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“Nintendo were often quite envious of us”, says former Rare staffer

Sheroking

Member
Rare's sound quality was also much better than Nintendo's, Conker having VA is still pretty impressive. Star Fox 64 had it too, but the technical quality of the sound isn't as good.

Nintendo still doesn't care to do VA, though.

And if I were to do a top-5 N64 soundtracks, Rare wouldn't make the list once (and I like Banjo Kazooie's OST).
 

Roland1979

Junior Member
Graphically, yes (Donkey Kong series and Killer Instinct where REALLY pushing the limits). But artistically and especially gameplay wise? Not necessarily.
 

Rezbit

Member
Well we had some awesome games from both, as it worked out. DKC2 not only looks great but is an awesome platformer in its own right. Their N64 games were graphically amazing at the time but are a bit of a struggle to play now with the extremely poor frame rates most have. Nintendo's own games did better on that front I feel.
 

Sheroking

Member
Zelda and Mario were also on the GC. Rare wasn't. There was a 15 million unit dive between the N64 and GC, despite the GC having FAR better third party support.

Three guesses why that is.

1) Goldeneye generation jumped ship to Halo.
2) Two successful competitors instead of one.
3) No Super Mario 64 equivalent at launch?

I don't want to discount the rest of Rare's catalog, but when it came to selling systems - there was Goldeneye and the rest were just sort of along for Nintendo's ride.
 

XPE

Member
Zelda and Mario were also on the GC. Rare wasn't. There was a 15 million unit dive between the N64 and GC, despite the GC having FAR better third party support.

Three guesses why that is.

I did say it was a combined effort, also the quality of the Mario and Zelda games were not the same as the N64 versions which would not have help word of mouth.
 

Gartooth

Member
Nintendo still doesn't care to do VA, though.

And if I were to do a top-5 N64 soundtracks, Rare wouldn't make the list once (and I like Banjo Kazooie's OST).

I wasn't arguing sound in an artistic sense, I was talking about the technical quality of it. Regardless of compositions, the music and sound effects were of a higher quality in Rare games.
 

Dizzy

Banned
Technically superior, very possible. Artistically you would have to take on a game by game basis and I think Rare would lose more often than win.
 
I know Mr. Tossell irl. Good guy and a huge Nintendo fan. He's not too fond of Microsoft these days. In fact, he even went as far as to say he 'despises' them when I was talking to him once.

He's working on Tengami for iOS/Wii U right now. Gorgeous game.
 

Sheroking

Member
I wasn't arguing sound in an artistic sense, I was talking about the technical quality of it. Regardless of compositions, the music and sound effects were of a higher quality in Rare games.

I don't know much about the technical quality, I assumed both were very compressed, MIDI heavy.

To an untrained ear, I don't hear a significant difference in audio quality.
 

Metallix87

Member
I don't want to discount the rest of Rare's catalog, but when it came to selling systems - there was Goldeneye and the rest were just sort of along for Nintendo's ride.
Honestly, one of the biggest mistakes made by Nintendo and Rare was not pushing Perfect Dark back to be a super-polished Gamecube launch title.
 

wrowa

Member
I think their shooters look pretty bad while the Banjo games, DK64 and Conker still look fantastic

Until the picture starts moving, you mean. DK64's framerate in particular is so bad that I think it's hard to stomach these days.
 

Celine

Member
unlike the rest of Nintendos franchises, theres no
crossover between Mario, Zelda, etc. Those were new gamers, and goldeneye was the first viable FPS on console, opening up the gates for Turok, Doom 64, Quake 64, mission impossible, duke nukem, etc.
I agree with you that thanks to GE, FPS flourished on N64 but citing games that came out (and were successful) before GE was released is a bit stupid.
 

jonno394

Member
Diddy Kong racing is the best kart racer to date

I agree, every kart racer needs an adventure mode with an exploreable world and frogs you can run over and lighthouses you can blast in to space!
Still can't believe I unlockedd T.T in the game, that was a challenge!
 

RedSwirl

Junior Member
I could probably believe the comment about EAD changing all the textures in Ocarina of Time. There is a very clear difference between how that game looked in screenshots and videos from 1996 when it looked more like Mario 64, and how it looked in 1997 and 1998 when all the art looked much more detailed. It was like two different versions of the game really. Maybe it was a coincidence, but I wouldn't be surprised if Miyamoto seeing Banjo had at least a slight effect.

unlike the rest of Nintendos franchises, theres no
crossover between Mario, Zelda, etc. Those were new gamers, and goldeneye was the first viable FPS on console, opening up the gates for Turok, Doom 64, Quake 64, mission impossible, duke nukem, etc.

To be fair, I have to point out that DOOM 64 and Turok 1 both pre-dated GoldenEye by a few months. GoldenEye may have really opened the door for shooters on consoles, but other developers were attempting them on N64 regardless. Edit: Beaten.

Still, Rare probably did make a lot of the most important games on the N64. Not to downplay the impact of genre-defining titles like Mario 64 and Ocarina of Time.
 
DKC2 was really great, and I'm sure Miyamoto were envious of the DKC sales worldwide. Even in Japan it sold better than other Nintendo titles.
 

Rich!

Member
Now that's a presumptuous thing to say, while most of Rare games were graphically very impressive in N64 they often suffer from serious frame rate problems, and no, no game from Rare came to the artistical degree to Majora's Mask, Ocarina of Time, Mario 64 IMHO.

Played any of those recently? I'm playing through both Banjo Kazooie and OOT right now on my RGB modded N64, and just as I thought back in 1998, BK is superior in framerate (oot is sub 20fps, 15fps in pal land), textures and models. Here's some shots from my CRT to compare:

jSMMbRoPTawGl.jpg


jbhYRviCPa0vRL.jpg


jbf03C4cBjou83.jpg

OOT by comparison has a much, much weaker main character model, poorer textures, lower resolution and a blurry drab image:


I can completely see why they were impressed by Banjo. It's vibrant, beautifully textured and one of the few N64 games to hold up well today.
 

Maxrunner

Member
I know Mr. Tossell irl. Good guy and a huge Nintendo fan. He's not too fond of Microsoft these days. In fact, he even went as far as to say he 'despises' them when I was talking to him once.

He's working on Tengami for iOS/Wii U right now. Gorgeous game.

He and all Rare/Nintendo fans despise MS....heck at this point MS probably despises MS...
 
1) Goldeneye generation jumped ship to Halo.
2) Two successful competitors instead of one.
3) No Super Mario 64 equivalent at launch?

I don't want to discount the rest of Rare's catalog, but when it came to selling systems - there was Goldeneye and the rest were just sort of along for Nintendo's ride.

Its mostly number 1. Nintendo didn't make FPS games, but rare could. Both goldeneye and PD were
Blockbusters.

The Xbox wasn't successful. At all. Halo was, but 20 million consoles sold (with virtually none in Japan) is not successful.

Rare has 3 or 4 of the top ten best selling games for the platform, but that's not as important as the fact that Nintendo was only putting out 1 to 2 games per year for the N64, half of which were Rares games, if not more. Lose rare and Nintendo has 1 first party game per year for the N64, if that.

Half the reason first party GC games were poor in comparison to N64 as they were was because Nintendo had to crank out games far faster, because rare wasn't there.
 
Only 3 of the top 10 best selling N64 games came from RARE. The other 7 were Nintendo's own games.

Rare games were highly rated and often dominated the 9 section of most game review sites. It's only natural Nintendo has the best selling games, did you expect them not to package their products with the consoles?
 

Chatin

Member
What was there to be envious of? Nintendo's games sold better. Rare took Nintendo templates and made flattering lover letters to them. Nintendo clearly had some positive impact on Rare, as it was all downhill once they got sold.

I love some of those Rare classics, but someone else's product can inspire some reworking of their own product without envy being a factor.
 
Rare games were highly rated and often dominated the 9 section of most game review sites. It's only natural Nintendo has the best selling games, did you expect them not to package their products with the consoles?

Nintendo sold a lot of N64s bundled with the Star Wars Racer and because Rare was owned by Nintendo the Rare games were Nintendo games.
 

Mr-Joker

Banned
It's hard to argue with Banjo Tooie, Perfect Dark and Conker's Bad Fur Day on the N64 visually.

I just wish Rare would have been more envious of Nintendo's superior control. Games like Banjo Kazooie and Jet Force Gemini were super clunky compared to Super Mario 64 and Ocarina of Time.

Actually if it wasn't for Jet Force Gemini clunky control Metroid Prime would never been in first person.

Diddy Kong racing is the best kart racer to date

I see this brought up so many time,

Can someone tell me what exactly made Diddy Kong Racing so good?

I think their shooters look pretty bad while the Banjo games, DK64 and Conker still look fantastic

Personally I think that Conker hasn't aged well as that game is very story driven and gives very little option to replay it.

So this shows why Nintendo doesn't have more Western studios.....besides Retro...

Not really, Nintendo doesn't want to buy a studio and then have the talented people leaving, which was happening to Rare prior to Nintendo selling them off.

I think that they would much rather hire a studio to work on a game like they did with Next Level and Platinum studio.
 

Jarmel

Banned
I see this brought up so many time,

Can someone tell me what exactly made Diddy Kong Racing so good?

The controls were fluid, the races had a lot of dynamics, different types of races with different controls, an actual overworld, characters were kinda fun, had some challenge to it, and was gorgeous.
 

Celine

Member
Rare carried the N64 to what little success it had almost entirely by themselves.

The N64 with no goldeneye, banjo, etc would have done worse than GameCube numbers coming off the SNES
Rare was a big supporter for N64 for sure but don't say silly things.
Nintendo, Rare and a few other third parties (Lucasarts, Acclaim,Midway, THQ etc.) is what gained N64 the second spot.

Super Mario 64 N64 11.91
Mario Kart 64 N64 9.87
GoldenEye 007 N64 8.09
The Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina Of Time N64 7.60
Super Smash Bros N64 5.55
Pokemon Stadium N64 5.46
Donkey Kong 64 N64 5.27
Diddy Kong Racing N64 4.88
Starfox 64 N64 4.00
Banjo-Kazooie N64 3.65
Pokemon Snap N64 3.63
The Legend Of Zelda: Majora's Mask N64 3.36
Star Wars Episode 1: Racer N64 3.10
Wave Race 64 N64 2.94
Mario Party N64 2.70
Star Wars: Shadown Of The Empire N64 2.60
Pokemon Stadium 2 N64 2.54
Perfect Dark N64 2.52
Mario Party 2 N64 2.48
Mario Tennis 64 N64 2.32
Star Wars: Rogue Squadron N64 2.17
1080 Snowboarding N64 2.03
Mario Party 3 N64 1.91
Kirby 64 N64 1.77
Cruisin USA N64 1.72
F1 World Grand Prix N64 1.60
Banjo-Tooie N64 1.49
Mario Golf 64 N64 1.47
Paper Mario N64 1.37
Jet Force Gemini N64 1.16
Pilotwings 64 N64 1.12
F-Zero X N64 1.10
 

Gamerloid

Member
Is this how Sony's other first party studios feel about Naughty Dog? :p

It's good Rare made Nintendo work harder, but their attitudes towards them wasn't very good.
 
Tossell’s comments came about when asked if Nintendo ever shared code with Rare considering the Big N had a large stake in the company.

He said:
No, we never had the Zelda engine or any code they did! We did see an early version of Zelda and that was a big influence on Dinosaur Planet, though. Nintendo were often quite envious of us. I got the feeling they thought our games were technically and artistically superior to theirs. Miyamoto would visit regularly and I heard a rumor they redid all of the textures on Zelda after they’d seen our work on Banjo-Kazooie because our game looked better!

http://nintendoeverything.com/nintendo-were-often-quite-envious-of-us-says-former-rare-staffer/

Now that's a presumptuous thing to say, while most of Rare games were graphically very impressive in N64 they often suffer from serious frame rate problems, and no, no game from Rare came to the artistical degree to Majora's Mask, Ocarina of Time, Mario 64 IMHO.

Banjo still looks great to this day, imho.
Even as a kid I felt Ocarina of time looked a little blurry and unattractive.
Great game, of course, but...
 
Is this how Sony's other first party studios feel about Naughty Dog? :p

It's good Rare made Nintendo work harder, but their attitudes towards them wasn't very good.

Naughty dog is Sony's best studio, but they would be fine without them. The N64 had abysmal third party support, possibly the worst of all time next to the wiiu.

They needed Rares games more than Sony needed naughty dog.
 
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