Rare Appreciation Thread

[Crappy Blue Luigi]

oh god they made that!?




LOL
I played that game more than you'd think someone'd play a game they absolutely hated

ME TOO GOD

my family owned it years and years ago when we still had a working nes and we played it so much so the point that i'm pretty sure everybody in my family could still hum the answering theme

it's not really a fun game but i'll be damned if it isn't nostalgic as hell for me

[Jermungandr]

as the first 30% or so is actually pretty alright(and it introduced krystal lol), but then the rest of the game is so obviously rushed and just gets more and more bare as you progress.

To be fair, that was more Nintendo's fault than Rare's.

Also for those of you interested in gaming history, I recommend reading up on Rare's former company, Ultimate Play the Game sometime. In the early days of computer gaming, this company single-handedly revolutionized the game industry many times within a span of only five years, which is even more impressive when you consider that almost all the work was done by just two people.

[Koopaul]

Oh man. Almost forgot to mention Jet Force Gemini!



This game is often overlooked too.

[Gors]

Rare Anticipation Thread

[Omega]

Appreciation threads aren't that rare koopaul.

Spoiler

Banjo-Tooie is the best Rareware game

[Paladin]

The only game I really care about Rare is DKC2 to be honest. Some of their other games are ok but nothing that really catches my attention.

The only thing that is good from Rare, consistenly, is the music.

Banjo and Kazooie was a terrible game.

Also yes, Donkey Kong Country (the first one) sucked ass. DKC2 made it look like a playable beta.

Ehm, I've got two questions.

1. Why?

2. Why post negative things about Rare games without any sort of reasoning in a Rare appreciation thread?

[E-Man]

In my personal opinion, I really like all of Rare's games equally. It's hard for me to decide favorites because each one provides me with something good (although I'm more positively biased about the first two Banjo-Kazooie games since I ended up playing them the most). Even though Rare had some generic beginnings when serving under the infamous LJN and ended up going belly up once Microsoft got their clutches on them, Drshnaps is right when they innovated gaming ever since their Ultimate Play the Game days. One of Rare's best qualities is taking something that already existed and innovating it with fresh ideas and new concepts. It was even true in their Microsoft days when they continued to make strange IPs that you wouldn't expect from them, such as Ghoulies, Viva Piñata, and Nuts & Bolts. I'm not saying this as a bad thing because they usually do well once they try a new idea that works in their favor. Heck, when they got the idea to use pre-rendered graphics for their Killer Instinct game (a graphic design choice that was unheard of in that day and age), Nintendo saw the potential in that and started a partnership that made Rare as famous as it was.

[Gors]

The only game I really care about Rare is DKC2 to be honest. Some of their other games are ok but nothing that really catches my attention.

The only thing that is good from Rare, consistenly, is the music.

Banjo and Kazooie was a terrible game.

Also yes, Donkey Kong Country (the first one) sucked ass. DKC2 made it look like a playable beta.

Ehm, I've got two questions.

1. Why?

2. Why post negative things about Rare games without any sort of reasoning in a Rare appreciation thread?

Because DKC2 is a great platform game, oozing with much more atmosphere than 1 and 3. The amount of hidden content is just perfect, and it doesnt make me groan. The music is great, Diddy and Dixie plays great and i like the combo move that you use your partner to reach higher places.

Because Rare is not perfect and not acknowledging their flaws is fanboyism over Rare. I like Rare but it is stupid to be ogling over it.

I appreciate oranges, but i hate to peel it. I appreciate rare, but i hate some of their games. Its similar.

[Paladin]

I get that I sounded a bit defensive, and I really didn't mean to, but it looks like you're saying most Rare games are sub-par and that Banjo and DKC 1 suck. While I think all Rare games had some flaws, not nearly enough to make them bad games. I think the basics of DKC 1 and 2 are the same, so I don't get saying that 1 sucks and 2 is a near perfect game. That's your opinion of course, and I respect that you aren't a Rare buttlicker, but it seems kinda aggressive to go into a thread with the purpose of honoring Rare and say that the majority of their games suck.

Sorry for the rant, no offense to you, just stating my opinion here.

[Gors]

The reason DKC2 is better than DKC despite them sharing the same basics, is that DKC2 added a whole new hidden world. There was a reason to look for the Bonus screens, other than getting 102% of the game. You were gifted more levels that are really good. Also animal buddies are given special abilities andI remember racing with my cousin to who could get more DK coins in the game (as they are the most well-hidden thing in DKC2). So it was a fun game and each pickup had a bigger role. Basically DKC2 got DKC1 and made it better with those additional gameplay ideas that worked.

As for Banjo, well, Banjo was nothing more than a 3D collect-a-thon game. If it was like Mario 64, it would be better: only three main collectibles: coins, red coins and stars. This is a case of less is more, I'd ofgen get confused in Banjo due to the sheer amount of items it had. You were forced to get musical notes to progress (those musical note doors were the bane of my existence); you had to get shiny skull tokens to get the transformation, which is crucial to beating the level; you had to save those fucking colored tapirs to earn a jigsaw piece; and the jigsaw piece themselves. At least in Mario 64 you weren't expected to get a fixed number of coins to access later areas; this was only determined by the number of stars you had in hand. Of course there's that 100-coins equal a star side-quest in every level but it can be substitued by any other star objective in normal gameplay.

[Vitesse]

Loved Donkey Kong Country 1 and 2.
Banjo Kazooie and Tooie are some of my favorite games of all time.
DK 64 is awesome.
Perfect Dark is fun and exciting.
Diddy Kong Racing is super fun.

Battletoads is horribly designed, frustratingly hard and overrated as fuck.
GoldenEye 007 was fun back in the day, but it aged terribly and is overrated as fuck.
Conker's Bad Fur Day is boring, unfunny and overrated as fuck.

Here's JonTron's contribution:

[E-Man]

In Rare's defense, the impossibly hard gameplay of Battletoads is a large factor of why many people like it so much.

[Zero Kirby]

I've actually been finding myself liking Rare's "golden era" less and less as the years go on. For example, Donkey Kong 64's not quite as timeless as, say, Super Mario 64 or something like that. I've played Super Mario 64 all the way through multiple times. I can't even bring myself to 100% Donkey Kong 64, or even just fight the final boss again. A lot just simply haven't aged well, at all - GoldenEye on the 64 is pretty terrible compared to the modern remake. And some just were never good to begin with - Star Fox Adventures, for example.

Pretty much all of their games suffer from really clumsy design at least once or twice. No matter what the game, there's at least one thing - be it a level, or gimmick, or a collectable or twenty - that's totally out of place. Donkey Kong 64 suffered from this a lot. Why did we need the instruments? They're just another key for another type of silly context-sensitive pad for each context-sensitive Kong which already HAVE their own context-sensitive pads. They have ammo as a smart bomb yes, but it's not even expended when you use them on this context-sensitive pad which is the ONLY time you'll ever use these instruments so why bother? That's just one thing, there's a multitude of others (why have orange grenades you never need, what the heck did we really need Chunky for when we have Donkey Kong, why is Tiny's context-sensitive pad just a character-specific teleport that's lazy). I dunno, I think they started falling apart a while before they got sold to Microsoft. (Conker's Bad Fur Day was godawful, Star Fox Adventures was just pitiful, and I really can't bring myself to play Banjo-Kazooie any further than I have, it's just BORING.)

I guess their games just have the same problem Super Paper Mario does. It was okay the first time though. But I just can't bring myself to play it again and I generally look back on the first time negatively.

[Kosheh]

The reason DKC2 is better than DKC despite them sharing the same basics, is that DKC2 added a whole new hidden world. There was a reason to look for the Bonus screens, other than getting 102% of the game. You were gifted more levels that are really good. Also animal buddies are given special abilities andI remember racing with my cousin to who could get more DK coins in the game (as they are the most well-hidden thing in DKC2). So it was a fun game and each pickup had a bigger role. Basically DKC2 got DKC1 and made it better with those additional gameplay ideas that worked.

I guess it's unfair to compare forward, but really. It's been a long time since the game came out and they literally had about a year or so's difference in release date.

Piggybacking on Gors' post here - it's almost like they made DKC2 twice the game the first one was. Unlocking levels was awesome, yeah and the additional abilities given to animal buddies was pretty good. But the most phenomenal part in my opinion was the buddy system (where your partner piggybacks on you) and its effect on the game's flow and level designs of the DKC games entirely (as it also enabled for levels which scale VERTICALLY) Your partner made it easier to traverse terrain at a cost (unable to run while piggybacking) and also made exploring "unreachable areas" much, much easier. I'm not kidding - for the series, it was revolutionary and it was also great how most of the levels were then designed around this mechanic.
However, all of these improvements made DKC1 feel kinda ho-hum in comparison to the other two.

Unfortunately, they turned the same mechanic into a gimmick - where Dixie could use Kiddy to break platforms/act like a barrel. Unfortunately, that mechanic wasn't really used outside of the first world in the game and it just felt gimmicky as the game practically forced you to use Kiddy Kong to utilize Dixie just as you would have in the previous title. This literally is what killed Kiddy as a good character for me - in the previous two titles, you could use both Kongs more or less interchangably (a little less so in the second game due to Dixie's hair-locopter, but generally the only difference are how they hold barrels - overhead or in-front) but the gimmicky partner mechanics forced you to use one over the other and have both Kongs on top of that - and the game really shoved the usage of Kiddy Kong in your face (which could arguably be "good level design" but maybe if he wasn't so godawfully frustrating to control, I wouldn't be complaining)

Hell, even the animal buddies feel dissapointing. They dropped Rambi for an elephant who ACTUALLY CAUSES TEMPORARY LOSS OF CONTROL over basic enemies (to be fair, she could pick up barrels and shoot water, though the latter you do a total of like twice in the game in levels designed for that mechanic) and Enguarde's underwater dash thing is literally useless, as there are no hidden water areas that aren't bonus barrels :/

[Paladin]

Basically DKC2 got DKC1 and made it better with those additional gameplay ideas that worked.

As for Banjo, well, Banjo was nothing more than a 3D collect-a-thon game.

You are completely right about DKC 2 perfecting the gameplay of DKC, the gameplay of DKC 2 is a big improvement from the first and that's because the second game came after. It's unfair to compare the mechanics of the first to the second. Still, despite better gameplay, that doesn't mean DKC is a horrible game. It had great controls and level design and great music too. The bosses were also fun.

So was Super Mario 64. I feel that Banjo did it in a more creative way by adding humorous dialogue and characters with actual personality.
The visuals were colourful and fit the game perfectly, along with the fantastic music.