Rare (company): History and Key Facts

Rare Limited is a British video game developer and a studio of Activision based in Twycross. Rare's games span the platform, first-person shooter, action-adventure, fighting, and racing genres. Its most popular games include the Battletoads, Donkey Kong, and Banjo-Kazooie series, as well as games like GoldenEye 007 (1997), Perfect Dark (2000), Conker's Bad Fur Day (2001), Viva Piñata (2006), and Sea of Thieves (2018).

Tim and Chris Stamper, who also founded Ultimate Play the Game, established Rare in 1985. During its early years, Rare was backed by a generous budget from Nintendo, primarily concentrated on Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) games. During this time, Rare created successful games such as Wizards & Warriors (1987), R.C. Pro-Am (1988), and Battletoads (1991). Rare became a prominent second-party developer for Nintendo, which came to own a large minority stake in the company, with the release of Donkey Kong Country (1994). Throughout the 1990s, Rare started selling their games under the trademark name "Rareware" and received international recognition and critical acclaim for games such as the Donkey Kong Country trilogy (1994-1996), Killer Instinct (1994), GoldenEye 007, Banjo-Kazooie (1998), Perfect Dark (2000), and Conker's Bad Fur Day (2001).

In 2002, Microsoft bought Rare, which retained its original brand, logo, and most intellectual properties. Rare has since focused on developing games exclusively for the Xbox series of consoles, including Grabbed by the Ghoulies (2003), Kameo (2005), Perfect Dark Zero (2005), and Viva Piñata (2006). In 2007, the Stampers left Rare to pursue other opportunities. In 2010, the company's focus shifted to the Xbox Live Avatar and Kinect, releasing three Kinect Sports games over the following years, while other studios were given permission to utilize their existing franchises under supervision, such as Killer Instinct (2013). In 2015, Rare developed Rare Replay, an Xbox One-exclusive compilation containing 30 of its games to celebrate its 30th anniversary. The company's most recent release is 2018's Sea of Thieves, an online multiplayer game which continues to see regular content updates as of 2026. In September of that year, Activision (which was also brought by Microsoft in 2023) became Rare's new parent company after an internal restructure in Microsoft's video game division; up until that point, Rare operated under Xbox Game Studios.

Several former Rare employees have formed their own companies, such as Free Radical Design, best known for producing the TimeSplitters series, and Playtonic Games, best known for Yooka-Laylee (2017). Rare is widely acknowledged in the video game industry and has received numerous accolades from critics and journalists. Rare is also known as a secretive and seclusive studio. Several Rare games, such as Donkey Kong Country and GoldenEye 007, have been cited as among the greatest and most influential games of all time, though many fans and former employees have been critical of the company's output under Microsoft.

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