nintendo fans and people like me who bough into the Xbox ecosystem just to continue playing Rare’s games.
I’m not implying Rare would have saved the GameCube, or the later years of the Wii, and certainly not the Wii U. What I’m saying is that they would have had less first-party software droughts like in the past because Nintendo and Rare complimented each other extremely well.
As for the Donkey Kong thing… well they certainly had no intentions of stopping by all accounts we know. At the time of acquisition, they were developing Diddy Kong Pilot, DK: Coconut Crackers, and Donkey Kong Racing. And then even after the acquisition, they still partnered with Nintendo to remake the DKC trilogy and Diddy Kong Racing DS. DK had more Rare DNA in it than Nintendo ever did and it’s the one single IP that Rare would likely have continued to work on even after that.
I could see some more remasters/remakes on Nintendo consoles though. Like a Banjo remake for 3DS in the vein of Ocarina/Majora/Starfox.That is an interesting thought, Rare Replay as it was on Xbone would absolutely never happen under Nintendo's watch lol. We'd just get rom dumps of Rare's old games on Virtual Console and NSO and that'd be the end of it.
Funnily enough we kinda ended up getting the best of both worlds, with Xbox getting the fancy HD remasters while NSO gets the original games as they were back in the N64 days.
I'm sorry... BK and BT XLBA are great ports and all, but I'd rather had the original N64 ROMs on a Virtual Console service like the Wii, if that meant that new Banjo games were still being made to this day, or at least on a consistent pace.We also got banjo kazooie and tooie in 4k, at 60 fps, with qol enhancements, something we would not have gotten from nintendo
A lot of this is speculation and wishful thinking. We know that Rare wasn't exactly interested in a third Banjo platformer, which is why they pivoted to Nuts & Bolts instead. There's no guarantee that Banjo would have been a long-term franchise still seeing games made in the modern era. Certainly, their N64 days were mostly new franchises and single-title IPs with little interest in making multiple sequels.I'm 2/3rds on DK Vine's Kongversation on the subject.. and man, despite of what is seen as good from the buyout era, I honestly can't value more than what Rare used to offer when on Nintendo. As I said I'm happy with their success of Sea of Thieves, but I don't think its selfish to say that I wish they kept doing stuff that were more akin of their 90's output.
They say Conker wouldn't had a future if Nintendo bought Rare outright, not even in merchandise, but I disagree; Especially now on days of Bayonetta being basically a Nintendo character.. and I suspect that something like Live & Reloaded would fit just right on Nintendo's pursuit of a more mature audience on GameCube too (Eternal Darkness and Geist).. if anything he'd show up as Assist Trophy in Smash by now. Kameo would had been accepted more by the more younger Nintendo demographic too, so would Grab by the Ghoulies.
Irony of all the dispute with Activision, is now they are all under the same roof, huh?
I'm sorry... BK and BT XLBA are great ports and all, but I'd rather had the original N64 ROMs on a Virtual Console service like the Wii, if that meant that new Banjo games were still being made to this day, or at least on a consistent pace.
I say that as the XBLA versions were released when Nuts & Bolts was still new, but now, it's basically all the Banjo franchise has... and that's not a good compromise imo. Banjo could had been incorporeted as a Mario Kart character coming from Diddy Kong Racing, at very least...
Eh, I feel confident enough to say that at least Banjo as a brand would survive through the 2000's, even if Rare themselves wasn't that well interested in making new games; In a scenario where Rare became a whole Nintendo owned studio, of course, their IPs wouldn't be solely on their control and Nintendo could hypothetically asign some other studios to make new games, even side stuff and put their characters on things like Smash or Mario Kart. Banjo was valueable for them to a extend.A lot of this is speculation and wishful thinking. We know that Rare wasn't exactly interested in a third Banjo platformer, which is why they pivoted to Nuts & Bolts instead. There's no guarantee that Banjo would have been a long-term franchise still seeing games made in the modern era. Certainly, their N64 days were mostly new franchises and single-title IPs with little interest in making multiple sequels.
(Although maybe someone at Nintendo could have clued Rare in that starting Nuts & Bolts with an elaborate, jokey takedown of the platformers was going to go over like a wet fart.)