The best guys went off to create Timesplitters, which is better than anything Rare have ever done.

Company was dying, get over it.

That's a misconception, Nintendo never had a hand in great Rare games. They were pretty hands off on their direction and Goldeneye mp is a proof of that.

Their relations started to strain when Nintendo wanted to be more intrusive in their game development. Perfect Dark was the start of it.

Well, yes, obviously. But it's not that simple. A lot of the people who made Rare 1994-2001 so great had already left or were leaving by the time Microsoft showed up to overpay for the company.

That said, Microsoft mismanagement hasn't helped the situation. Rare would be far better under Nintendo's stewardship but it would still see a decline from its glory years. It's too bad Nintendo couldn't have purchased a few choice IPs and developed sequels in house.

Rare was definitely one of Microsoft's failures in the gaming space. They spent nearly a half- billion dollars on them only to get a poor platforming game, a remake, and a failed attempt to create a Pokemon-like phenomenon on the 360.

That said, Rare itself was losing its value. I never bought into the Rare hype much. DKC and KI were pretty abd well-animated. But in 5th generation, Square, Capcom, Konami, Nintendo itself, and others caught up and even surpassed Rare in the graphics category, so that advantage was gone.

In the gameplay department, I never thought Rare was anything special. I'm willing to grant the significance of Goldeneye and Perfect Dark because they were mostly uncontested in the console FPS space at the time, and that was one genre where the PS1 was weaker than the N64. I will admit that FPSs are among my least favorite genre. did like Perfect Dark. Blast Corps was novel for being able to destroy stuff. DKC was never as good as Super Mario World 1 or 2, KI was never a top tier fighter. Diddy Kong Racing looked like it was slapped together to shore up Nintendo's dismal 1997 holiday season while PS1 owners were enjoying FF7 and Tomb Raider II, and we already had Mario Kart 64, though I suppose that was the fault of Nintendo itself. Banjo-Kazooie bored me after the third world with its collectathons. I didn't even bother with Conker, which originally started out as another cutesy collectathon platformer in the vein of B-K before negative feedback from the N64 fan base caused Rare to try the toilet humor angle. By the time it came out I had already moved on to the PS2.

Star Fox Adventures was mediocre, and I doubt the original Dinosaur Planet concept would have gone over any better. I never had an Xbox, but I knew Grabbed by the Ghoulies was getting pilloried by game reviewed. Perfect Dark Zero was a stark illustration of how far Rare had fallen behind. By that point, we had Halo and Metroid Prime in the console space, so FPSs weren't a novelty anymore.

So in summary, Rare was already fading when MS got their hands on the company. Their peak was in 1994-1997. Were they still as big of a draw in 2000, Nintendo would have done more to hold onto them. Maybe the Stampers would have stayed, maybe not. A lot of other big names have retired from the industry, even in seemingly good times. Nintendo would have had them to shore up GameCube droughts, though their games wouldn't have been as big a deal, and who knows how they would have been on the Wii and Wii U.

Yeah, I remember reading quite a few horror stories of developers whose had their work assessed by Miyamoto and got very critical and almost entirely negative feedback. As for Nintendo themselves, it's widely believed they went so far as to kick not one but two of Retro's presidents to the curb from 2002-2003, replacing the second with one of their own, NoA veteran Michael Kelbaugh, who remains in charge to this day I believe.

That said, I still feel that even Nintendo supervision may not have been able to salvage Rare's decay; after all, they let Starfox Adventure though and that was a pretty weak game.

How is that possible when Free Radical was formed a year before Perfect Dark even came out?

They definitely should, therefore they won't. :(

Maybe even sequels to Conker and Jet Force Gemini, too! I still want them...

Probably better because it's hard to imagine worst than the dying studio it now is. At least Nintendo could have feed them with a few licenses. But it's also very possible that Nintendo didn't sold them by accident, I think they were on a decline since the N64's era. Also, Nintendo don't really have a long list of studio they bought and pushed to the top (is there even a single one ?).

Nope not a misconception a prime example is Banjo Tooie, by Rare's own admission they wanted to make the game like Nuts and Bolts back then but Nintendo shelved the idea and made them make a game more like the original. Guess which game is like a lot more by fans, fact is Nintendo were always involved in their development it's when Rare were given freedom when problems started because projects started running into problems and extended development time costing money leading to Nintendo having to step back in to keep them in check.

MS never knew this and bought them only to find out that the studio was problematic when not being babysit, MS got the shaft.

Personally none of Rare's games have stood out or caught my attention ever since MS owned them. Loved their Nintendo games.

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