Rare Ltd.

Rare Ltd., formerly also known under the Rareware trademark, is a British video game developer formed in 1985 by Tim and Chris Stamper. Rare has created Conker the Squirrel and the Conker franchise. They are also known for developing the Donkey Kong Country, Perfect Dark and Banjo-Kazooie franchises. The company also developed Conker's debut game, Diddy Kong Racing.

Starting with the release of Donkey Kong Country, Rare used to exclusively develop titles for Nintendo units, but on September 24, 2002 the company was acquired by Microsoft. Their logo was changed the following year, in 2003, when they officially dropped the "Rareware" trademark (which was essentially a branding name for their software), and subsequently, the new logo was used in Conker: Live & Reloaded.

As a result of the acquisition, the Conker franchise fell under Microsoft's ownership. A sequel to Conker's Bad Fur Day, known as Conker's Other Bad Day, was in early development at the time, but was canceled after the acquisition due to an approaching end of lifecycle of the original Xbox. Even though the expanded remake they set out to make received strong reviews, it was met with fan backlash. The same situation happened with Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts, after which Rare shifted their focus on creating new games, while reviving old IPs in collaborations with other studios, other than providing means to play the old games through Rare Replay, backwards-compatibility and cloud services.