Voor de Engelse game developer Rare heb ik een zwakpunt, want deze hebben mij altijd blij gemaakt met games als Killer Instinct, Viva Pinate en mijn alltime favoriet Donkey Kong Country. Maar veel oudere gamers zijn nog altijd wat boos omdat Killer Instinct 3 ondanks vele teasers nog steeds niet is uitgekomen, en het bedrijf door de nodige veranderingen (opgekocht door Microsoft) heeft door staan. Nu heeft de website EuroGamer.net dit prachtige artikel geschreven, en daar in word gesproken over het verleden, heden en de toekomst van dit legendarische bedrijf.

"Microsoft and Rare was a bad marriage from the beginning. The groom was rich. The bride was beautiful. But they wanted to make different games and they wanted to make them in different ways."
Martin Hollis joined Rare in 1993, a year before Nintendo bought a 49 per cent stake in the developer. His first project was the coin-operated Killer Instinct, an arcade machine for which he coded an entire operating system. Following the Nintendo buyout Hollis, a coding genius, created Goldeneye, laid the blueprint for Perfect Dark and finally left for America to help develop the GameCube console. His time at the company coincided with what many view as its golden years, a period during which Rare simultaneously broke new ground and perfected old with a string of blockbusters stamped with the Nintendo seal of approval.

"Rare was always looking East at Japanese and Nintendo's games in particular, with their open-hearted childlike vibrancy and playfulness," explains Hollis. "Meanwhile, Microsoft had a US-centric style to its games, a flair of machismo and testosterone. For the first decade after the Microsoft sale the major problem for the creativity of the studio has been direction. Looking in from the outside it felt as if neither Microsoft or Rare could work out where it was headed."