MundoRare Shuts Down After Losing Faith in Rare's New Direction

Rare, knows the way...

Let's face it, Rare haven't been Rare in a long time. They've become just another generic 2nd party developer and a shell of their former selves. Time to let it go.

Microsoft really screwed Rare...go back to Nintendo...

That crappy Kinect Sports was the reason they cancelled Perfect Dark 2 and Kameo 2.

Meh. It was inevitable. Rare has just become the Retro Studios of Microsoft, only they aren't making good games.

I knew it would happen one of these days. Rare has gone from a source of classics to just another soulless game developer since the fatal moment in 2002, when they were bought by Microsoft. Adding further proof to Rare's newfound stupidity, they're too thick to see that Microsoft murdered them. The way they're going now, I wouldn't be surprised if Rare went bankrupt within the next decade.

All in all, it was a reasonable thing to shut down MundoRare. There's just no point in being a fan of a company that is only good for the stuff they did years ago. People who still tie their faith to Rare are nothing but fools who dwell on the past. It's now time to move on and forget, and to see that what Rare is doing now is draining their own life force away. Now a shadow of their former selves, it's time to just proclaim Rare as a dead developer before it goes bankrupt. After all, it will happen very soon. Try your best to mark my words, even if they're too long to mark.

Thank you for listening to that long-winded speech of mine, all four of you who didn't lose your attention span halfway through.

Yep. Nintendo doesn't need Rare now. And Microsoft doesn't need to keep Rare for themselves; they are not getting the classic quality of Rare games that Nintendo enjoyed. It would be better for everyone if Microsoft let Rare go even if new Rare isn't fit to clean old Rare's shoes. The only Rare games I would want to come to a Nintendo console in future are for the Virtual Console. I wouldn't bother with a new Banjo-Kazooie game for Wii if it ever happened after being disappointed by Nuts & Bolts. I have to wonder though, if Rare had stayed with Nintendo, would they have still become the company they are today or if its all Microsoft's fault.

Rare post-nintendo has been vastly disappointing. I'm not quite sure what happened, maybe others could fill me in but they are a shell of their former selves.

Hmm, pretty sad. Their own doing, as was mentioned.

I'm not surprised. After making so many classics it's sad to see them reduced to making games like kinect sports. I wish they were still with nintendo. Even if their games were of the same quality as the games on microsofts consoles, at least we would se their games on vc.

@Bass: That's a good question. Even if Rare did stick with Nintendo, there would still be a possibility that they would screw themselves up, just like they did under Microsoft's ownership. After all, the true murderer of Rare is Rare themselves. I don't know what kind of control that console developers exert on the 2nd party developers that they own, but I doubt that Microsoft really controlled Rare enough to make them create awful games. As far as I know, Microsoft's ownership of Rare only means that Rare can develop only for Microsoft-made consoles. :/

Welcome to nl, nintyfan.

Rare started to go down hill before Microsoft got involved. Just saying'.

Rare died in 2002, as far as I'm concerned. After that, mediocrity was the highest they ever made it to.

"Rare started to go down hill before Microsoft got involved. Just saying'."

Totally agree...

Hey, I liked Adventures. A lot. lol

But i know that one has split opions...kinda like most Starfox games actually

Rare are always going to be haunted by their old Nintendo titles. Their fans expect them to release something like Donkey Kong Country or Goldeneye - but they can't. Most of their classics have rights issues (there's no way Nintendo would let them use their characters for a start) so their only option is to create something new. However people seem to be expecting Nintendo titles - but they're not Nintendo, they're Rare. It's pointless trying to please their old audience when they're now developing for a new one - they have to change, move on and just try to develop some great games and move away from the past.

Ouch.

Funny thing is, I only ever knew them for their work on Nintendo-owned franchises Donkey Kong Country and StarFox. Didn't grow up with their other stuff like Banjo or whatever. IMO, DKC and StarFox are still their best work, with everything else paling in comparison. Why the company would have a loyal fanbase to begin with has always been beyond me.

I sorta blame Microsoft. Nintendo was ALWAYS strict with Rare, and Rare apparently did not like the strictness- even though they produced amazing games. Now that I see that maybe Microsoft isn't too 'close' to Rare or strict, well.. You can pretty much say they went lose and have not discipline themselves the way they should when it comes to "delaying a game if it needs more time to be worked on". And the departure of a few and the best employees and managers pretty much started this downward spiral for the company. I hope they clean up their act and maybe, Microsoft should be using the money to make some new studio to make these Kinect games rather than throw the money around to get 'useless' deals (everyone knows that EVENTUALLY, ESPN will look to other consoles and provide a similar service to the Wii[successor] and PS3) and hand over money to third-party developers to make games for them.

Nintendo funded their studios- including Project Sora which turned out it was developing a Kid Icarus game and then-some.

Rare should focus on patching up their mistakes, and fast.

If only Rare stuck with nintendo

Banjo-Kazooie Nuts and Bolts was good. I'm not even a big follower of Rare or anything, but I'm not convinced that they lost the ability to make good games. Rare has always followed in Nintendo's shadow and Kinect Sports falls into that mold. The real problem here is that what they did to MundoRare is really cold. They denied a long-time fan site something as simple as interviews.

@ Stuffgamer1

You know that the only StarFox game Rare worked on was StarFox Adventures, no?

madgear, they can't even do new versions of their old games well. The new Perfect Dark, Banjo-Kazooie and Conker games aren't a patch on the N64 versions. Nobody expects them to release a new Donkey Kong game on XBOX 360, but it is fair to expect a game the same quality or better as their old DK games but with different characters (and not direct clones of the Kong clan; just different characters). But new Rare would likely screw that up too.

Not only was Rare good for creating complex graphics tools and engines that unlocked unknown powers in Nintendo's previous consoles, they had the freedom (as a second-party developer) to take advantage of Nintendo's or other franchises and develop new ideas. It's this talent that the old Rare had that made games like the DKC series a standout in the fading 16-bit era and killed the early 32/64-bit consoles (3DO, 32X,Jaguar) even as Sony's PlayStation and Sega's Saturn launched. Their Goldeneye, Banjo-Kazooie and DK64 games gave the N64 an excuse to exist as others were enjoying FFVIII and Sonic Adventure on other consoles. As for Gamecube's SFA...meh.

Sadly, I just don't see any reason to support Rare either as they've lost themselves by moving away from Nintendo. Without them unlocking the innermost powers of an "underpowered" console and using this power to develop fun games by bankable franchises, Rare can't be the developers that they once were. Rare was more of a technology company than a game developer in their later years, which may be the reason why they have no "muse" to draw inspiration from at the moment.

So sad, DKC is still one of my favourite games... but I'm not one to cling to a sinking ship either. Can't wait for DKC Returns!!

I read a history of Rare on IGN just because it was there when I was browsing their reviews for a second opinion (didn't agree with them ) and I see no games that I am interested in from the time when the original creators of Rare left to the present. DKC 1 is great, don't know about the others.

Most days, I forget Rare exists. I'm amazed they even had their own community site. No need for it anymore, that's for sure.

I agree with everything Klapaucius said, except the part about Star Fox Adventures. ( I liked that game. ) Microsoft didn't do anything. Nintendo just let them go when some of the most important people in the company left.

i really liked star fox adventures, and would buy it if i found it in a second hand shop or something.... i hadnt noticed it was made by rare though..._{maybe i just lack the atenttion span needed to see the credits...}
it was a great game for me probably because, as a starting gamer, i couldnt care any less for rare's previous games

i may also add that the only oter games i have played by rare are golden eye, which my brohter loved, and viva piñata, though i play mostly the DS version...

i guess rare has been a little careless lately.

Well Microsoft didn't mess up RARE though they did damage them indirectly. If you read their history you will see that some members left I believe before the purchase and some left when they were purchased. I think their reign ended with the N64. Star Fox Adventures probably would have been better if Nintendo didn't push the Star Fox franchise onto the game though it's hard to say. I own almost all of their N64 games with boxes and manuals. I'm only missing Killer Instinct and Donkey Kong.

Part of RARE's problem was their development time. Their games were good because they took a long time to make (much like Blizzard) but the transition from N64 to Gamecube messed them up as did the transition to Microsoft. A lot of their games in production had to move consoles which creates an even bigger delay and rush to release them. Kameo/Perfect Dark Zero both had to be launch titles and both were originally Gamecube games switched to Xbox and then finally changed for a 360 launch. Star Fox Adventures was originally Dinosaur Planet and well underway for the N64 when it was changed to the Gamecube.

@HiroshiYamauchi: For some reason, I'd thought they were involved with Star Fox 64 as well. I guess not. But I like Star Fox Adventures, so it's okay.

Corbie took the words out of my mouth.

They're just not the good old Rareware of the SNES/N64 days.

Poor Rare. I'm going through DKC, and I love it. It's horrible to see them be dwindled down to this.

I remember a good statement a magazine asked back in the 90s - Nintendo didn't trust Rare with Mario and gave them a forgotten character to use whose only recent appearance at the time was in Super Mario Kart and had been untouched for what, seven years or so before then? Nintendo only gave them Donkey Kong because if they screwed up, nobody would care much. But even after proven success, they never did get to make their own Mario game. Whereas these days, almost anybody can make a Mario game for Nintendo despite Mario being a much more important franchise to Nintendo now than he was back in the nineties.

I did enjoy Star Fox Adventures but it didn't do the Star Fox series any favours whatsoever. Look at it now.

I prefer to remember Rare as the developer that they used to be: Donkey Kong Country is still one of my favourite games as is Blast Corps, but their newest projects just don't seem to get anywhere near the same amount of attention. I'm afraid I can't see Rare lasting much longer, especially since they've been lined up for Kinect.

The best recent game Rare has made was Viva Pinata.

But I can't help but kinda hate Rare after reading this article.

Bye Rare. Hello Retro Studios.

@YoshiSage - I started reading the second paragraph, skipped to the third, felt guilty and re-read the second. Well played.

RARE was just fantastic on Nintendo platforms, then the long arm of Microsoft turned them into a mediocre developer I guess. I dont know, all I know is that the RARE showing at E3 for Kinect was flat out awful.

I really don't blame them. The new reason why the company's name is Rare is because they can make great games it is just very RARE...terrible pun.

@Klap

Starfox Adventures was great. It was the Star Fox tie in that ruined the game. The game was originally titled "Dinosaur Planet" and didn't involve Star Fox at all.

Star Fox was thrown in as an afterthought, that's why the space parts felt like unfinished demos.
That's why there is no cool space fighting or intergalactic wars on foreign planets.

"The way they're going now, I wouldn't be surprised if Rare went bankrupt within the next decade."

Judging from their standpoint, I think Rare might go bankrupt within the next two years!

Rare has to be the most whitewashed company ever. Most of what they made was crap from the beginning.

It seems to me that MundoRare (whoever the heck they are) are being babies. They pretty much said, "They won't let us do what we want so we don't like them anymore." On top of that, they subtly segue into the "Hardcore vs. Casual" debate by saying that since Kinect Sports is a "casual" game then they can't support them.

It's one freaking game! It's like someone who loves Square finding out they made Rad Racer on the NES and disowning the company.

But anyway, it doesn't bother me, the only Rare game I've ever liked was...well, I really haven't cared for any of them. I mean I had Goldeneye and Perfect Dark but those were only because I had a N64 and my brother wanted to play them. Ok, I got one, Conker's Bad Fur Day. I loved that game, too bad the emulation sucks for it on the 360 or I'd pick it up in a heartbeat. Until then, Rare doesn't matter to me a bit, just like Retro or whoever it was that made those God awful Metroid Prime games. (I promise I'm not trolling, I just seriously hated those games)

We need to stop talking about Rare. Rare is gone. Expect it and stop posting about it. It is a microsoft company now. Unless this site also talks about microsoft stop.

Free Radical Design (which I believe is now defunct) and the other off-shoots now constitute the original RARE talent pool. It's sad that what was once considered to be Nintendo's Second Party-Powerhouse is now Microsofts "casual go-to." The only thing that could save them now is an amazing re-boot of the BATTLETOADS franchise. Fortunately for Nintendo fans, RARE has been replaced by RETRO....

Sad what microsoft does to the world

Not sure what they expected after that kind of Kinect Sports review. Not that I blame them.

I find it hilarious that Rare, the one developer that's already ripped off every Nintendo game in existence, would be the one to develop Kinect Sports.

I remember when Banjo-Kazooie and Conker's Bad Fur Day, then known as Twelve Tails: Conker 64 were scheduled to come out a month apart from one another, and then right before their release dates, Rare delayed them indefinitely. Everyone was upset, but they said they needed to make them better. And when many, many months later they were released, we all realized how right they'd been to spend the extra time and risk losing fans with delays in order to make two incredible games. We all saw that sometimes a game delay can be a very good thing. Rare gave us almost all of the best titles on Nintendo 64, and they will be missed.

@57: People loved Rare because they DID make good games. Goldeneye is AWESOME, and although rather outdated NOW, it was mind blowing back in the day. And it's "sequel" Perfect Dark was even better, and having it on XBLA, it's still an amazing game and holds up against even Halo or Call of Duty.

Then there's Banjo which I've never played, but I hear it's awesome. And then there's Conker. My god, Conker. Not only was it actually a really good platformer, but it was beyond funny, and it broke that "cutesy 3d platformer phase that seemed to be the "cool" thing at the time. Not to mention all the other games like Donkey Kong Country and Killer Instinct.

They also made Battletoads, which is regarded as one of the best beat em' ups ever. And sure they may be "over rated" but they are most DEFINITELY not "nothing special".

@55: Erm, what Nintendo games have they ripped off? :/

@56: "A delayed game is eventually good, a rushed game is forever bad."

@Shadx: Only game I KNOW they ripped off was Super Mario 64. All you have to do is play Banjo-Kazooie to reach that conclusion. Only thing is: They did a bad job of it and made an inferior product whose reported awesomeness is EXTREMELY overstated.

"A delayed game is eventually good, a rushed game is forever bad."

These days its more like "A delayed game is eventually good, a rushed game is frequently patched." But there are some delayed games that weren't all that great. If it were true, Duke Nukem Forever must be the best darn game ever when it finally gets released.

Only game I KNOW they ripped off was Super Mario 64.

Both Super Mario 64 and Mario Kart 64 are classics but I think Banjo-Kazooie and Diddy Kong Racing may be better games. Rare took what worked and made improvements. Nintendo is to be praised for coming up with the initial blueprints for Super Mario 64 but it takes another good company to be equal or better to that game. However, I don't think Rare could have developed Banjo-Kazooie if it had not been for Super Mario 64. Did Rare rip-off Nintendo's games? Not exactly, but they did create games of the same genre. "Rip-off" would suggest inferior quality, which Rare's games weren't. There were many 3D platformers and 3D racers on the N64 and none could come close to Nintendo and Rare's games.

Yeah, ouch.
What will really hurt though is if Donkey Kong Country Returns becomes a much bigger success than anything they've made in the last 7 years. (which is pretty plausible) Rare still has talent I think, more than enough to make a game like DKCR, but their efforts have been severely misdirected ever since they joined Microsoft.

What Darkmire (24) said is the true issue. How could Rare be so cold to a FAN group ! Just because they wrote ONE bad review on Kinnect sports? That is such a lousy excuse.

Sad.

Don't really care, Rare ain't that great anymore.

The best recent Rareware game is Bonsai Barber on WiiWare.

Rare beeing Rare is geting rare...hurr...

but really it was a downhill slide since the late N64 days (at least in my book. and when you treat your hard fanbase like that...ah well.

NL staff is full of Nintendo fanboys. Since when were Rare's 360 titles halfbaked? Most of Rare's 360 games are REALLY well-crafted, Perfect Dark Zero being the unpolished exception.

@Skrubber: Kameo is pretty good. But Viva Pinata is sooooo NOT for everybody, unlike Rare's DKC series and all of their N64 classics. And Banjo 3 was ugly and too different from its predecessors, not to mention uninspired in its own right (lets face it, almost all the missions boiled down to "destroy this" or "race to here"). Their 360 games have been disappointing overall, and their Xbox 1 output was pathetic.

Rare has definitely been in decline since being bought by Microsoft, but i have NO idea how much of that is their fault or MS's. If you travel to unseen64 sometime, you can see just how many Xbox 1 and Xbox 360 titles Rare have had cancelled by MS in the past. Really, really promising stuff. Quest, Urchin, Kameo 2, Saber Wulf Stampede, etc. And then they get killed and we end up with....Kinectimals and Kinect Sports and Avatars and whatever else MS wants to ripoff from Nintendo. It's very, very sad.

I never heard of Mundorare till this week, but it IS sad to see that the state of Rare is so bad these days. I would give anything to just see them make one more awesome platformer/action game. Banjo was as close as they'll get for a long time, I think, and it was really disappointing. Fun to play around with the vehicles, but then there was far too little to do with 'em. And christ it was hideous. Why redesign everyone to be so blocky? Just do it like the excellent, high res promotional/marketing art for Banjo Tooie on N64!

And it all just goes to show that Microshovel doesn't care. Microshovel has bought and enslaved so many great IPs, starving them until they were utterly worthless. Nintendo was foolish to sell RARE, some of the most brilliant games of the N64 era were done by this company. Without Nintendo's brilliant leadership, RARE crumbled to dust under the tyranny of Microshovel and ther X-flops. R.I.P.

I agree, although Rare themselves made the decision to leave. What Nintendo could've done was incorporating the company and rename them as Nintendo UK studios or something.

I am against M$ for a number of reasons. What does it tell people that a company brings hardware on the market that is 'potentially' defect? The Red ring (of death) is still a major problem, that isn't fixed. It shows us that they do not care, as long as you buy their crap.

Nintendo, had and will always have the best hard and software quality. period.

One of the major differences with Rare in the Nintendo days was that the Big N never rushed Rare. Their games were constantly delayed - much like Nintendo games sometimes are - in order to ensure the games were of highest quality. Gamers complained at the time, but I think we'd all agree the extra quality control was worth it at the end of the day. Companies like Microsoft and EA would rather rush a game to market than strive for perfection.

And Rare was definitely slipping near the end of their Nintendo tenure. Star Fox Adventures, while decent, paled in comparison with most of their N64 efforts. And, one of their last N64 games, Conker, was terrible. The gameplay was so limited and clunky... yes, it was amusing, but I generally don't turn to videogames when I want a laugh.

The fact that Rare doesn't have certain character licences shouldn't be an excuse. Their best games, IMO, are Jet Force Gemini, Blast Corps and Banjo, all which are original Rare properties.

I don't really blame MundoRare, what has Rare really done since they were acquired by MS from BigN...a big fat nothing!

0 sympathy for Rare. They made some great games with Nintendo. Pretty much just crap since being purchased by Microsoft. And now they apparently "specialize" in Microsoft's "copy the Wii" games. You would deny the fansite with 10 year devotion a documentary on you because Kinect Sports, who everyone knows is a Wii Sports copy, wasn't that good? Could you honestly say Kinect Sports was in the same innovative level as Perfect Dark or Banjo-Kazooie?