Absolutely loved Rare during the N64 era. I have 10 out of the 11 games they made and enjoyed them all so I've written my full ranking of them:

1) Banjo Kazooie (9.5/10) - One of my fave games of all time and a gem in the 3d Platformer genre.
2) Goldeneye (9.5/10) - Masterpiece in its day but dated now
3) Diddy Kong Racing (9/10) - Great for the time and still great now (always was superior to Mario Kart 64)
4) Perfect Dark (9/10) - Actually better in many ways than Goldeneye but came out 3 years later and did mostly the same thing. Still a classic though
5) Banjo Tooie (8.5/10) - Great but not as good as the original
6) Donkey Kong 64 (8/10) - Loved it at the time but man it's too heavy on collectibles.
7) Conkers Bad Fur Day (8/10) - Last great game for N64 but it's crudeness meant it got a little overrated imo
8) Blast Corps (8/10) - A bit simple but consistently fun mission-based gameplay
9) Killer Instinct Gold (7.5/10) - Best traditional fighter on the N64 and a little underrated imo
10) Jet Force Gemini (7/10) - Could never get into this one. Decent game but a little boring
11) Mickeys Speedway USA (6.5/10) - Never played this but it was just a simpler, slower Kart racer aimed at kids so I've given it a mediocre rating.

Either Banjo Kazooie or Perfect Dark.

Donkey Kong 64 and it's not even a contest.

I only played. Perfect Dark, Goldeneye 007, Diddy Kong Racing andDonkey Kong 64. From those games DK64 was the most disappointing, although I did have some fun with it. The best was Perfect Dark. It couldn't match Goldeneye in atmosphere/theme, but overall it was better. The controls improved a lot, visually it was taken to the next level and the multi player was really perfect for that time. The extra multiplayer levels/assignments were almost a game of its own.

I noticed you put Banjo at the top. Made my life easier, anyway :D

What a group of amazing games!

Man, this company kicked so much ass back then. Banjo Kazooie is my favorite - one of the best 3D platformers ever made (that four seasons level still makes me smile every time I play it).

Among all of the excellent choices for second (DKR, both shooters, Conker) I'd have to give it to Blast Corps. Still nothing quite like it - one of the most unique games I've ever played that was thoroughly enjoyable for me.

Anyone voting Goldeneye has the nostalgia goggles on. Perfect Dark is a huge upgrade in terms of graphics, character models, guns, AI...practically everything is a notch up.

I have always been under the impression selling off Rare was a brilliant move by Nintendo, because once Rare joined Microsoft they were a shadow of their former selves, but it seems that is due to the fact that a lot of people left Rare in the transition, and not just because they lost their spark.

Looking at wikipedia it seems there was a bidding war between Activision, Nintendo, and Microsoft. And Microsoft offered the most money, but this was started because Nintendo didn't offer Rare more capital to make more expensive games in the jump from N64 to GC, nor did they offer to buy out the rest of the stake in Rare. And 30 people left during the transition to Microsoft. So while Microsoft got a shadow of Rare and Nintendo made a bunch of money from it, if Nintendo had just held onto Rare all those people wouldn't have left so Rare might have continued being the second best game dev studio in the biz behind Nintendo, and continued to make amazing games for Nintendo systems. Instead they fell apart and faded into irrelevance on Xbox.

Nah, I think most people agree that while PD was a technical upgrade and had more options, it just didn't capture the magic of GoldenEye. There is a reason GoldenEye was a phenomenon and took over that whole gen as THE game to play with friends, while PD was just that other great FPS that came after GoldenEye. Part of it is probably just because GoldenEye came first, so PD was just more of the same. Ya know, like GoldenEye blew everyone away and then PD was just the same kind of thing with more multiplayer options. Also PD single player campaign was great but got boring towards the end, while the GoldenEye single player levels were just stuff you could play over and over again. I think GoldenEye levels were shorter and there were a lot more of them, which is maybe part of what made them more replayable. The PD campaign was a game you play through and got kinda boring when aliens were introduced toward the end, but GoldenEye single player was something where you'd go back over and over to play the levels again and try to get better and get the achievements.

So GoldenEye had better single player campaign, they had similar amazing deathmatch but PD had more options that were very cool and technically you could certainly say made for a better multiplayer, but PD just didn't quite have the same spark, which was probably partly due to a new IP vs the beloved James Bond IP, but more so probably due to PD coming after and therefore everyone having already experienced the genre-revolutionizing experience from GoldenEye (and really for any multiplayer game up until that point, and the next one to have such an impact and a craze around it was Halo) so PD was just more of the same with some upgrades. For most people GoldenEye was the defining experience for multiplayer that gen, while PD was simply one of the other premier 4-player games on the system.

Side note: since comparing the two best deathmatch games on N64, also wanna give a shout out to Turok 2 which was the third best deathmatch game on the system. While GoldenEye is almost certainly my most played game ever, me and friends probably played Turok 2 multiplayer as much as we played PD. We'd toss in Turok 2 every once in a while to get some variety from GoldenEye.

Also to the person who said the other non-Rare james bond game was better.....WTF?!?! haha that's funny!