HappySqurriel said:
Although (in defence of the Nintendo fans) on many message boards before the news came out there were tons of postings about whether Rare would return to their previous level of greatness. Banjo Kazooie was generally considered far better than Banjo Twooie and Donkey Kong 64, Jetforce Gemini and Conkers Bad Fur Day were flops, and Perfect Dark was very good but was delayed several times and stuck very close to the Goldeneye formula. People were praising Rare mainly because they thought that a lot of their problems were caused by the loss of key staff members when Zoonami and Free Radical were created. The bashing of Rare afterwords was partially from frustration of losing Rare to Microsoft and partially honest comments; rare was taking forever to release games and when released they were not having the impact of previous Rareware games (see. Kameo and Perfect Dark Zero) |
Speaking as a former Rare fan, I was only mildly disappointed in their departure from Nintendo for the reasons you cite. I loved Blast Corps, Diddy Kong Racing, Banjo Kazooie, Conker's Quest (it's failure was the result of timing more than anything) and of course Goldeneye. However, Perfect Dark and Banjo Tooie,which I enjoyed, were not as good as their predecessors. Jet Force Gemini left me cold, as did DK64. By the time Star Fox Adventures was released, I was glad to see them go. I figured their loss of quality was either 1) loss of key personnell, or 2) interference by Nintendo on project such as Dinosaur Planet/SFA. It was my hope that the latter was the primary culprit, and a change of venue with fewer restrictions would benefit them. Alas, it was not to be so, and given the results of Grabbed by the Ghoulies and PD Zero, Nintendo got thebetter end of the deal.
