Donkey Kong Country is a 1994 platform game developed by Rare and published by Nintendo for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES). It is a reboot of Nintendo's Donkey Kong franchise and follows the gorilla Donkey Kong and his nephew Diddy Kong as they set out to recover their stolen banana hoard from the crocodile King K. Rool and his army, the Kremlings. The single-player traverses 40 side-scrolling levels as they jump between platforms and avoid obstacles. They collect items, ride minecarts and animals, defeat enemies and bosses, and find secret bonus stages. In multiplayer modes, two players work cooperatively or race each other.
Donkey Kong Land is a 1995 platform game developed by Rare and published by Nintendo for the Game Boy. It condenses the side-scrolling gameplay of the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) game Donkey Kong Country (1994) for the handheld Game Boy with different level design and boss fights. The player controls the gorilla Donkey Kong and his nephew Diddy Kong as they defeat enemies and collect items across 30 levels to recover their stolen banana hoard from the crocodile King K. Rool.
Donkey Kong 64 is a 1999 platform game developed by Rare and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo 64. It is the only Donkey Kong game to feature 3D gameplay. As the gorilla Donkey Kong, the player explores themed levels to collect items and rescue his kidnapped family members from King K. Rool. The player completes minigames and puzzles as five playable Kong characters—each with their own special abilities—to receive bananas and other collectibles. In multiplayer modes, up to four players can compete in deathmatch and last man standing games.
GoldenEye 007 is a 1997 first-person shooter video game developed by Rare and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo 64. Based on the 1995 James Bond film GoldenEye, the player controls the secret agent James Bond to prevent a criminal syndicate from using a satellite weapon. They navigate a series of levels to complete objectives, such as recovering or destroying objects, while shooting enemies. In a multiplayer mode, up to four players compete in several deathmatch scenarios via split-screen.
Perfect Dark is a 2000 first-person shooter developed and published by Rare for the Nintendo 64. The first game of the Perfect Dark series, it follows Joanna Dark, an agent of the Carrington Institute research centre, as she attempts to stop an extraterrestrial conspiracy by rival corporation dataDyne. The game features a campaign mode where the player must complete a series of levels to progress through the story, as well as a range of multiplayer options, including a co-operative mode and traditional deathmatch settings with computer-controlled bots.
Killer Instinct is a 2.5D fighting game developed by Rare and published by Midway. It was originally released for arcades in October 1994, and ported to the Super Nintendo Entertainment System and the Game Boy the following year. The game's plot involves an all-powerful corporation organizing a fighting tournament. The story was adapted in a limited comic book series published under the short-lived Acclaim Comics imprint.
Rare Limited is a British video game developer and a studio of Xbox Game Studios based in Twycross, Leicestershire. 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).
Blast Corps is an action game developed by Rare and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo 64. In the game, the player uses vehicles to destroy buildings in the path of a runaway nuclear missile carrier. In the game's 57 levels, the player solves puzzles by transferring between vehicles to move objects and bridge gaps. It was released in March 1997 in Japan and North America. A wider release followed at the end of that year.
Crytek GmbH is a German video game developer and software developer based in Frankfurt. Founded by the Yerli brothers in Coburg in 1999 and moved to Frankfurt in 2006, Crytek also operates further studios in Kyiv, Ukraine and Istanbul, Turkey. Its former studios included Crytek Black Sea in Sofia, Bulgaria, Crytek UK in Nottingham, and Crytek USA in Austin, Texas. Crytek is best known for developing the first instalment of the Far Cry series, and the Crysis series, and the open world nature of their games which showcase the company's CryEngine.
David Wise is a British video game music composer and musician. He was a composer at Rare from 1985 to 2009, and was the company's sole musician up until 1994. He has gained a following for his work on various games, particularly Nintendo's Donkey Kong Country series. Wise is known for his atmospheric style of music, mixing natural environmental sounds with prominent melodic and percussive accompaniment.
Killer Instinct 2 is a 2.5D fighting game developed by Rare and manufactured by Midway for arcades in 1996 as a sequel to Killer Instinct (1994). A modified version of Killer Instinct 2 was published for the Nintendo 64 as Killer Instinct Gold the same year. A Super Nintendo Entertainment System version of Killer Instinct 2 was developed and completed, but never released. A digital port of the game for the Xbox One is bundled with the second season of Killer Instinct (2013), under the title Killer Instinct 2 Classic.
TimeSplitters is a series of first-person shooter video games developed by Free Radical Design. The games are often considered spiritual successors to the Nintendo 64 titles GoldenEye 007 (1997) and Perfect Dark (2000), due to overlapping elements in gameplay, design, and development team. Each game features a time travelling element in which players battle across a diverse number of locations and periods in history.
Free Radical Design Ltd. is a British video game developer based in Nottingham. Founded by David Doak, Steve Ellis, Karl Hilton and Graeme Norgate in Stoke-on-Trent in April 1999, they are best known for their TimeSplitters series of games. After going into financial administration, it was announced on 3 February 2009 that the studio had been acquired by German video game developer Crytek and would be renamed Crytek UK. Crytek had a good relationship with the city of Nottingham due in part to its sponsorship of the Gamecity festival and its recruitment drives with Nottingham Trent University. In 2014, the studio would close and a majority of the staff transferred to the newly formed Dambuster Studios. In May 2021, the original founders reformed the studio, led by Doak and Ellis, to create a new entry in the TimeSplitters series. The current studio incarnation operates under Deep Silver.
Martin Hollis is a former British video game designer best known for his work at Rare and directing and producing the critically acclaimed Nintendo 64 first-person shooter video game GoldenEye 007, released in 1997. In 2000, he left Rare to found Zoonami, a defunct video game development company that was based in Cambridge and closed in 2010. His final release was Bonsai Barber in 2009.
Kenneth Alan Lobb is an American video game designer formerly employed by Taxan USA Corp., Namco Hometek, and Nintendo of America, and currently employed by Xbox Game Studios as Creative Director. He is best known as co-creator of the Killer Instinct series.
David Doak is a Northern Irish video game designer. Originally from Belfast, he later moved to England, where he studied at Oxford University on biochemistry specialty and worked as a research scientist.
Eveline Novakovic is a British video game music composer who composed some of the music for Donkey Kong Country, most of the tracks for Donkey Kong Country 3: Dixie Kong's Double Trouble!, and did voice acting and sound effects for a number of other Rare games including the voice of the main heroine, Joanna Dark, in the Nintendo 64 game Perfect Dark. She left the company after doing voice work for Kameo.
Project Dream was the codename of a role-playing video game (RPG), Dream: Land of Giants, that served as the basis for the 1998 game Banjo-Kazooie. Developed by Rare, it was aimed for release on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES), and later the Nintendo 64 (N64). The plot followed a young boy, Edson, who caused trouble with pirates. The SNES version of Dream used an isometric perspective and had a fairy tale theme. After transitioning to the N64, the project became a more complex 3D RPG that had a greater emphasis on the pirate theme. Eventually, Dream was scaled back to a linear platform game in the vein of Donkey Kong Country (1994) that starred Banjo the bear, who became the protagonist of Banjo-Kazooie.
Rare Replay is a 2015 compilation of 30 video games from the 30-year history of developers Rare and its predecessor, Ultimate Play the Game. The emulated games span multiple genres and consoles—from the ZX Spectrum to the Xbox 360—and retain the features and errors of their original releases with minimal edits. The compilation adds cheats to make the older games easier and a Snapshots mode of specific challenges culled from parts of the games. Player progress is rewarded with behind-the-scenes footage and interviews about Rare's major and unreleased games.
