I’ve been tackling my backlog this year, harder than usual. I planned it out back in January, but it’s been May and June when I really started crossing off game after game. The biggest reason for this is that I suddenly felt like going back to Rare Replay.
Jetpac Refueled is surprisingly pretty fun for how limited and arcadey it feels. Perfect Dark is incredibly fun to skate around blasting the enemies away, and honestly, I feel it’s disappointing sequel PD Zero is more mediocre than outright bad. I was stuck in Grabbed by the Ghoulies many years ago but somehow I picked it up again this year and managed to beat not just that level I was stuck on, but made it to the end that same night. A bit of an odd game but a gem that needed better sales. Kameo turned out to be fairly average, but still a fun enough game with interesting gameplay concepts.
I still need to jump back into Blast Corps, and Jet Force Gemini, but I somehow found time to play the ancient games like Gunfright and Jetpac original.
And okay, you likely just care what I think of Banjo-Kazooie. The original was beaten by me a long time ago and it’s pretty much Rare’s most competently made game. Not my personal favorite, but the one I think has the least issues. Can’t say the same for either sequel, but don’t get me wrong, I’m actually in the camp that finds Nuts & Bolts to be pretty good! The vehicles are fun and the open choice in how to win the puzzles is a great change-up to the formula even if hardly anything else feels like classic Banjo.
Of course, Tooie is also classic Banjo, and I’m sorry but I did not have a good time with it. I think every idea offered is a nice addition and I think the story and jokes are a step above the first game, but the ideas don’t gel with each other and instead just drag the gameplay down by a lot. It probably has Rare’s best final boss but honestly, that’s not saying as much as you might think.
Rare, or Rareware, (or Ultimate Play The Game if you wanna get really retro), really are one of my favorite developers for the classic games scene. Sure Insomniac offered great gems but Rare I did not grow up with and yet still find charm when I play their back catalog.
So if I could explain Rare games in just a few words, what are the phrases that come to mind?
Well for starters: Unfair difficulty!
Credits: Microsoft, Rare, Bandai Namco, Fromsoftware
Heed my advice on this, when you play any of Rare’s older games, either play a game where you have infinite lives by default, or open the options menu to give yourself infinite lives. And even then, good fucking luck my guy. I cannot for the life of me beat Snake, Rattle, and Roll. The bullshit final boss, (who’s just a hopping severed foot by the by, which is also a standard enemy type so hello there blatant recycling), is programmed to instantly fully heal back all health after a set time of not taking damage. That time frame seems to be a second or so. Rare Replay lets you rewind time and I still somehow magically miss or go just too slow and the damn foot goes back to full health. It’s asinine even for the NES, the kind of thing I’m positive a play tester told them was bad and got promptly ignored. If you can beat this thing without the cheat codes, I think you’re made of crack.
Don’t know how I would have beaten Gunfright if not for the rewind feature, either. You have to win twenty duels with AI that just moves around randomly and shoots whenever. And yes, it’s random, because when I would rewind they’d move to entirely different patterns than the last time. You just have to guess better than a fortune teller if you want to beat it “correctly”.
Banjo-Kazooie is a pleasant breeze, part of the reason I consider it Rare’s best-made game. I won’t ride on Tooie’s harsh difficulty too much as I already said I don’t like it, so let’s continue with pointlessly hard Rare games I do like.
Well, Nuts & Bolts does sometimes break its own rules and expect you to roll with it, such as how I only earned three Jiggies in Terrarium of Terror because I’d just had enough of that level’s BS. Ghoulies like I already said I was stuck on, but frankly that game’s just hard because there are a lot of rules you can suddenly have to obey, and the camera controls take a bit to get used to, not to say it’s the worst camera Rare ever made.
Allow me to share with you my favorite Rare games. I’d place Banjo-Kazooie in third place really, and Viva Pinata is such a blast (even with its problems) that I have to give it the silver medal. And maybe you’ve guessed it, but my all-time fav is Conker. And while it is in my personal top ten games, boy do I have a hard time recommending it to people because it’s also one of the hardest games I’ve ever beaten.
If you’ve never played Conker, but have heard of it, I’m sure there’s one of two thoughts going through your head. Either: “How is the funny squirrel game hard?” or “How is the allegedly funny squirrel game hard?” Conker’s humor has aged poorly for some, but not everyone. Same for its story, I have seen people criticize how slapdash and random the plot points are but I think that works as a parody of 3D platformers since, well, that’s also how it works in those games. You just jump from one completely different area to the next, the only reason this time it’s a joke is because Conker’s just a sociopath alcoholic trying to get home.
But fuck me the difficulty needed to calm the hell down. The zombies are practically impossible, the war sections demand perfect platforming despite the controls being honestly not perfect themselves, I remember my high school theatre teacher had played the game too and complained about the electric eel but frankly, somehow I had no issue there.
As for my worst moments: I died countless times to the spinning underwater saw blades. Ugh, and the final boss, Jesus, if you ever want to send me into a spiral just put on the most monotone British accent you can muster and go “Throw out the alien, and shut the bloody door.”
And on top of that, Conker has another boss who may be the hardest in all of gaming: Its own camera. I hear a lot about FromSoftware setting the scale for hard games, but not a single person calls the camera controls hard in those games, so there is unironically a good chance Conker is harder thanks to the game actively fighting back at plenty of times. There is nothing harder than a tough fight where you’re looking the entirely wrong way and can't do much of a thing about it.
I still love the game, and I still want to play it again soon despite how much it grinds my teeth into dust. All that said, I should probably give the Live & Reloaded cut a chance. Less swearing but if the camera actually works then that’s a fine trade-off.
I think if you ask most people, (well okay most YouTubers), Rare was this incredible developer who delivered fun-first gameplay styles, with wacky and well-realized characters who often stack up to what’s currently out there. The kind of games that inspired the competition generations later. Many think it’s a shame they do nothing but Sea of Thieves now, but frankly well you’re “stuck” in your best-selling game ever and raking in more money than you ever did before, that’s the kind of horrible fate I think I’d wish on myself most days.
But Rare’s insistence on difficulty is the bigger talking point, I feel. It’s Rare who thought Snake, Rattle, and Roll should have an invincible final boss. It’s Rare who felt Conker needed a bad camera. And hell, if you think I’m only guessing or being overly negative, go check out two things.
In Rare Replay, there are loads of behind-the-scenes videos, and in one of them, a developer openly states how much fun they had changing Battletoads Arcade just for the sake of making it harder and harder. Even had the gall to admit it was just to sucker more quarters out of arcade patrons.
If that’s not enough, Chris Seavor had a short-lived commentary series for Conker’s Bad Fur Day. Where he notably struggled with the gameplay, and yet found the time to state how they were forced to change the camera controls for Live & Reloaded because “players like having control over that these days”. He then stated that he preferred the stiff and unresponsive camera of the original.
That’s Rareware, everybody! One of the greatest game developers of all time, who happened to love making players pissed off way more than needed. Some of the best of the best, truly, but my popped blood vessels have their own opinion.
Image copyright belongs Rare, Nintendo, and Microsoft, most images pulled from Xbox store page.