If there is any developer that knows the dangers and risks of getting games published, it is Rare. The studio fell into a well of canceled games and bad releases in the mid 2000s. This fall came from towering heights, with the developer once thought of as a giant of games development. Despite a storied past, Rare currently enjoys an interesting place in the games industry.
The ex-Nintendo darling had swathes of canceled titles, with examples like Dinosaur Planet recently leaked online, but this is not the first time this has happened recently. A leaked remaster of GoldenEye, also canceled, made its way online in early February 2021. One question haunts Rare’s history: Why do publishers cancel so many of the studio’s titles so consistently?
This is a topic hotly debated by fans, and even Rare developers do not always know. Former employees did not know why Nintendo canceled the GoldenEye remake, adding to the many Rare games shot down by executives at the last moment. Despite a pattern of canceled or disregarded games, the company is not a failure by any means. If Rare still produces incredibly successful games, why does it suffer canceled games so often? Sea of Thieves’ had its biggest month ever in January 2021, three years after its official release, showcasing how the company may have broken from this history.
The first character in the story of Rare’s often-canceled products is the giant of Japanese games itself: Nintendo. The company’s first interaction with Rare was after the studio claimed to have reverse engineered the Famicom console. Nintendo claimed that this was impossible, but Rare’s reverse engineering impressed the Famicom creator. As such, Nintendo gave the studio an unlimited budget to develop as many games for the Famicom console as possible.
This is where Nintendo and Rare’s near decade together began, all the way back in 1993. Throughout this period, the two collaborated on numerous products and intellectual properties. Among these were Donkey Kong Country, Diddy Kong Racing (one of the best Nintendo 64 racing games ever), Battletoads, Banjo-Kazooie, Perfect Dark, GoldenEye 007, and Star Fox Adventures to name but a few. Critics and fans alike loved Rare’s Nintendo games, but the studio’s time at Nintendo was not without its cancellations.
A trend among the canceled Nintendo titles from Rare was a lack of trust in original IPs from the studio. A perfect example of this was the infamous Conker’s Bad Fur Day, as the original Conker prototype was a cutesy 3D cartoonish platformer like Rare’s other classics. Unfortunately, despite positive reviews from beta testers, some remarked on the similarity between the original Conker concept and Banjo Kazooie. In fear of repeating old content, Rare canceled the original game, retooling it into the much maligned Conker’s Bad Fur Day. The same trend is obvious in the recent Dinosaur Planet demo – a perfectly well-made game morphed and changed to use established characters rather than allowing Rare to experiment with new characters in new forms.
In 2002, Microsoft paid $375 million for Rare. As a result, Rare’s ongoing projects with Nintendo very rapidly came to a thudding halt. These titles either stopped production instantly or became another footnote in the widely expanding catalogue of canceled Rare games. The developer’s stint at Microsoft included many attempts to revive old IPs that Rare had managed to keep some hold of.
Included in the games tossed to the wayside as a result of the Microsoft acquisition are Donkey Kong GameCube, a Banjo-Kazooie sequel and another interesting DK game: Donkey Kong Coconut Crackers. This last title was going to be a Donkey Kong themed puzzle game for the Game Boy Advance, but the rights to use DK were rescinded after the Microsoft merger. After this cancellation, the title eventually released in 2004, with THQ publishing, as “It’s Mr. Pants.: The game came out to generally positive reviews, but it lost that name brand recognition that might have come from a Nintendo character.
Throughout this period, Rare saw its original founders and many other central figures leave the company as part of the time at Microsoft. This was not a huge surprise, as the studio was relegated to creating a lot of Xbox Live Arcade titles. Unfortunately, Rare’s first game as part of Microsoft was the commercial failure Grabbed By The Ghoulies. It seems that a result of this failure with an original intellectual property spurred later cancellations of Rare titles.
These canceled Microsoft titles include a Monster Hunter style title where players would fight huge bosses. This game was part of Rare’s work with the Xbox Live Arcade – the adventure would use Xbox avatars as player characters in a setting evocative of Shadow Of The Colossus.
Even ex-developers that worked with Rare faced similar cancelling concerns. Yooka-Laylee is a passion project from several ex-Rare employees who banded together to create a game evoking the feel of the studio’s bygone classics. For several years, development updates ceased entirely, until the team eventually rallied under the name Playtonic Games. The Yooka-Laylee developer now plans on heading its own indie game publishing label.
Thankfully, this spirit of Rare’s canceled games might still live on in Playtonic’s indie publishing. The original company’s concerns might have radically shifted, but both the new, Microsoft-era Rare and some of its old game design concerns can coexist. Hopefully, both studios will not be worrying about game cancellations in future, as it does seem Rare has broken away from this canceled game curse.
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