Rare (company) facts for kids
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Headquarters in Twycross
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| Subsidiary | |
| Industry | Video games |
| Predecessor | Ultimate Play the Game |
| Founded | 1985 |
| Founders |
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| Headquarters |
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England
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Key people
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| Products | List of video games developed by Rare |
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Number of employees
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200+ (2020) |
| Parent | Xbox Game Studios (2002–present) |
Rare Limited is a British video game developer and a studio of Xbox Game Studios based in Twycross, Leicestershire. Rare's games span the platform, first-person shooter, action-adventure, fighting, and racing genres. Its most popular games include the Battletoads, Donkey Kong, and Banjo-Kazooie series, as well as games like GoldenEye 007 (1997), Perfect Dark (2000), Conker's Bad Fur Day (2001), Viva Piñata (2006), and Sea of Thieves (2018).
Tim and Chris Stamper, who also founded Ultimate Play the Game, established Rare in 1985. During its early years, Rare was backed by a generous budget from Nintendo, primarily concentrated on Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) games. During this time, Rare created successful games such as Wizards & Warriors (1987), R.C. Pro-Am (1988), and Battletoads (1991). Rare became a prominent second-party developer for Nintendo, which came to own a large minority stake in the company, with the release of Donkey Kong Country (1994). Throughout the 1990s, Rare started selling their games under the trademark name "Rareware" and received international recognition and critical acclaim for games such as the Donkey Kong Country series, Killer Instinct (1994), GoldenEye 007, Banjo-Kazooie (1998), Perfect Dark (2000), and Conker's Bad Fur Day (2001).
In 2002, Microsoft acquired Rare, which retained its original brand, logo, and most intellectual properties. Rare has since focused on developing games exclusively for Microsoft's video game consoles, including Grabbed by the Ghoulies (2003), Kameo (2005), Perfect Dark Zero (2005), and Viva Piñata (2006). In 2007, the Stampers left Rare to pursue other opportunities and, in 2010, the company's focus shifted to the Xbox Live Avatar and Kinect, releasing three Kinect Sports games. In 2015, Rare developed Rare Replay, an Xbox One-exclusive compilation containing 30 of its games to celebrate its 30th anniversary. Rare's most recent game, Sea of Thieves, was released in 2018.
Several former Rare employees have formed their own companies, such as Free Radical Design, best known for producing the TimeSplitters series, and Playtonic Games, best known for Yooka-Laylee (2017). Rare is widely acknowledged by the gaming industry and has received numerous accolades from critics and journalists. Rare is also known as a secretive and seclusive studio. Several Rare games, such as Donkey Kong Country and GoldenEye 007, have been cited as among the greatest and most influential games of all time, though some fans and former employees have been critical of the company's output under Microsoft.
Games
Rare has developed a number of video games since its founding, with sales nearing 90 million copies by 2002. The company is best known for its platform games, which include the Donkey Kong Country, Banjo-Kazooie, and Conker series, and for its Nintendo 64 first-person shooters GoldenEye 007 and Perfect Dark. Rare does not adhere to a few specific video-game genres. They have also developed action-adventure games, including Star Fox Adventures and Kameo: Elements of Power; fighting games, such as the Killer Instinct series; racing games, such as R.C. Pro-Am and Diddy Kong Racing, and beat 'em up-shoot 'em up games such as Battletoads and Captain Skyhawk. Since Rare has usually been associated with a video-game console manufacturer (such as Nintendo and Microsoft), most of their games have been developed as exclusives for a particular platform. In 2018, Rare released Sea of Thieves, a pirate-themed open world sandbox game for Xbox One and Windows 10. At Microsoft's X019 event, a fantasy action-adventure title called Everwild was announced.
The company's cancelled projects include Dream: Land of Giants, which became Banjo-Kazooie; Perfect Dark Core, originally the sequel to the first Perfect Dark; Black Widow, an open world game that tasks players to control an eight-legged robot; Sundown, which featured a horde-like survival mode; The Fast and the Furriest, a mascot racer; Tailwind, an action game featuring helicopters; Urchin, a Fable-style game which began development after the completion of Live & Reloaded; Ordinary Joe; Savannah, a Kinect-based game; Kinect equivalents of Wii Fit and Professor Layton, a sequel to Diddy Kong Racing, and a sequel to Kameo: Elements of Power.
Awards
Rare received numerous awards, including BAFTA award for "Best UK Developer" for its work on GoldenEye 007. In 1997, Electronic Gaming Monthly named Rare "Most Promising Game Company", citing their high rate of success in putting out killer apps for the Nintendo 64. Rare was awarded the BAFTA Interactive Entertainment Moving Images Award in 2000 for developing Perfect Dark. Tim and Chris Stamper were named as Development Legends in the 2015 Develop Industry Excellence Awards. Rare was included as Gamasutra's Top 30 Developers of All Time, and was ranked as the 36th best video game maker by IGN. The Herbert Art Gallery and Museum curated a retrospective of the company's work in 2018.
See also
In Spanish: Rare para niños
