Rare Replay

Rare Replay is a 2015 compilation of 30 video games from the 30-year history of developers

The compilation was one of several ideas Rare considered to celebrate its 30th anniversary. Inspired by fans, upcoming

To select the final 30 games, Rare sorted through 120 games in their catalog. They rated each for fitness and prioritized those that featured characters and environments original to the company, choosing to exclude those based on licensed intellectual properties. Secondarily, Rare considered whether licenses were available and whether a game remained fun and playable by modern standards. They wanted a wide and representative sample of "popular games that would hit that nostalgic beat that everyone likes".[22] Deciding which versions of some of their most popular games to include also became a topic of debate among the team. Rare decided to include the updated Xbox 360 re-releases of Banjo-Kazooie, Banjo-Tooie, and Perfect Dark instead of the Nintendo 64 originals, as the developers realized the various quality-of-life improvements in these remasters were too valuable even to the purists on their staff. Conversely, they chose the Nintendo 64 version of Conker's Bad Fur Day over its Xbox remake, Conker: Live & Reloaded, which they felt had strayed too far from the original due to being less lenient on censorship.^[23] While Rare Replay's designers made the final call, other Rare employees and veterans gave input and recollected old game development stories.^[19] The developers briefly considered including playable prototypes of unreleased Rare games such as Black Widow and Kameo 2 as part of the collection, but the work required to do so made this infeasible given the limited development time frame, leading them to produce "Rare Revealed" videos about the unfinished games instead.^[18] Interviews with current and former Rare staff members for the "Rare Revealed" featurettes took place over the course of several months in 2015. Several interview segments and "Rare Revealed" videos were omitted from the game due to time and disc space constraints; these were later released via the company's official YouTube channel.^[24] An additional "Rare Revealed" video focused on the making of GoldenEye 007 was planned, but was left unreleased until being leaked in 2019.^[25]

Unlike the usual product development cycle, which grows a concept into a final product, most of the development work in Rare Replay was in converging 30 games across six platforms onto one disc. The engineering challenge lay in the quantity of games and platforms being emulated rather than the emulation effort itself.

Much of the commentary on the compilation focused on Rare's choice of selections[43]^[28] and concluded that players new and old would find enough new treasures to outweigh the duds.^[4][34] Reviewer favorites included Blast Corps,^{[4][5][7][33][34][44]} Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts,^[5][44] the Viva Piñata games,^[35][44] and the Nintendo 64 titles (especially Banjo-Kazooie, Conker, and Perfect Dark).^{[5][34][15][35][44]} Among the least favorites were Perfect Dark Zero,^{[4][33][15][44]} Grabbed by the Ghoulies,^[5][15] and the early Spectrum games, which reviewers felt had aged the worst.^[5][34] Ars Technica, however, defended the Spectrum games for showing an experimental and unrefined side of Rare.^[4] Many critics regretted the implacable licensing problems^[4][5][15] that led to the exclusion of what they considered the company's best games—Donkey Kong Country, GoldenEye 007, and Diddy Kong Racing^{[4][5][7][33][34]}—while others felt that the package was fine without them.^[34][15] Also omitted were Rare's Kinect Sports series, Nintendo franchise releases,^[5] Super Nintendo-era games, and "Mario Kart clones".^[4] These timeline gaps precluded, for instance, the player from understanding Conker as an edgy response to the "cutesy" characters of preceding Nintendo games.^[5] Despite these absences, Ars Technica's critic was impressed by Microsoft's ability to license from publishers including Tradewest, Nintendo, Milton Bradley, and Electronic Arts.^[4] Eurogamer's reviewer was surprised by Rare's consistent style across the selections, and compared the company's legacy to that of Cosgrove Hall Films.^[33] The Kotaku reviewer saw Rare Replay as "image rehabilitation" that would hopefully mark Rare's return to making "deep and daring games" in line with their historical reputation.^[5]

Reviewers felt that the archival game content and developer interviews were among Rare Replay's best features.^{[4][16][33][17]} Some were frustrated that the features were locked behind time-consuming in-game challenges.^{[4][5][16][33][35]} Sam Machkovech (Ars Technica) found himself stuck not even halfway through the stamp card progress after finishing the easiest achievements. This made the unreleased game footage particularly hard to access.^[4] Stephen Totilo (Kotaku) similarly became uninterested in finishing the stamp collection. He called the stamps the package's "sickest joke" in consideration of Rare's reputation for collectible-heavy games.^[5] Some reviewers found the developer content more important than individual games.^[4][17] Polygon's reviewer called the compilation "an essential piece of gaming history",^[9] while Kotaku's critic noted that the features lacked a straightforward history of the company and hid Rare's significant, former ties with Nintendo.^[5] Whitehead (Eurogamer) wondered why Mire Mare and other early games were ignored in the bonus content.^[33] Machkovech (Ars Technica) found Rare Replay to be as much a "memorial" as an anthology since Rare had become "a shadow of its former self". He noted how the compilation's final games coincide with the Stamper brothers' exit from the company.^[16] Reviewers felt that the Stampers, Rare's founders, were a conspicuous absence from the compilation^[4][5][33] and Jaz Rignall figured that the compilation's stamps feature was a reference to the brothers.^[7]

Reviewers praised the feature by which players could "rewind" time and reattempt difficult sections of ZX Spectrum and Nintendo Entertainment System games, which were known for their difficulty, especially in the notoriously challenging Battletoads.^{[4][7][9][15]} Kotaku figured that Rare added cheats to make the esoteric and "crushingly tough" Spectrum games tolerable,^[5] and the Ars Technica review wished that this "rewind" feature had been extended to the Nintendo 64 games.^[4] Critics liked the Snapshot challenges^[4][7][34] and Polygon reported that they were crucial for learning basic game mechanics,^[9] though less accessible than those of NES Remix.^[6] Reviewers complained that the Spectrum game controls were difficult to decipher.^[4][9] The Ars Technica reviewer thought that the compilation did a poor job of explaining each game's controls, and wondered why Rare did not include introductory or how-to videos. Instead, he turned to YouTube videos and external FAQs before playing each game.^[4] Eurogamer and Ars Technica disagreed on the virtues of having the Spectrum emulator replicate the graphical glitches of the original console.^[33][4] Jaz Rignall of USgamer appreciated the added option to save game progress at any time for the Spectrum games, and wrote that the collection will remind players how difficult games used to be.^[7]

Rare Replay's Nintendo 64 emulation pleased critics.