One of the many, many announcements made by Nintendo during their Direct today was what was coming up next for NSO (Nintendo Switch Online). And there was one addition in particular no one ever thought they’d see happen: Goldeneye 007.
For those of you who don’t remember the 90s, there was once a ball made of hundreds of rubber strands called the Koosh Ball, named after the noise it made when it hit the floor. Koosh Balls could be safely thrown around the house as they were soft enough to not break anything (unless you threw them really hard against a lamp). They were massively popular and before long, everybody had a Koosh Ball or two around the house…which put their maker, Oddzon Productions, in an awkward position.
Every now and then you hear about an unreleased game from the past finding its way to the Internet, and the sheer number of discoveries in recent months has given everyone hope…unless you’re a fan of Rare’s golden years on the N64. You see, Rare used a special development cartridge of its own invention that would self-erase its own ROMs every time the carts were disconnected. That means the odds of uncovering a lost and desired N64 game from them (like Dinosaur Planet or Twelve Tales) is painfully low.
Last night on Nintendo’s Japanese website, the craziest thing happened. The Wii U release schedule was updated for the first time in a long time, and it listed two games coming to the Virtual Console marketplace the following day: Banjo-Kazooie and Blast Corps (under its original name Blast Dozer).
Last month during E3 Microsoft revealed Rare is working on the return of Zitz, Pimple and Rash, the Battletoads of NES fame — the amphibians who came to define the words “Nintendo Hard.” The original game, despite its difficulty, was successful enough to spawn several sequels, but one of them never made it out — despite being completed.
As you might have guessed from its name, Yooka-Laylee is a tribute to the retro 3D platformers that were first introduced to the world two decades ago, most notably taking inspiration from Rare’s Banjo-Kazooie. It has been crafted by Playtonic Games, made up of several former Rare staffers, and was funded due to a highly successful Kickstarter campaign that grabbed attention by promising to recreate a faithful experience to what fans had expected from games of this genre in the 90s.
GoldenEye 007 is one of the few titles in history that has been both critically acclaimed and hailed as a game changing moment for the industry, as it proved to be one of the most influential console first-person shooters of all time.
Ed Fries, co-creator of the original Microsoft XBox, just told IGN that they almost didn’t secure Rare as a second party. “We put in a bid and then Activision outbid us, and it looked like we were going to lose the deal,” he said. “And then at the very last minute Robbie [Bach, forner XBox boss] increased our bid and we won the deal. And that was it.” Fries added, “Who knows what could have happened with Rare.”
British game studio Rare has put out a new video in their Rare Revealed series, this one about the making of the Battletoads series. Five new secrets are told from the mouths of the original staff.
Right on the heels of Rare’s video revealing once and for all what the mysterious “Dream” video game was all about, the company put out another video on Christmas Eve detailing the making of their 2000 Nintendo 64 FPS Perfect Dark.
Game developer Rare unveiled some “rare” footage that will certainly get the gears turning and have the fans of the company’s game salivating. During the development for the Rare Replay compilation that was released this year, the company unearthed some footage that had been sitting in the archives of Rare’s unreleased RPG project, Dream: Land of Giants. This Rare game is the fabled precursor to Banjo-Kazooie. Rare also recorded new interview footage with the Dream and Banjo-Kazooie developers for the video, which you can also check out in the player below.
Earlier this month, the compilation title Rare Replay was released for XBox One. It contains thirty games from the once-legendary game designer’s past, most of which have not been made available since the N64 days. Iin the case of their early titles for the ZX Spectrum, some of them have never been available in America at all.