Rare (company)
Rare Limited is a British video game developer based in Twycross, Leicestershire, and today a studio inside Xbox Game Studios. In 1985, its founders, Tim and Chris Stamper, looked at the computer their first company depended on and called it a "dead end". They had already built Ultimate Play the Game into one of the biggest developers in the UK. Even so, they chose to start over around a console imported from Japan. How does a team that begins by taking a rival's hardware apart become that rival's closest partner? Why did a studio famous for secrecy later open its doors to fans? And what happens to a creative culture when a new owner arrives?
Ashby-de-la-Zouch, in Leicestershire, was home to Ultimate Play the Game, the company behind Jetpac, Atic Atac, Sabre Wulf and Knight Lore. Its founders, Tim and Chris Stamper, were both former arcade game developers. The firm usually made games for the ZX Spectrum, a home computer that was popular only in the UK. Then the brothers examined an imported Famicom, Nintendo's console from Japan. They judged it more sophisticated than the Spectrum, and it had a worldwide market. Its cartridges also had no load times.
Rare was established in 1985 with a narrow first job. The team was to reverse-engineer the Famicom and pick apart the code of its games, learning how the machine was programmed. The experiment worked. The Stampers sold the Ultimate brand to U.S. Gold and stopped making ZX Spectrum games the following year.
Nintendo had said the console could not be reverse engineered. The Ultimate team used what Rare had learned to prepare several tech demos. They took them to Kyoto and showed them to Nintendo of America president Minoru Arakawa. Nintendo was impressed and granted the team an unlimited budget for Famicom games. Back in England, the team left Ashby-de-la-Zouch for Twycross. There they set up a new studio under the Rare name, with a Manor Farmhouse as its headquarters.
Rare also had an American twin. Rare, Inc. opened in Miami, Florida, under Joel Hochberg, a former vice president at the arcade manufacturer Centuri. It kept Rare's US operation running and handled contact with major American publishers. Meanwhile, the Famicom itself reached North America and Europe as the Nintendo Entertainment System, or NES.
Sixty games in five years shows what an unlimited budget can buy. Rare made them with publishers including Tradewest, Acclaim Entertainment, Electronic Arts, Sega, Mindscape and Gametek. Forty-seven were for the NES. The rest were conversions for the Game Boy and Sega Genesis. The first project was Slalom, a downhill skiing game.
R.C. Pro-Am, a racing game with vehicle combat, and Snake Rattle 'n' Roll, an action platform game with graphics by Tim Stamper, were among the new properties. Battletoads, a beat 'em up inspired by the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, became famous for its extreme difficulty. Its success led Tradewest to publish multiple ports and commission sequels. Tradewest also handed Rare its Double Dragon licence for a crossover game. In 1993, Rare released three Battletoads games, including Battletoads in Ragnarok's World and Battletoads in Battlemaniacs. An arcade game followed in 1994.
Ste Pickford, who worked on the Rare team through the late 1980s and early 1990s, described the philosophy plainly. Rare, he said, "wanted to make as many games as they could in their 'window of opportunity'". The library earned large profits. Yet none of its games became a critical success for the company, and the output showed less creativity and innovation.
Then came the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. Rare was not ready, so it limited its releases to some Battletoads games. It put its large NES profits into expensive Silicon Graphics workstations for making three-dimensional models. That made Rare the most technologically advanced developer in the UK. Those workstations would soon produce a demo that changed Rare's standing with Nintendo.
A boxing game demo, built on the Silicon Graphics machines, is what Rare carried to Nintendo. The Super Nintendo could not render all of that graphical power at once. So Rare used the workstations to create 3D models, then pre-rendered the results onto the SNES cartridge. The process was called "Advanced Computer Modelling". Nintendo was impressed. In 1994 it bought a 25% stake in Rare, which gradually grew to 49%. That made Rare a second-party developer for Nintendo, yet Rare kept approving and designing its own projects with little interference.
The trademark name "Rareware" began appearing on Rare's games in this period. Nintendo regarded Rare as one of its key developers and offered the use of its character catalogue for a 3D CGI game. The Stampers asked for Donkey Kong.
Donkey Kong Country took 18 months and a total of 20 people. Staff also visited Twycross Zoo to observe and videotape real gorillas. Critics praised its advanced visuals and art style. The game sold over nine million copies worldwide, making it the third best-selling game in the SNES library. It collected several Game of the Year honours. Two sequels followed in the trilogy that ran from 1994 to 1996, Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest and a third game subtitled Dixie Kong's Double Trouble. Handheld spin-offs such as the Donkey Kong Land series came too.
Nintendo's investment let Rare grow fast. Its staff rose from 84 to 250 people, and the company moved out of the Manor Farmhouse.
Killer Instinct came next, a CGI arcade fighting game running on a custom-built arcade machine that Rare made itself. It was meant for the Nintendo 64 in 1995. Instead it had to ship on the 16-bit SNES, with downgraded graphics. The game sold 3.2 million copies and produced a sequel, Killer Instinct 2. The console version of that sequel, Killer Instinct Gold, suffered its own graphical downgrade. Compression was needed to squeeze the arcade game onto the smaller Nintendo 64 cartridge.
Blast Corps sold one million copies on the Nintendo 64, a figure Rare considered disappointing. By then the studio was split into several teams working on different projects. A large platform game was planned next but ran late. So Rare rearranged its schedule and released smaller projects first. The first of them was GoldenEye 007, based on the James Bond film GoldenEye.
Martin Hollis led GoldenEye 007, and an inexperienced team did the development. Inspired by Sega's Virtua Cop, the game began as an on-rails shooter. The team then widened it into a free-roaming first-person shooter. New ideas included stealth, headshots and reloading. Split-screen multiplayer arrived near the end of development. It was Rare's first console first-person shooter, and it reached players two years after the film. Critics praised it and it won numerous awards. It stayed among the best-selling games for two years and sold more than eight million units worldwide.
Diddy Kong Racing, released in 1997, was Rare's first self-published game. It began as a real-time strategy game about cavemen before becoming a racer. The Guinness Book of Records recorded it as one of the fastest-selling games of its time. Its cast included Banjo and Conker, who would soon star in games of their own.
Dream: Land of Giants was the codename of the large platform game still in progress. It starred a young boy named Edison and some pirates. Rare replaced him with a bear named Banjo and expanded the role of Kazooie the bird. Both characters drew inspiration from Disney films, and Rare hoped to attract a younger audience. Banjo-Kazooie arrived in June 1998 to critical acclaim. Banjo-Tooie followed in 2000 and outsold the first game, reaching 3 million copies.
Hollis began Perfect Dark the moment Banjo-Kazooie was finished. It was meant to be a tie-in for Tomorrow Never Dies, but another publisher significantly outbid Rare. So the team built a new concept with new characters and a major emphasis on lighting. Fourteen months into development, Hollis left Rare for Nintendo. Around then, many employees departed to form new studios. A new team took over and reduced the role of lighting, making a more straightforward first-person shooter. Rare's other teams were unaffected and shipped Jet Force Gemini and Donkey Kong 64 in the meantime.
In 1999, Nintendo signed an agreement with Disney and assigned Rare several racing and adventure games featuring Mickey Mouse. They became Mickey's Speedway USA and Mickey's Racing Adventure. Perfect Dark finally arrived in 2000 to critical acclaim and sold approximately 2 million copies.
Conker the Squirrel first appeared in Conker's Quest, later renamed Twelve Tales: Conker 64. Critics found it too family-friendly and too similar to Banjo-Kazooie. The team rebuilt it as Conker's Bad Fur Day, re-revealed in 2000 for a mature audience. It featured violence, profanity and scatological humour. Reviews were positive, but the game failed commercially. It came out at the end of the Nintendo 64's life, and Nintendo did not actively promote its crude humour.
Another team had been working on Dinosaur Planet for the Nintendo 64 since Diddy Kong Racing was finished. Shigeru Miyamoto, Nintendo's Senior Managing Director, suggested redesigning it as a Star Fox game for the new GameCube. Unlike earlier Star Fox games, Star Fox Adventures focused on ground-based, open world exploration. It launched in 2002 to positive reviews. It stayed the only game Rare ever developed for the GameCube.
Sales of Rare's games were nearing 90 million copies by 2002, yet the studio's future was far from settled. Development costs kept rising. Nintendo neither supplied more capital nor bought Rare's remaining stake, which surprised the Stampers. So Rare began looking for buyers. In early 2000, staff from Activision and Microsoft started visiting with offers. Microsoft's Ed Fries later described a bidding war among Nintendo, Activision and Microsoft. Rare showed interest in Activision's offer, but Microsoft offered more money.
On the 24th of September 2002, Microsoft bought Rare for $375 million. Rare became a first-party developer for the Xbox. Character trademarks from its Nintendo games, such as Conker and Banjo, stayed with Rare. Nintendo kept the intellectual property it had created, including Donkey Kong and Star Fox. That left Donkey Kong Racing, planned for the GameCube, unreleased. About 30 employees left during the transition.
Microsoft had no handheld console, so Rare kept developing for Nintendo handhelds. In August 2003, Rare and Microsoft agreed that THQ would publish Rare's Game Boy Advance games. They included Sabre Wulf, based on an Ultimate character, and Banjo-Kazooie: Grunty's Revenge, first intended for the Game Boy Color. A puzzle game that began as Donkey Kong: Coconut Crackers was part of the deal as well. The arrangement ended in January 2005 with Banjo-Pilot, which had been called Diddy Kong Pilot before the acquisition.
Grabbed by the Ghoulies, Rare's first Microsoft game, arrived in 2003. It was a humorous action-adventure set in a haunted mansion full of supernatural creatures. Rare had planned a free-roaming game but streamlined it to attract a larger, more casual audience. Reviews were mixed, and the game came to be seen as Rare's worst and least popular.
At E3 2004, Microsoft's Ken Lobb said Rare held Nintendo DS development kits and was working on two games. Soon afterwards, Microsoft stated that neither it nor its studios had any plans for the DS. In July 2005, however, Rare posted DS job openings and said it was creating "key" DS games. Only two appeared. Diddy Kong Racing DS, a remake of the Nintendo 64 racer, came in February 2007. Viva Piñata: Pocket Paradise, a life simulation, followed in September 2008.
Conker: Live & Reloaded, released in 2005, remade Conker's Bad Fur Day with updated graphics and a reworked multiplayer option. Reviews were generally favourable, but like the original it failed commercially. The Xbox 360 also arrived in 2005, with two Rare launch games, Perfect Dark Zero and Kameo. Zero, a prequel to the first Perfect Dark, was originally intended for the GameCube. Rare removed several features to meet the release deadline. Kameo, a new property in which the player shape-shifts to solve puzzles, had also been planned for the GameCube. Both received generally positive reviews and sold more than a million copies. Both were still considered disappointments.
Viva Piñata, released in 2006, was a gardening game that borrowed from The Sims, Animal Crossing and Harvest Moon. It was acclaimed as innovative, but its sales disappointed. Some Rare team members questioned Microsoft Studios' large marketing budget for Gears of War and its relative neglect of Viva Piñata.
On the 2nd of January 2007, Chris and Tim Stamper left Rare to "pursue other opportunities". Gregg Mayles, the former lead designer, became creative director, and Mark Betteridge became studio director. That year Rare also released Jetpac Refuelled, an Xbox Live Arcade remake of Jetpac.
In 2008, Rare unveiled work on Xbox Live avatars, Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise and Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts. The core team behind the first Banjo-Kazooie made Nuts & Bolts. Players criticised its focus on vehicle construction rather than traditional platforming. Reviews were generally positive, but Rare's Microsoft games sold poorly. At the end of the decade, Microsoft decided to restructure the studio.
In March 2010, Rare opened a new facility at Fazeley Studios in Digbeth, Birmingham. Later that year Microsoft confirmed that Scott Henson, who had worked on the hardware and software designs of the Xbox 360 and Kinect, replaced Mark Betteridge as studio manager. Rare's focus moved to Xbox Live avatars and Kinect. Henson said: "Kinect will be the main focus for Rare going forwards as it's a very rich canvas. This is just the beginning of an experience that will touch millions of people."
Kinect Sports launched in November 2010. It had started as Sports Star, a more complex sports simulation. It was streamlined into what Microsoft executive Don Mattrick hoped would be the Kinect answer to Wii Sports. A former Rare employee said the team worried during development because of Kinect's limitations. Reviews were average, but the game sold three million units by May 2011. Rare and BigPark, another Microsoft studio, collaborated on the sequel, Kinect Sports: Season Two.
In March 2011, Henson announced that Craig Duncan, whose credits included Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing and the Colin McRae Rally series, was hired as senior studio director. In April 2012, Simon Woodroffe, who had worked at studios including Adventure Soft, Midway Games, Ubisoft and Sega, became creative director.
Some of Rare's older properties returned in small ways. Killer Instinct was revived in 2013, with Rare in a supporting role to lead developer Double Helix Games. Conker appeared in Project Spark as Conker's Big Reunion, an episodic downloadable add-on. It was cancelled in 2015.
Several other Rare projects became publicly known before they were cancelled. Black Widow was an open world game in which players controlled an eight-legged robot. Sundown offered a horde-like survival mode. The Fast and the Furriest was a mascot racer, and Tailwind was an action game featuring helicopters. Urchin, a Fable-style game, began once Live & Reloaded was finished. Savannah was a Kinect-based game, and Perfect Dark Core was meant to be the sequel to the first Perfect Dark.
Rare composer Robin Beanland said that 2015 would be a significant year for the company. At E3 2015, Rare introduced Rare Replay, a compilation celebrating the studio's 30th anniversary. It held thirty titles, all of them games whose intellectual property Rare owned. It became the most pre-ordered game shown at E3 that year and was released in August to critical acclaim.
The same E3 brought Sea of Thieves, a multiplayer adventure game marketed as "The Best Game That Rare Has Ever Made". It was delayed at the following year's conference and released on the 20th of March 2018. Reviews were mixed, but it was a commercial success. In January 2020, Microsoft declared it the most successful IP it had released in the eighth generation, with more than 10 million players. The game later reached the PlayStation 5, the first Rare product on a PlayStation console.
Rare reconnected with Nintendo in 2019, when Banjo and Kazooie joined Super Smash Bros. Ultimate on the Nintendo Switch. Rare's older games also returned through Nintendo Switch Online. Since 2018, Rare had been working with Dlala Studios on a Battletoads revival for Xbox One and Windows, released in 2020. In November 2019, at the X019 event, Rare announced Everwild, an action-adventure game for Windows and Xbox Series X/S. By January 2020, Rare had more than 200 employees, after growing at a steady pace for five years.
On the 14th of October 2024, Microsoft announced that Duncan would be promoted to head of Xbox Game Studios in November, succeeding Alan Hartman. Joe Neate and Jim Horth were to succeed him as studio heads. In July 2025, Microsoft cancelled Everwild amid significant layoffs across its divisions. The game's director, Gregg Mayles, a longtime Rare employee, left the company in October.
Thirty minutes was all the time staff were allowed for lunch in Rare's early days, according to some employees, and weeks could run past 60 hours. Mark Betteridge said that one of Rare's main goals was to create games people enjoy rather than simply earn profit. The Stamper brothers gave teams considerable creative freedom, though they stepped in if a product was technically flawed or under-performing. Justin Cook, designer of Viva Piñata, described the relationship with Nintendo as a "creative partnership".
Rare historically developed only for video game consoles, never for personal computers. The Stampers cited a preference for a stable standard format designed specifically for playing games. Duncan said in 2014 that Rare would only develop games with unique ideas and would never make a generic game from its own properties.
Cameras monitored the approach to Rare's buildings in Manor Park, near Twycross. Inside, the company was divided into barns, and employees worked only on their own group's game. Tim Stamper explained the approach this way: "Rare has a different philosophy. We don't really have much contact with other game development companies and we just do things the way they've evolved." He said the studio hired great games players, enthusiasts who wanted to see the other games in development. Together, he said, they worked to produce the best games they could, and that was Rare.
The secrecy had exceptions. Fansites Rarenet in 1999, Rare-Extreme in 2004 and again in 2009, and the website Eurogamer in 2006 each received exclusive tours of the studio. In 2010, however, Rare declined an offer from the fansite MundoRare to film a documentary at the fansite's own expense. The film would have marked Rare's 25th anniversary and been distributed online and on Xbox Live. Rare refused permission, saying the project was not "on message". MundoRare shut down, stating that the site could not support the company's new corporate direction. Alex Carlson of Hardcore Gamers criticised Rare's secrecy, arguing that it left the studio "disconnected" and led it to make games "their fans don't want".
Ed Fries, head of Microsoft Studios' publishing division at the time of the acquisition, said Microsoft tried to preserve Rare's culture. The aim was for staff to keep feeling that they worked for Rare rather than Microsoft. Employees disagreed about the results. Phil Tossell, lead engineer on Star Fox Adventures, said conditions became more stressful after an "imperceptible" start, and the two cultures clashed. Microsoft gradually imposed a corporate structure, with more performance reviews and meetings, and some Rare staff struggled to adapt.
Others saw early changes as good for morale. Team members could now discuss projects they were not working on, use the internet and listen to music during work hours. Betteridge called the overall change "positive", saying Microsoft's capital could help Rare develop its projects. Former employee Gavin Price said some Microsoft executives, such as Phil Spencer, were supportive of the developer. Grant Kirkhope, a former Rare composer, strongly criticised Microsoft after the acquisition.
Former Xbox executive Peter Moore voiced disappointment with Rare's later work. He said Rare employees were trying to "recreate the glory years", but their skills had become outdated and were no longer "applicable in today's market". Duncan insisted that many talented people still worked at Rare and that the studio had a "bright future".
When Duncan took over as head of the studio, he set out to change its culture. Rare's office was completely remodelled to make it easier for team members to share ideas. The studio also adopted a more open attitude to its community and invited fans to take part in developing Sea of Thieves. In 2025, to celebrate Rare's 40th anniversary, 8BitDo released a limited edition Xbox Series X and Series S controller featuring the Rare logo and Sea of Thieves branding. Sea of Thieves also received a new hat cosmetic in-game.
Eighth Wonder, underwritten by Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, was the first company formed by departing Rare staff, beginning in 1997. It closed without producing a game. Martin Hollis, after leaving Rare for Nintendo, founded Zoonami, which developed Zendoku, Go! Puzzle and Bonsai Barber.
David Doak and Steve Ellis, two members of the Perfect Dark team, founded Free Radical Design and created the TimeSplitters series. Crytek acquired the studio and renamed it Crytek UK. It closed in 2014, and most of its staff moved to Deep Silver Dambuster Studios. Deep Silver briefly re-established Free Radical Design from 2021 to 2023, with Ellis and Doak again in charge. Other former Free Radical and Rare staff formed Crash Labs, a studio specialising in iOS games.
In 2002, two former Rare employees, Alex Zoro and Jonny Ambrose, were among the six co-founders of FreeStyleGames, later Ubisoft Leamington. It became known for the Guitar Hero series. Zoro later founded Pixel Toys, while Ambrose left game development for automobile sculptures under the name Ambrose Auto Art.
Chris Seavor, director of Conker's Bad Fur Day, founded Gory Detail with Rare employee Shawn Pile. The studio released Parashoot Stan for mobile devices and The Unlikely Legend of Rusty Pup on Steam. Four former Rare employees founded Starfire Studios, which released Fusion Genesis, an Xbox Live Arcade game published by Microsoft Game Studios. Another group formed the mobile-game studio Flippin Pixels. Lee Schuneman headed Lift London, a Microsoft studio. Phil Tossell and Jennifer Schneidereit founded Nyamyam and released Tengami.
Playtonic Games was founded in 2014 by several former Rare employees. On the 10th of February 2015, it announced plans for a "spiritual successor" to Banjo-Kazooie called Yooka-Laylee. The game was released on the 11th of April 2017 to mixed reviews.
Rare's founders did not retire from games. Chris and Tim Stamper joined FortuneFish, a mobile game company founded by Tim's son, Joe Stamper. Its first game was That Bouncy Thing! The Rubbishiest Game Ever for Android. In 2019, ex-Rare developers Omar Sawi, Kevin Bayliss and Richard Vaucher created Chameleon Games. It made Tamarin, a 3D action platformer considered a spiritual successor to Jet Force Gemini, with music composed by David Wise.
In 1997, Electronic Gaming Monthly named Rare "Most Promising Game Company", citing its high rate of success in producing killer apps for the Nintendo 64. Rare won the BAFTA award for "Best UK Developer" for its work on GoldenEye 007. It earned the BAFTA Interactive Entertainment Moving Images Award in 2000 for Perfect Dark. Tim and Chris Stamper were named Development Legends in the 2015 Develop Industry Excellence Awards. Gamasutra included Rare in its Top 30 Developers of All Time, and IGN ranked it 36th best. In 2018, the Herbert Art Gallery and Museum curated a retrospective of the company's work.
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Common questions
Who founded Rare, the British video game developer?
Tim and Chris Stamper established Rare in 1985. They had previously founded Ultimate Play the Game, the company behind Jetpac, Atic Atac, Sabre Wulf and Knight Lore.
When did Microsoft buy Rare and how much did it pay?
Microsoft bought Rare on the 24th of September 2002 for $375 million. Rare became a first-party developer for the Xbox, and it kept character trademarks such as Conker and Banjo.
Why did Nintendo give Rare an unlimited budget?
Nintendo was impressed by tech demos that the Ultimate Play the Game team prepared after reverse-engineering the Famicom. The team showed them to Nintendo of America president Minoru Arakawa in Kyoto.
What are the best-selling Rare games?
Donkey Kong Country sold over nine million copies worldwide, and GoldenEye 007 sold more than eight million units. Killer Instinct sold 3.2 million copies, and Sea of Thieves reached more than 10 million players by January 2020.
Where is Rare based?
Rare is based in Twycross, Leicestershire, and is a studio of Xbox Game Studios. In March 2010 it also opened a facility at Fazeley Studios in Digbeth, Birmingham.
Which studios were founded by former Rare employees?
Former Rare staff founded Free Radical Design, known for the TimeSplitters series, and Playtonic Games, known for Yooka-Laylee. Others include Zoonami, FreeStyleGames, Gory Detail, Nyamyam and Chameleon Games.
What happened to Rare's game Everwild?
Microsoft cancelled Everwild in July 2025 amid significant layoffs across its divisions. Director Gregg Mayles, a longtime Rare employee, left the company in October.
All sources
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- 115Five ex-Rare vets form new mobile studio Flippin PixelsDavid Hinkle — 1 July 2013
- 116Microsoft confirms merger of Lift London and Soho ProductionsDan Pearson — 4 March 2015
- 117Exclusive: Tengami Confirmed For Wii U ReleaseDamien McFerren — 1 May 2013
- 118Meet Playtonic, A Studio Of Ex-Rare Staff That Wants To Work With NintendoDamien McFerren — 11 February 2015
- 119MagazineRare Co-Founder's New Game Bounces To AndroidTim Turi — 22 December 2014
- 120Tamarin: Adorable Adventure Game From Classic Rare Devs AnnouncedColin Stevens — April 23, 2019
- 121MagazineTamarin, A Spiritual Sequel To Jet Force Gemini, Announced From Former Rare DevelopersImran Khan — April 24, 2019
- 122Canceled Rare game details emerge thanks to Rare Replay achievement hunters UpdatedSam Machkovech — 6 August 2015
- 123MagazineRare Details On Canceled Diddy Kong Racing SequelBen Reeves — 28 February 2014
- 124The man who made Conker – Rare's most adult gameWesley Yin-Poole — 12 October 2014
- 125GoldenEye Wins BAFTA Awards4 November 1998
- 126MagazineThe Good the Bad and the SillyZiff Davis — March 1998
- 128Rare Founders To Be Honoured At The Develop Industry Excellence AwardsDamien McFarren — 2 July 2015
- 129Top 30 Developers of All Time25 July 2014
- 131Feature: Take A Peek Behind The Curtain At Rare With This New ExhibitDamien McFerran — 4 August 2018
- 132Killer Instinct for HireHeidi Dawley — 29 May 1995