Rare Replay Review

The Best Around:

As a child in a one-console household, Rare made me grateful every single day that our family was a Nintendo family. Aside from being the pride of the UK development scene, Rare defined an era of gaming that would be difficult to match going forwards, and continued to bring their charming warmth into an industry that was getting colder and more sterile by the second. Rare Replay is a celebration of that warmth, proudly boasting thirty games over thirty years, and all for just twenty quid. Even though Rare are one of my all-time favourites, I was still nervous going into the Replay, wondering if blind nostalgia had played a large part in my infatuation with the games I grew up on. I’m glad to say I was wrong.

Storyline:

Rare Replay tells a fantastic story of a company’s journey through an ever changing landscape of video games, and how through it all their wit, character and charming design philosophies have helped pump out gem after gem. Whilst the company have had a couple of low points there have been more than enough highs to make this game a wonderful success story.

On top of being a great collection of games, Rare Replay embrace and explore this history with a bevy of behind-the-scenes videos and making-of featurettes. These unlockable videos are a real treat for any Rare fan wanting to find out more about their favourites – as long as your favourite launched in 1998 or later. The videos are understandably more focused on the more recent titles in their collection. What Rare lack in design notes and funny anecdotes for their pre-64 titles, however, they make up for with snapshots.

Gameplay:

Snapshots are just that – brief and exciting blasts of the more retro games bundled in with the package, and they help introduce, familiarize or challenge newcomers and diehard fans alike. The difficulty of some of the later challenges mean that when you finally return to play the game proper you are far more capable of triumphing over classic and unforgiving game design from the eighties. It’s a real treat to re-experience these titles in this way, and going forwards I want more compilations and re-releases to take this idea and run with it. I do wish Rare had done something similar with all its games, not just the retro titles, but I can understand how creating snapshots for the later titles would have taken a huge amount of effort.

I’m sure if you’ve followed this collection at all you’ll have treated your peepers to the extensive, thirty game list that makes up Rare Replay. It’s a great collection of gems – some more deserving of others, admittedly – that go a long way to highlight the diverse and brilliant library Rare have cultivated. From the positively ancient Jetpac – still a brilliant and engaging arcade blast – to the sharp (and ridiculously brave) experiment with Banjo and Kazooie in Nuts & Bolts, there’s definitely a game for everyone here. A couple of my favourite Rare titles – namely Captain Skyhawk and Wizards & Warriors – were omitted, whilst a handful of everybody’s favourites were left out for Nintendo-related reasons, but what’s here is still fantastic. Rare have also hinted that post-launch DLC could bring a few of the most notoriously missing titles back into the fold. My wallet is ripe for the picking.

The vast majority of games on display here stand the test of time and are still brilliant fun to play today. I had a blast revisiting Atic Atac, R.C. Pro-AM and Killer Instinct again especially. Even the games you might expect would hold up poorly – namely the clunky and undeniably ugly ’64 titles – are a joy to play (once you’ve gotten past the razor-sharp angles). I blitzed Conker’s Bad Fur Day from start to finish in one mad session on launch day (still a brilliant game, although the collection would have benefitted from opting for the remastered XBOX version) and I’ve recently played (and beaten!) Jet Force Gemini for the first time (officially rad in 2015). Smart design and timeless comedy help these titles survive gaming’s awkward adolescence and still come out as winners. And Blast Corps. – well – it’s just the greatest game in the package.