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Rare Ltd.

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Rare's logo, used from 2003-2010.

Rare Ltd., formerly known by their trade name Rareware, is a British video game developer formed in 1985 by Tim and Chris Stamper.

Rare has created Conker and the Conker franchise. Some of their other well known works include Perfect Dark, Banjo-Kazooie, and Sea of Thieves. The company also developed Conker's debut game, Diddy Kong Racing.

History

When they rebranded from Ultimate to Rare in 1994, 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.[1] 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,[2][3] other than providing means to play the old games through Rare Replay, backwards-compatibility and cloud services.

Gallery

Logos

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References

  1. "When it launched, Conker: Live and Reloaded received strong reviews, but fans of the original game were critical of a number of alterations made to the single-player campaign – not least the removal of certain swear words. Though Seavor and Pile understood these frustrations at the time, they still take exception to those who try to paint the remake as an unmitigated disaster. “They were looking for a reason to hate Microsoft,” suggests Seavor. “There was this loyalty thing with Nintendo. Nothing good could happen with Microsoft. And the truth of the matter is, they got another Conker game, which I would say with pretty much 100% conviction would never have happened if we stayed with Nintendo. We couldn’t win, could we?” ("Gory Detail: Life After Conker's Bad Fur Day" - Wireframe, issue 30)
  2. "Rare Studio Head on Possibility of Other Studios Working With Its IP — IGN Unfiltered" - www.IGN.com
  3. Who saved Rare? - www.gamesindustry.biz