No, Grabbed by the Ghoulies was the sign that the era of Rare making great games was over, and they'd just make nondescript average at best gaming gruel for the rest of their existence.
Eurogamer did an extremely well writen article on that precise subject this year back in February. I highly recommend reading this. This even include comment from former Rare employee. http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-02-08-who-killed-rare After reading that articles to me the reason Rare success has fall is the lack of tight control that was done by Nintendo in the 90s. At the same time this too thigh control is part of the reason that led to the Microsoft acquisition. So from the 2000s I think Rare where doom unfortunately...
Rare has been hiring for a "next-gen" project and it's summed to not be kinect or anything like that. So I don't think they're kinect only at this point. However, Rare today is not the Rare of yesterday. I mean that in the most literal way possible - every person from the DKC, Goldeneye, PD, etc days is gone. The final straw was when Microsoft fired their entire art direction team, the last group that had been there from the beginning. It's sad what happened to Rare, but seeing how Retro studios is performing, I'm more inclined to believe that it was Nintendo's strict supervision which made Rare so great. The more freedom they got, the worst products they began to put out. DK64 and Star Fox Adventures were terrible.
Rare used to make some really awesome games - DKC, Goldeneye, Conker's Bad Fur Day, Killer Instinct, etc. They weren't all great, but they had great style, and often great humor. I even thought Star Fox Adventures was pretty good, even if it was basically a Zelda clone.
i really liked diddy kong racing on the n64, although it was a sort of rip of mario kart at that time. it had some very nice multiplayer battle stuff. there last games where not that good..
Grant Kirkhope had a short cameo in a live MAGFest podcast, and answered questions from what I assume were the people watching it while it was streaming. Most of his comments aren't anything we haven't already heard, but it's interesting to hear blunt honesty from one of the few remaining people who worked at good Rare. The podcast was made back in 2011, but for whatever reason articles about the first question below started popping up recently all over the internet. I went ahead and wrote his answers to questions/comments regarding Rare. You can view it for yourself here. It starts at about 2:10:00 Comment: Why don't Rare make Killer Instinct (3)? Kirkhope: I don't know why Rare don't make Killer Instinct. I think Rare have completely fucked themselves, and it's - in fact, it isn't their fault, it's Microsoft's fault. They have completely ruined that company, and it makes me cry everyday of my life. Comment: I love Banjo Kazooie. Nuts and bolts made me Kirkhope: It did me too. Yes, nuts and bolts was a - tell you what, the original idea for nuts and bolts that they had was even worse than the one they came out with. So think yourself lucky that you got that because the original idea was completely shit. We all, the senior people at Rare, moaned about it lots and lots and changed it to nuts and bolts, but even then that was shite. I'm sorry about Banjo Kazooie too. Comment: If you had to whore yourself for any company, which one would it be? Kirkhope: It would be, um... Well, I'd whore myself - if I could get Rare back to the way it was. In fact, we all said we would give back all the money that Microsoft paid us if we could go back to how it was. It's unfortunate what happened. Comment: Rare is the best! Kirkhope: Rare is the best, yes. Well, they were the best. Not anymore...
It's a common, but sad, story in modern gaming: company makes great games, company undergoes massive organizational changes (usually for financial reasons), company makes shit games.
I couldn't disagree with Henners more. Rare made some excellent games, some of which were pioneering. GoldenEye, despite all its faults, was truly stunning. I can't tell you how many hours... no, months... my friends and I spent on that game. And Perfect Dark. And they really have aged well, and are still very playable. The only thing that hasn't aged well from the 90s is that stupid teenage girl habit of maxing names with the letter x. You know... xXmynameXx. Truly pathetic. I agree with whoever said that you perhaps had to be there - if you are some teenager who didn't have a Nintendo 64 on release (or perhaps, more importantly, don't remember the SNES coming out and probably the NES before it), you may not appreciate the games. It's a bit like Halo. When the Xbox came out and Halo, it was stunning. I remember playing my friend's imported copy on his projector and going around looking down, marvelling at the grass. Looking back on it now, the graphics are a pile of crap! Still, it's a playable game. Kiddies - games aren't all about fancy-shmancy graphics. We used to have this thing called GAMEPLAY. That's basically where a game has a good, novel idea and longevity. Not just yet another FPS - booring! Sure, Rare isn't what it used to be, but I don't know about dead. Incidentally, don't forget that Rare started off as Ultimate Play the Game, who made some top notch Spectrum games! The Jetman series, Pssst, Atic Atac and Kinght Lore were great, for example. Don't forget NES classics like Snake, Rattle 'n' Roll and Wizards and Warriors. Oh, and to suggest it was all downhill from Grabbed by the Ghoulies is unfair. What about Viva Pinata? Kameo was OK. And I for one didn't mind Perfect Dark Zero. Not a patch on the original, but still fun enough. Maybe the decline started in 2003 when Microsoft bought them out, but they were still making decent games until Tim and Chris left. And yeah, the N64 days were great. Don't forget Blast Corps!
Reading this thread over again, I am starting to really regret giving away my N64 a few years ago. I never really gave that console a chance.
I love that you're implying I'm a teenager who never experienced the N64. If you reread my post I mention that I was playing online FPS on PC when I also got Goldeneye...it was fun but not groundbreaking for me. I enjoyed their games on N64 (which I had a year after release, thank you) but I don't think they've aged well at all. IMO most early 3D games from the mid 90s haven't aged well.
Completely agree. GoldenEye has not retained its former glory, nor have a lot of N64 titles. That being said, Rare's older classics (such as Donkey Kong Country) still hold up to this day, and are still arguably better than most games on the market.
Goldeneye was a good game, but it wasn't that impressive if you played PC FPSes before. By the time it came out, there was already stuff like Quake World which was a hell of a lot more impressive than Goldeneye: Internet play with server search in 1996.
I think people are missing the point about Goldeneye. It wasn't popular or groundbreaking because it was good (and it was), it was because it was one of the first console FPS' done right. It showed everyone that you didn't need a PC to play FPS' or a keyboard and mouse to control it. It also had extremely fun multiplayer, which was great for when you had friends over (back when people had to actually have friends to play multiplayer with them). That all may not seem like much to the PC master race, but to us filthy console peasants, it was amazing. Keep in mind, I'm not even a huge fan of Goldeneye or first person shooters. I have no attachment to the game or the genre and I'm still baffled at how many people say the game (along with many others from the 90's) has aged horribly or that the controls are awful by today's standards. If that's the case then let me ask this: Why do I have more fun playing Goldeneye than literally any FPS on the market today? Simple. Because the game hasn't aged badly, it's the genre (and the gamers that play them) that did. God forbid anyone want to play a FPS that doesn't have a high budget, regenerating health, a two/three weapon limit, "gritty realism", linear level design, is multiplayer centric, and has single player campaigns that barely last 4 hours. That's why if I'm ever given the choice to play "badly aged" 90's FPS' or current ones, I'll gladly pick the "badly aged" 90's FPS each and every time.
those who manage the cash and those who are talented are rarely the one and the same. Rare just made this more obvious to gamers.
Speaking of Rare (yeah, this is the thread for that)... I have a video interview of Former Nintendo of America Howard Lincoln circa May 1997 at E3. The discussions talked about revolved around the Nintendo 64's early performance of that year and Nintendo's then-strong relationship to Rareware, the developers of Donkey Kong Country, Killer Instinct, Banjo-Kazooie, and GoldenEye 007. It's a good watch/listen.
Am I the only one who actually LIKED Grabbed By The Ghoulies? I thought it was fun to play, hilarious at times and a nice game you could also let your younger relatives play on a console saturated with FPSes and racing/sports games. Hated the Conker remake though, the graphics had some effects missing (no milk in the glass in the intro? puh-leeze!) and the censorship of the swear words didn't go down well with me. Sorry, I prefer the original "Great Mightypoo"-song! But the little story twists and slight updates which came from the more powerful hardware were nice
I didn't think Grabbed by Ghoulies was any good, but Perfect Dark Zero was a blast online. And Kameo was pretty solid as well. Never played much of Viva Pinata, but I know a ton of people who swear by the game. And really, Nuts and Bolts was pretty solid too, its only crime was being different from its predecessors as far as I can tell.
