K.Lobb... gets shot!
Talking about Rare is like Sherlock Holmes trying to unveil the mystery behind the island from Lost. Pretty much like that, but harder. Since their oldest origins, secrecy has been one of the most distinctive qualities of the company. Nowadays, the situation hasn’t changed a bit. In fact, it could’ve become even more diffused because of several internal moves that happened when Microsoft displaced Nintendo out of the equation. Luckily for you all, there are people like us that try to seek the truth by looking where no one else would dare to look.
Our latest incursion into this rambling territory led us to the distinguished Ken Lobb, whose loyalty to Microsoft forced him to avoid the most compromising questions from our lovely interview. But maybe he didn’t avoid them so clearly.
Through this article, we will go over the recent list of Rare’s upcoming projects, mostly unofficial franchises, comparing their background with our reading of what Mr Lobb wisely understood as a chance to get a commercial quid pro quo. A kind of exchange deeply normalized in corporate conversation with media. But it is also a rich compendium of actual impressions only visible if you don’t get lost in translation.
And you won’t. At least not if you follow us on the other side of the mirror.
“They make great games for all audiences”
Ghoulies unfairly failed both in the eyes of the critics and public. Just like Conker, it didn’t become backwards compatible and we still wait to play it on the Xbox 360. Kameo suffered an evident transformation since the days it was planned for the GameCube, adding a renewed combat system closer to the likes of Xbox’s core audience.
Does all this mean that Rare’s old school is finished on the Xbox?
Apparently not.
Rare’s tradition of making cute looking games should continue, even if the main character of their next release is a joyful bear who speaks like Disney’s Goofy. According to Lobb, “Microsoft purchased Rare because they make great games for all audiences.” Maybe this means that they wrongly see titles like Ghoulies or Kameo as games just for kids. But in any case, there shouldn’t be any attempt to reduce the production of such titles, nor interest on changing them.
Perfect Dark-like games would be “on one end” and Kameo or Ghoulies games “on the other”, while both coexisting. For now on, we shouldn’t be afraid to see Banjo carrying a machine gun to get many Halo fans horny.
“Turnover at Rare has always been very low”
One of the favorite topics of many Nintendo fans after the buyout dealt about the supposed disappointment of Rare employers regarding their company’s operation. This thought continued among the gaming community in the following years, and lots of people still find comfort thinking that only Directors Chris and Tim Stamper continue their work in Twycross these days making crappy games.
But were they really abandoned by most of their workers?
No.
Lobb stated it briefly enough by saying that the point is simply “not true”. Rare actually lost a few of its most renowned members when Martin Hollis (GoldenEye), Martin Wakeley (Blast Corps) or musician Graeme Norgate (GoldenEye) left the company to enlarge the ranks of Free Radical and to begin the still imaginary Zoonami. However, general turnover at Rare looks to have “always” been “very low”.
“They are now sharing members with… other games”
So, there are people working at Rare after all. Who would have thought that? Thus, they should have been making something during the last four years.
Microsft promised five new games in the course of two years when they acquired Rare in late 2002. The first one was Ghoulies, followed by Conker, and then, a bit out of schedule came Kameo and Perfect Dark Zero. We know that these two needed the biggest development teams that Rare ever had in order to get them finished on time. Not only did people from their original teams work on them, but members responsible of other games too worked on them as well. This could have caused the delay of a fifth title, officially unknown, that is currently in the making again.
Anyway, if there are more games that we don’t know around there, how many are them? Who is working on them?
Well, we actually know about at least other five possible unannounced projects.
Yep, sounds like a ton for a company where, as many claim, nobody is working on anything.
The first and most notorious one is Banjo-Threeie, or whatever the current name is now. Rare has been dropping clues about this for the last few months until finally getting near to say something like “yes, we are making the damn game, can’t you notice?” or worse. It would be very surprising not to see Banjo’s comeback sometime this year.
The second appeared long ago, and rose back from the dead the last week. The title is Viva Piñata and it’s supposed to be an Xbox 360 game unofficially in development. Chris Seavor (Conker) recently revealed that he is now working on a secret game that would be launched before they start with a hypothetical Conker 2. Maybe Piñata is this game. Maybe is not.
Then there are a couple of Nintendo DS projects constantly on standby. Unless Piñata itself is one of them, no one can tell much about their fate. Rare announced their production time ago, and that’s all.
Finally, the fifth one is probably the most interesting one. But you will need to jump to the next paragraph if you want to know more about it.
“Uh”
Never before two letters contained so much information. Without making an official statement, Lobb let us guess a lot about the longest-running project in Rare’s headquarters right now. A game that, much like Kameo and PDZ, has been there since the Nintendo days and which doesn’t seem to be significant for any place but this web site.
We are talking about the fabled Stampede, formerly /strong>Donkey Kong Racing, presumed sequel to Diddy Kong Racing and a delayed Xbox title.
The race of Stampede begun in 2001 when Nintendo announced the development of DoKR for the GameCube, where players could ride animals from the DK Universe, increasing Rare’s pack of promises for the new console together with StarFox Adventures, Kameo and the unofficial PDZ. But all of this changed a year later, when the Stampers met Bill Gates and suddenly Donkey Kong became no longer a suitable character for their games.
Some people might think that the game’s natural fate after the buyout should have led it to the wasteland of canned projects. However, it wasn’t. Nearly two years ago, Rare talked about the evolution of DoKR through Leigh Loveday, confessing that the game wasn’t called like that anymore, wasn’t for the GameCube anymore and wasn’t even the same thing anymore. Although it still existed and would someday be released, with a new title that “had been unofficially floating around the electrical interweb for months.”
Later on, when Kameo hit the streets, an unexpected special thanks credit appeared in the instruction booklet, referring to the, until then, officially unknown “Stampede Team”. Funny name that, considering that Microsoft registered the trademark “Sabreman Stampede” in 2003 and no one knew what happened about it after that moment. But it seemed that there was actually a game in development in Twycross that (at least at some time) was using the license of Sabreman and would have been launched first for the Xbox, and now for the Xbox 360.
Having said that, we have an old racing game with animals that lost its main character, we have a new trademark involving some sort of stampede and then there is that point about Sabreman and Microsoft. Not to mention that Rare stated that the old racing game was never cancelled. Everything happens for a reason.
Probably because of this, Lobb wouldn’t need to say anything else when we asked him about this matter. He indubitably wasn’t allowed to talk about upcoming games yet, but the proofs of evidence were obscenely clear.
Anyway, he also wrote an smile. Now guess why that happened.
“Just because they are both FPS does not make them completely similar”
Changing the subject again, we find that comment to be of clever appreciation. Actually, it shouldn’t be that difficult to understand that Halo and Perfect Dark are really different games. But many people simply don’t get it.
Both are first person shooters, both are on the Xbox, both have a beautiful flashlight for dark places and in both of them you fire by pushing the trigger.
Does this make them somehow identical?
Obviously not.
“The style of control is similar, but the game’s feelings are quite different”, as Lobb said. “Where Halo is very fast paced, PDZ is slower, more stealthy and thought out.” However, the meaning of stealth is something that lots of users don’t seem to have understood. One of the most popular misconceptions about PDZ that even the press used to talk about is that you can beat the single player mode not knowing where you are or what you have to do. You can just run towards the end firing for no reason. In our opinion, anyone who says that hasn’t played PDZ.
Sadly, there is this hysteria about Halo among the Xbox audience which was very much like the one there was about Perfect Dark among Nintendo fans, but which is totally non-existent for Rare in the Microsoft era. In addition to this, we had a really unfortunate launch campaign for PDZ. It was full of old material and controversial screenshots. One thing led to another, and eventually the game was socially accepted as a disappointing failure.
It wasn’t Halo, but it never tried to be. The problem is that many people believed that the game was programmed to be Halo 3, without knowing anything about the first Perfect from N64.
“Launch is hard”, admitted Lobb. But all these issues about PDZ surpassed the worst expectations of the game in some ways. While Bungie, Team Ninja or Bizarre have their particular audiences and successes since the very beginning, Rare looks to be in a no man’s land since they left Nintendo.
Microsoft misleads the point when, as Lobb replied, they try to find the problem by thinking that “fans that are still a bit hardcore to Nintendo.” Actually, the majority of these fans remain loyal to Nintendo and probably don’t even own an Xbox. There is not only a “fight against nostalgia.” Rare simply needs to get back the fandom they lost.
“I love Killer Instinct”
Yeah, he does. But does this mean that KI3 is in the works?
Heck, no.
Rare has denied the existence of KI3 about a thousand times. Firstly through the infamous Leigh Loveday, who assured that the company’s next secret game wasn’t KI. Secondly through members of the KI games’ development teams that referred to the next fighting sequel as something really far away in the horizon. And thirdly through Loveday again, who needed to repeat clearly than ever that KI3 wasn’t currently in development due to the lack of discernment showed by most writers on the net.
