Today British video game studio Rare are a subsidiary of Microsoft and are consigned to making XBLA avatar content and Kinect titles. For Rare, makers of the ignored Grabbed by the Goulies, irksome Ocarina of Time-clone Star Fox Adventures and the anticipated-by-no one Kinect Sports: Season Two, used to make some of the finest video games planet Earth. They are best remembered for their days working for Nintendo, notably in the N64 era where they bashed out Mario 64-clone Banjo-Kazooie, underrated Mario Kart 64-clone Diddy Kong Racing and Blast Corps, as well as film tie-in GoldenEye 007 - for many of my generation, THE game. But even before then, Rare made the awesome Teenage Mutant NinjaTurtles rip-off Battletoads, Street Fight/Mortal Kombat amalgam Killer Instinct and the seminal Donkey Kong Country titles that defined the SNES. It is safe to say that Rare today exists in name only - scarcely even a shadow of their former glory. But don't hate them for Perfect Dark Zero, gentle reader, share in their sorrow.
A regular film and video games contributor for What Culture, Robert also writes reviews and features for The Daily Telegraph, GamesIndustry.biz and The Big Picture Magazine as well as his own Beames on Film blog. He also has essays and reviews in a number of upcoming books by Intellect.
