So, another thread from me, however this time it's not only sales data, lets do something a little more maningful. Rare is usually regarded as one of the best (or the best) development partner Nintendo ever had, from 1994 to 2002 when they worked exclusively with Nintendo they released some of the most memorable games ever released on their systems, so let's do a little recap.

Rare was founded in 1985 by the Tim and Chris Stamper, originally named Ultimate Play The Game, they went on from developing titles for the ZX Spectrum to the NES during the 8 bit years, their NES library included over 40 games, during these days they found great success with games like Battletoads, Wizards and Warrios along with many licensed properties (note, not all games were good)

They woudn't parter with Nintendo until about 1986, when they signed a contract to develop games for Nintendo arcade systems, this was also the time when their first Nintendo published game was released RC Pro-Am, released in 1987, which became the company's first million seller.

Here's a photo of the signing of said contract, from left to right.

Joel Hochberg, president of Rare, Chris Stamper, co-founder of Rare,  Frank Ballouz, NOA executive, Howard Lincoln, senior vice president of Nintendo of America and Minoru Arakawa, founder and president of Nintendo of America

As the Genesis was released and videogames started to move towards the 16bit days, Rare decided to slow down their output of games on the new systems to mostly sequels of their NES titles rather than new experimental ones, this was to save money as they had spent a big portion of their NES profits on expensive sillicon graphics workstations, Rare wasn't going to be just another player in the videogame world, now they were thinking big.

Their effort payed off, some of their progress with 3D Graphics was so impressive that in 1994 Nintendo purchased 49% of the company turning Rare into a second party developer, the first game of the Nintendo era Rare was Donkey Kong Country, what was a risky project for the time, as by then Donkey Kong was essentially a dormant series, apart from ports of the original arcade games there wasn't much, however Rare's efforts proved successful, the result was one of the most visually impressive looking games for its time; today Donkey Kong Country is looked back as a landmark title and is beloved by gamers, the game became the third best selling SNES game of all time with 9.30m copies sold, and to this day is the best selling Rare game ever.

The succes promped two sequels of the game, both becoming successes as well, Rare had turn a forgotten character into one of Nintendo's biggest mascots, and Donkey Kong Country became one of the biggest franchises on the SNES. Of course, this is not all they worked on, during the late SNES days Rare produced a fighting game called Killer Instinct which became a huge success as well, the game sold over 3.20m on the SNES, its the best selling exclusive 16bit fighting game.

As the 16bit era ended and the industry moved along Rare put their eyes on the Nintendo 64, Rare started by doing a home console port to the sequel of Killer Instinct, they then moved to a new IP with the unique title Blast Corps, none sold over 1m. Oddly enough their first game on the system to sell over 1m wasn't a continuaiton of the Donkey Kong Country series, it was a licensed game, Nintendo had commitioned Rare on developing a game adaptation of the movie GoldenEye; even when released 2 years after the movie GoldenEye became yet another huge success for Rare, by selling over 8m copies it became the third best selling game on the system, even outselling landmark titles by Nintendo such as The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.

Rare was on top of the world, hit after hit, after done with GoldeEye they returned to Donkey Kong as well as started development of their own IPs, Rare catalog of games during the N64 era is the stuff of legends, Banjo-Kazooei, Banjo-Tooei, Diddy Kong's Racing, Jet for Gemini, Donkey Kong 64, Perfect Dark etc. All games selling millions of copies as well as earning critical praise, Rare's partnership with Nintendo was the best thing that could happen to the company.

However all good things must come to an end.

By the end of the 90's Rare saw a big exodus of developers, plenty of the people who worked on Rare classics choose to leave the company, at this time as well, the Stamper Bros. planned to expand the studio and produce games for multiple systems, the tried to sell their 51% of the comapany to many western third parties, with all of them turning them down, even after offering Nintendo full control of Rare they declined, however in 2002 Microsoft stepped up and aquired the Stampter Bros. shares as they were looking for developers of their new console, the Xbox, with no other real option Nintendo sold their stock in Rare, making Microsoft the 100% owner of the company, the Nintendo era of Rare was over.

On consoles that is, Microsoft let Rare continue to develop for handhelds; prior to this Rare had already made games for the Game Boy, while succesful on their own, they were small numbers compared to what they did on consoles, probably their most well known series on the Game Boy was the Donkey Kong Land series of games, all selling over a million copies; after the Microsoft acquisition they ported the original Donkey Kong Country trilogy to the Game Boy Advance, all moderate successes, with only the first title selling over 1m units.

With the release of the Nintendo DS, Rare planned to continue the series on the new handheld, however Nintendo turned the idea down, they got to work on one of their previous series with a new Diddy Kong Racing game, which was a modest success, after making a few games with their Microsoft era IPs, they dropped support from the platform. The last Rare game released on a Nintendo system was Viva Piñata: Rocket Paradise, in 2008.

Well, that was quite a mouthful, now for everyone's favorite, sales data, first of a chart, all Rare games that sold over 1m units worldwide.

Now a bar chart, as its tradition, only franchises to sell over 5m units.

Rare performance per platform

: ( Oh Rare, you made some of the best games on Ninten consoles. RIP buddy...

That was a blast through Memory Lane.

I honestly think Microsoft bought Rare for 2 reasons: 1) To Cripple the already crippled Nintendo Gamecube and 2) to try to monopolize FPS... both plans fell straight on their faces however... and now they completely destroyed something that was once great. It's a shame.

Rare was such a force back in the day. Shame they aren't anymore.

There he is, Chris Stamper, the willy wonka of the industry at the time. What a genius.

Run all you want. I'm using the FarSight XR20.

:P

There are charts there tho!

Good article. I can't believe Battletoads (a Rare / Tradewest game) isn't listed as a million seller... that game was pretty popular during the early 90s. They also developed two other NES favorites of mine, Marble Madness and Snake Rattle N' Roll.

One minor correction though: GoldenEye wasn't Rare's first N64 game... that would be the home port of KI2 - Killer Instinct Gold in fall of '96, followed by Blast Corps in early '97.

Note that the list only includes Nintendo published games, should've pointed that out. 

Battletoads probably did 1m, we don't know.

And yeah, thanks for that, will correct.

Rare was greatest developer team back then, loved their quality games(except Kinect Sports).