I honestly don't see why so many people take up for Rare at all.
They turned out a couple of decent N64 titles, one amazing one (GoldenEye). The only outstanding stuff they'd done at the end of the Super NES was DKC... the second and third Donkey Kong Country titles were horrible and uninspired.
Their games took too long to come out, they were decent at best (outside of a little luck), and weren't worth the hype the Nintendo loyalists heaped on them in the Nintendo 64 generation in the first place. You'd heap praise on them too (and likely did) if they were the only company truly supporting the N64 other than Nintendo, which they were.
It's 100% fair to judge a company by its last title... particularly when it took them so long and sucked so horribly. Some of the second party games that came out last year were Silicon Knights' Eternal Darkness, Rare's StarFox Adventures, and Retro Studios' Metroid Prime. Two of those titles are hands-down amazing, and the other one was the biggest disappointment many of us have ever received. Nintendo kicked Rare to the curb because they were an overappreciated over-hyped developer who got grandfathered into the new generation with a huge ego from hype based on their success in the *last* generation... where they JUST so happened to not have any competition. In this generation, however, Rare's many flaws were super-evident the day that SFA was released, and Nintendo had obviously noted their lack of value before we got the opportunity to test the goods as they had the Microsoft deal ready before the fact.
Honestly, guys. If Nintendo had wanted Rare, all they had to do was buy 2% of Rare's stock to hold the majority. They looked close and saw what any logically thinking human would see... that Rare was the product of being in the right place at the right time and didn't happen to be worth *nearly* as much as they had been during the 8-bit and 16-bit consoles quality-wise. Fortunately, Microsoft believed the same thing that Rare did: that Rare was worth a lot of money, so it became a self-fulfilling prophecy. It turns out that Rare was indeed worth a lot of money... to Nintendo, as a used-up developer, sold to the richest company in the world. Do you think they're going to make Microsoft their money back? Not bloody likely, friends. A lot closer to impossible.
If you're still not seeing it clearly, think about Too Human, Metroid Prime 2, and Kameo: Elements of Power. Which one is the one you're least interested in? Nine out of ten of you will say Kameo, hands down. Finally, when viewed under good light, Rare has been exposed as the totally weak developer that they are. I, for one, am glad that they are no longer around to churn out mediocre games on my console of choice. I'm also glad they no longer have the right to bastardize some of Nintendo's favorite franchises, from StarFox to Donkey Kong.
And yeah, I agree with the idea that many Nintendo loyalists are only turning on Rare because they're with Microsoft now. There are some of us who actually have genuine disgust for Rare's underwhelming existence... but really, who cares? At least the fanboys are finally getting it right. Rare was sub-par all along.
Topic: Nintendo and Rare (Read 13324 times)
