New Rare deliberations on XBLA and VC titles come from Scribes
Reasons for Bottles Revenge being dropped finally revealed
As customary for… well, a number of years, Welcome To Rare Version 2.0 has updated with their final Scribes to bring in the holidays. Due to the fact that there’s a lot of ground to cover within these proverbial walls of the MundoRare website, we’ve decided to split the traditional analysis into two parts: the Banjo 3 section, and the other Rare games talked about. In no particular order…
Regarding Jetpac Refuelled’s lack of an XBLA section: “we gave it a section of its own rather than one page in a general XBLA section.” Now normally, a comment like that would fly by, but the added “rather” seems to imply that at one point in time they were probably planning to do an XBLA section for the site. Yet with no further games announced, it’s pretty obvious as to why there’s no section.
Loveday also adds that an XBLA release of Sabre Wulf wouldn’t be likely as “the fact that we didn’t differentiate the GBA version of Sabre Wulf with a cunning subtitle might make things confusing if we went back and polished up the nails-hard original for XBLA.” Loveday also mentions his preferences for Atic Atac and Lunar Jetman, but as of now, he’s not convinced XBLA titles will happen because “not enough could be done to make the old isometric classics palatable for a modern audience without breaking them,” not to mention that Loveday doesn’t feel that “any of them are happening.”
Reiteration of the possibility on Rare’s N64 titles on XBLA and the VC: “Of course it’s up to Nintendo, it’s their service. DK on XBLA seems singularly unlikely – Banjo and the rest are at least within the realms of possibility, but we’ve got no news for you today, guv.” Nothing new, but it’s good to know that possibilities still reign. Furthermore, there’s reiteration once again on Viva Piñata and Perfect Dark Zero NOT getting more downloadable content: Piñata expansions “seem unlikely at this stage,” while “all work has stopped on PDZ… it stopped some time ago with the release of the second Map Pack.”
Tiny Kong’s redesign has been somewhat of a welcome controversy, enabling her to be distinguished from her sister Dixie Kong and probably gaining a few furry fans in the progress. Despite Rare’s love for… ahem… female character designs, Tiny was NOT their idea, and that it was “simply a realigning of the Kong family at Nintendo.”
In relatively obscure news, Roysten has officially been confirmed as a character in Viva Piñata! When asked if the fish in Paper Pets was him, Loveday lovingly commented by saying that “it is Roysten. Who knows where this exciting goldfish will turn up next!” Not really much of Rare news for this site, but the scamps at our sister site DKU sure seem happy about it.
Last but not least, a rather informal insight on why Bottles’ Revenge mode from Banjo-Tooie never came to be was revealed: “As soon as we decided to drop Bottles’ Revenge, no further work was done on it. It had two major problems. Firstly, it proved very difficult to get the gameplay right when a second player could control a boss. Nearly all boss characters work by the player exploiting a learnable set sequence. As soon as this sequence is broken by the second player doing what they like with the boss, it makes it very difficult for the player controlling Banjo to defeat it. I’m sure we could have resolved it but we ran out of time. Secondly, this new addition was thrown in at the last minute which meant that the game would have had to be fully tested twice – once without Bottles’ Revenge and once with it. Again, we didn’t have time to do this.” Put short? Time constraints. The demon of the gaming industry.
For more info on Scribes, the denials of more sequels, and the letters of cult Battletoads fans, be sure to check the site. And meanwhile, stay tuned for Part 2 of this edition of Scribes from MundoRare!
Somehow related news
- DK64 DS in the making? ()
- Rare makes multiple game denials before E3 ()
- Cyclical PD2 rumours strike back! ()
- Rare acknowledges a third DS title in the making? ()
- 100 million copies of “Rareware” ()
Banjo on the Live Arcade, please!
Comment by Grant McLachlan — 03.Mar.08 @ 4:29 am