Correction:
If they stayed at Nintendo the Gamecube would have been a hit. Therefore potentially no Nintendo Wii at all.
Big alternate future there
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Rare, in an alternate reality: What if they stayed with Nintendo, what could've been
- Thread starter Hero of Legend
- Start date
Correction:
If they stayed at Nintendo the Gamecube would have been a hit. Therefore potentially no Nintendo Wii at all.
Big alternate future there
The Gamecube definitely would have been better with Rare games, that's for sure.
Nintendo renewed the Killer Instinct trademark when the Gamecube came out in hopes Rare would make another.
PixyJunket
Member
There sure is a lot of fantasy-based, overblown Rare hyperbole going on lately.
Samurai_Heart
Member
Yeah poor choice of words there, maybe not most, but in the sense that the original key people at Retro, who made Prime and such have moved onto other studios or started their own ala Armature Studios and Bluepoint Games.
Hero of Legend
Member
Watching the Sabreman Stampede footage, I can REALLY see a DK game in this style, hell they can keep the exact environment style as it's not too distant from DKC.
Imagine riding Rambi and such across a massive DK Island in real-time. Hell, what if they merged this and Donkey Kong Racing to make the Stampede portion like DKR's hub world?
That could make one hell of a Donkey Kong Racing revival.
Imagine riding Rambi and such across a massive DK Island in real-time. Hell, what if they merged this and Donkey Kong Racing to make the Stampede portion like DKR's hub world?
That could make one hell of a Donkey Kong Racing revival.
banjo in smash...
He would have been my main.
Ploid 3.0
Member
banjo in smash...
Oh man lol. I never thought about that.
MrSaturn99
Member
To this day, I still wish for a proper Banjo sequel and a new Conker game.
Buddha Beam
Banned
That was always Rare's main strength, though. They took those concepts that Nintendo EAD made and refined the hell out of them. Add Donkey Kong and Banjo to the list of games you mentioned, too. They did a couple of truly original projects but, with the exception of Goldeneye, they were usually pretty rough around the edges; Blast Corps and Jet Force Gemini spring to mind. Don't get me wrong - I LOVED JFG, but even playing it back then I couldn't help but feel like the game was a little off.
I don't think there's anything wrong with that approach. For the longest time, Naughty Dog was the same way but look at what they've blossomed into. So yeah... I don't think it was ever a problem that Rare was remaking/refining/whatever Nintendo's games. Shit, if more third parties followed Rare's example over they years, they might have done really well.
Dion Blaster
Member
Banjo-Kazooie was basically Banjo 64 and everyone loved it.
Diddy Kong
Banned
Two sad threads in one day... My heart...
Gamecube would have had Banjo-Threeie, Conker's Other Bad Day, Perfecf Dark 2, Killer Instinct 3. Banjo-Kazooie in Super Smash Bros. Melee
and we could have had all those great games on the VC. Joanna Dark joining Smash in Brawl.
Banjo-Kazooie in Threeie-D for 3DS, Diddy Kong Racing U, debates over the next Rare character to join Smash for Wii-U
</3
Gamecube would have had Banjo-Threeie, Conker's Other Bad Day, Perfecf Dark 2, Killer Instinct 3. Banjo-Kazooie in Super Smash Bros. Melee
and we could have had all those great games on the VC. Joanna Dark joining Smash in Brawl.
Banjo-Kazooie in Threeie-D for 3DS, Diddy Kong Racing U, debates over the next Rare character to join Smash for Wii-U
</3
JinjoUnchained
Member
If this happened, you just know that Nintendo would be milking the Banjo IP for all it's worth today. Not that that's necessarily a bad thing. It's much better than what Microsoft has done with Rare. MS squats on Rare's IP like a movie studio buying up a promising script and purposefully sending it to development hell, just so no one else can profit off of it. Then when they do resurrect it, it's an uninspired, cheap cash in that they farm out to their C team, like Killer Instinct. This thread makes me sad.
Also, Silicon Knights. The old "twin-stick brawler for Microsoft" trick has claimed more than one victim.
For or against?
It felt like Nintendo was torn in half when Rare left. Sega coming to Nintendo and handhelds becoming capable of full 3D games helped a little. It still doesn't feel completely like the friendly rivalry that started with the DKC series. No development groups in Nintendo are going to match the bigger EAD or Tokyo groups release for release in quantity and quality like Rare did.
Imbarkus
As Sartre noted in his contemplation on Hell in No Exit, the true horror is other members.
Owned by right-stick combat.
EDIT: Maybe someone more knowledgable than me can show off the Too Human everyone said they wished had happened instead.
teruterubozu
Member
Rare filled some seats for Microsoft's opening season, but Nintendo was right in dropping an aging player.
pretty done
Member
Diddy Kong Pilot looks absolutely atrocious. Diddy Kong Racing 2 or bust.
I don't know if this would have ended well either tbh, Rare never made a good GCN game and Kameo/PDZ turned out to be really awful on 360 so I'm not sure much of value was lost (for Nintendo)
I don't know if this would have ended well either tbh, Rare never made a good GCN game and Kameo/PDZ turned out to be really awful on 360 so I'm not sure much of value was lost (for Nintendo)
shouamabane
Member
Rare was going downhill long before Nintendo sold them.
PixyJunket
Member
Rare made a (sort of) new Conker and a new Perfect Dark and a new Banjo under Microsoft (unfortunately, nobody cared, apparently).
They also put out decent HD remakes of both original Banjo games and the original Perfect Dark AND they put out a neat little reimagining of one of their old ZX games.
How do you get "IP Squatting" out of seven products from their existing IPs?
PHOENIXZERO
Member
Rare was already on the way of being a shell of its former self before Nintendo passed on buying them outright. They made the right move and Rare would have still fallen maybe not to the level it did thanks to MS's decisions but the damage was done well beforehand.
PixyJunket
Member
What of Microsoft's decisions caused them to fall?
Rare had seven or eight fairly interesting years under Microsoft before Kinect Sports.
Hero of Legend
Member
Bumpage as I found another GC game; Your Garden, the original prototype for Viva Pinata, it was briefly a GC game after starting out on... Pocket PC, what, how?
Check it out in the OP.
Check it out in the OP.
Hero of Legend
Member
But Conker was never officially coming to GC correct? We only heard of Conker's Other Bad Day in story form but there's no concrete evidence of it having ever entered development... right? If you find something of such, I'll gladly add it to the OP.
Fattony12000
Member
Jet Force Gemini 2.
Which turned into one of the most charming and enjoyable games on x360. And this was by current Rare, so all hope is not lost!Bumpage as I found another GC game; Your Garden, the original prototype for Viva Pinata, it was briefly a GC game after starting out on... Pocket PC, what, how?
Check it out in the OP.
But Conker was never officially coming to GC correct? We only heard of Conker's Other Bad Day in story form but there's no concrete evidence of it having ever entered development... right? If you find something of such, I'll gladly add it to the OP.
Chris Seavor has described things they were working on in the past, about how you would play as Conker as the king and how he has to deal with the pressures of power while also
being depressed about Berri.
http://mundorare.com/news/2008/09/conker-commands-and-conquers/
Hero of Legend
Member
I'd still like a confirmation of it being a GC project though.
I asked Seavor on Twitter, hopefully he says so.
Makoto Yuki
Banned
Is there anyone left in current Rare that originally worked on their N64 era games?
Breakfast at Noon
Member
Because that is exactly what all of Nintendo's teams are making.
Man I want this so much.
I just imagined a Jet Force Gemini sequel with Wii Remote pointer controls for aiming, nun-chuck for movement.
I am now very sad.
...I don't understand? How would Activision suddenly own them?
And they'd be making games for 3DS as well as WiiU, so at least half their games would selll pretty good!
I am now very sad.
...I don't understand? How would Activision suddenly own them?
And they'd be making games for 3DS as well as WiiU, so at least half their games would selll pretty good!
Riky
$MSFT
The Stamper brothers were not "forced out", they decided they wanted to cash in and offered the company to Nintendo who refused. It was part of the sale that Microsoft insisted they had to stick around for a period of time after the sale, they departed as soon as they could.
I wouldn't think if Nintendo had taken the option to buy Rare that they would be in any better position myself, they did some good stuff on Xbox with Conker and had Kameo ready for Xbox with Perfect Dark Zero also started so we would have probably got inferior versions on Gamecube. Then moving to Wii they wouldn't have had much more powerful hardware and may have made more games based around motion controls, like they ended up doing with Kinect anyway.
I think Kinect Sports is their biggest seller since Goldeneye anyway.
I wouldn't think if Nintendo had taken the option to buy Rare that they would be in any better position myself, they did some good stuff on Xbox with Conker and had Kameo ready for Xbox with Perfect Dark Zero also started so we would have probably got inferior versions on Gamecube. Then moving to Wii they wouldn't have had much more powerful hardware and may have made more games based around motion controls, like they ended up doing with Kinect anyway.
I think Kinect Sports is their biggest seller since Goldeneye anyway.
If Nintendo are not making it, they don't really care what happens to anyone else. Rare would split and go with the next best bet for making quick cash and that would be selling their soul to CoD.
Also, we would probably be on either Banjo 12 by now or we would have no Banjo games and it would just appear in random sports titles.
Yeah, n64 would have been a big flop without rare. They really propped that up.
Can only imagine what further things they would have brought to the GameCube and now wii u. So sad.
I guess I'm glad I got to play kameo and viva piñata on a hd console though instead of them trying to do things with the wii.
zero shift
Banned
I will never understand how people can see Nintendo selling Rare other than one of the smartest decisions the company has made in its history. The fact that the company has yet to release one single big title that reaches anywhere near the popularity of their N64 days should speak volumes. Rare stood out back in the day because they made games that were widely popular and were amongst the best of that generation. What have they done since? What game have they made since the Gamecube and beyond era that is as important as Goldeneye? Or any other of their stand out N64 games? The fact that they were putting out shit games like Star Fox Adventure and merely good games like Sabre Wulf. The old Rare was dead Nintendo caught that and sold the company.
Riky
$MSFT
Depends what you mean by "popularity", Viva Pinata was "popular" as in critically well received and remembered fondly by players but Kinect Sports sold more than all their N64 games apart from Goldeneye.
I would say that today not buying the rest of Rare has proved to be a mistake looking at the Wii U line up, Nintendo needed better games for Wii U rather than the $300 million as cash isn't a problem for them.
zero shift
Banned
Viva Pinata wasn't a system seller though. Goldeneye was a system seller. Banjo Kazooie was a system seller. And so on. Not to mention even quality wise while Viva Pinata is good...its just that GOOD not GREAT not AMAZING, but GOOD. And that's Rare's problem, they don't make games that will make people buy the console or games that even really stand out that much from the competition.
Kinect Sports sold because it was a Wii Sports clone, that's pretty much it. The game itself isn't really that good. Even then so that's two games over the past...near 13 years. Nintendo most likely used the money to sell Rare to further build their in house and gain talent (like Retro). I mean really the only thing that makes Rare stand out today is that they are seen as a shadow of their former selves.
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