“If we could bring back one game, it would be Killer Instinct Arcade”
Mark Betteridge reviews Rare’s past, present and future with 1UP
Good ol’ Tim Stamper’s successor, Mark Betteridge, has been shooting the breeze with the 1UP guys and, to our personal satisfaction, drops quite a few hints about the long-expected return of the Killer Instinct franchise. Not only is the fighting game’s title jokingly mentioned several times during the interview, Betteridge even confesses his desire to adapt the classic arcade for the Xbox 360 as the downloadable game we all yearn for. When asked about what game would he choose to bring back through the Xbox Live Arcade, the answer is surprisingly honest: “Killer Instinct Arcade”. Apparently, Rare is fully aware of the anxiety out there regarding this game. “It would be great if we could get Killer Instinct coin-op on there”, Betteridge added, “we get e-mails all the time saying, “Can we just get that? You’re not doing anything at lunch! Get it done.”
And there could be something in the works indeed, as it seems that they have been considering some ideas for the sequel the world keeps talking about as well. “If we did Killer Instinct, it would look like and play like Killer Instinct coin-op. If there were a new Killer Instinct, it would be completely new. You’d expect the characters to be there, but it would be completely new. We wouldn’t use the old one as a starting base to move forward, other than conceptually. It wouldn’t have the code or anything like that in there.” This sort of philosophy follows the rules established long ago with other sequels: Donkey Kong Country 2 got rid of the first instalment’s main character, Donkey Kong, in order to present a more innovative gameplay; later on Rare also rejected the chance to adapt a new James Bond movie after the successful GoldenEye, only so they could have more creative freedom developing Perfect Dark.
More recently, this tendency has gone even further with Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts, even if Betteridge thinks otherwise: “I don’t think Banjo is that radical, really — but it is a very different take on the platform genre — and again, we think that was essential rather than spend the type of development costs that next-gen demands just to build another high-def platformer. We wanted something where people could have the inherent replayability that Halo does online, or that sort of thing, and we identified that in this genre. This concept would be giving players the creativity to play the game as they wished in a sandbox way. And being able to see how other people played the game — being able to trade how they played the game with other people — that was the longevity and replayability that we felt a traditional Banjo game would have missed. It wouldn’t have given us anything new.”
Talking about stuff we already knew, Betteridge also reminded everyone that Rare thought about the avatars long before Nintendo presented their Miis. “We work on a lot of things that aren’t released until the time is right. We couldn’t implement them at the Xbox 360’s launch because there were just too many things on the plate for us to start going ‘Let’s build these characters and put them in the dash!’” And obviously, this led to the expectable disappointment when Nintendo’s version became hugely popular. “It’s not the first time it’s happened, and it won’t be the last. But there’s probably some other company thinking that it was going to do a game like Banjo as a platform game or something like that. The idea wasn’t only ours. Other people are probably thinking similar things at similar times. But yeah, you probably go “S***!” That’s development, and that drives competition between people — and that’s what’s brought games to where they are today from where they were 20 years ago.”
Remembering their wonder years, Betteridge had a few memories to share, especially considering he has been at Rare since the very beginning of the company back in the eighties. “There wasn’t really an industry at the time. I always say, “A misspent youth in the amusement arcades — that’s how I got involved with it.” At the age of 12, I was writing software.” From there, he went to college to get a math degree and in the meanwhile, he joined Tim and Chris Stamper’s Ashbey Computer and Graphics, later known as Ultimate Play the Game and eventually renamed Rare Ltd.
In a few years, as we all know, Rare became a big shot videogame developer and reached its golden age while working on Nintendo-destined games. “I suppose Donkey Kong Country is the high point for us. The early products,” said Betteridge. “We’ve got a lot of happy memories of that.” Moreover, many of Rare’s most defining products were born during or short before this era. “There are various parts that we can point to and say, “You know, we did alright there.” Something like Jetpac and Knight Lore on the Spectrum — they were sort of the pivotal games. With NES maybe it was Battletoads, and later on with the SNES it was Donkey Kong Country, and maybe with the N64 it was GoldenEye.” Although he didn’t mention it, it would have been interesting to know what games does Rare consider to be their mainstays on the Xbox platforms, or even handheld systems. Kameo? Viva Piñata? Certainly not Grabbed by the Ghoulies.
But what if one day Killer Instinct 3 becomes that game? “As a company, we balance things the way we’ve always done. We don’t just build something we think the market would like,” Batteridge said. “If we could think of a way that we thought would really drive the genre forward, sure, we’d be interested in working on that. But we didn’t just want to do something for the sake of it being called Killer Instinct or Blast Corps or whatever else. I suppose it’s about balancing that — what we see as a new competitive piece of content. And if it can tie in with a new IP, that’s great. It has to be driven by the concept and the content and the playability rather than by “Oh, that’s a name that a retailer knows. That should get us halfway home.” We want to put the product and the gameplay first.”
These words basically support another comment made by Gregg Mayles a couple of months ago: “If you’re just doing a game because of IP, that’s not the right thing to do. If someone came up with some revolutionary idea for a new fighting game, yeah, we might think of resurrecting Killer Instinct.” So the right question to ask is ‘did they come up with that revolutionary idea after all?’
If you have been playing the new Banjo-Kazooie these days, you may have found a whole bunch of KI paraphernalia that could (or could not) suggest they actually did. Fridge magnets depicting the game’s acronym, a mechanical arm for your vehicle aptly named ‘Fulgore’s Fist’ and even exclusive insider info coming from a possible cast member: “I’ve heard it’s going to star Mighty Bottles. I’m knitting myself a bandana just in case that turns out to be true!” Look for him in the hub world. He’s short, chubby and short-sighted. Just the perfect profile to be part of a fighting game.
Somehow related news
- Rare “not working on” Killer Instinct 3, according to Ken Lobb ()
- Rumours on new titles being announced in March ()
- Killer Instinct on Wii? ()
- Perfect Dark and Killer Instinct coming to XBLA? ()
- Rare “may do” another Killer Instinct ()
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