Rare Replay

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Lore & Background

Rare Replay was one of several ideas Rare considered to celebrate its 30th anniversary. Inspired by fans, upcoming Xbox One backward compatibility features, and a desire to link Rare's past and future, the company sorted through 120 games to choose those that best represented its oeuvre. It prioritized games with characters and environments original to the company. Rare incorporated four hardware emulators in the package, and worked with its parent company, Microsoft, to use its then-unannounced Xbox 360 emulation. Rare Replay released worldwide as an Xbox One exclusive on August 4, 2015. The compilation debuted at number 2 on the UK all-formats chart, becoming Rare's highest-charting compilation since Banjo-Kazooie in 1998.

In Their Own Story

The compilation opens with a musical number featuring Rare characters. Each game has a landing page with a variation on its theme music. While the core gameplay remains unedited, Rare added extra features to the older releases. The player can toggle the visual appearance of scanlines and 'rewind' up to ten seconds of gameplay in pre-Nintendo 64 games. The older games can be saved at will and autosave progress upon the player's exit. Rare also added an infinite lives cheat setting for some older games and fixed a game-breaking bug in Battletoads. The 'Snapshots' feature presents small segments of the older games as challenges for the player, such as collecting a target number of points within a time limit in a set scenario, similar in function to the NES Remix series.

Reader's Guide

Rare Replay is a compilation of 30 games developed by Rare and its predecessor, Ultimate Play the Game, over their 30-year history across platforms from the ZX Spectrum to the Xbox 360 (1983–2008), up until Rare's Kinect Sports series. The 30 games span multiple genres, including fighting, first-person shooter, simulation, platforming, racing, and skiing. The compilation opens with a musical number featuring Rare characters. Each game has a landing page with a variation on its theme music. While the core gameplay remains unedited, Rare added extra features to the older releases. The player can toggle the visual appearance of scanlines and 'rewind' up to ten seconds of gameplay in pre-Nintendo 64 games. The older games can be saved at will and autosave progress upon the player's exit. Rare also added an infinite lives cheat setting for some older games and fixed a game-breaking bug in Battletoads. The 'Snapshots' feature presents small segments of the older games as challenges for the player, such as collecting a target number of points within a time limit in a set scenario, similar in function to the NES Remix series. Some Snapshots are connected sequentially as a playlist. The ZX Spectrum emulation retains the technical idiosyncrasies of the original hardware. For instance, their graphics fluctuate in render speed depending on the number of items the computer has to process on-screen. The Nintendo 64 emulation upgrades the games' polygon rendering and frame rate. The nine Xbox 360 releases install directly to the Xbox One dashboard separately from the Rare Replay compilation and require online activation before they can be played offline. The Xbox 360 games share player saved game and Achievement progress between the consoles via Xbox Live's cloud sync features. Rare Replay uses the prior Xbox 360 versions of Banjo-Kazooie, Banjo-Tooie, and Perfect Dark rather than emulating their originals. However, Rare chose to emulate the original Conker's Bad Fur Day rather than using its Xbox remake Conker: Live and Reloaded (2005). Grabbed by the Ghoulies runs natively on the Xbox One, as a port upgraded its display resolution and frame rate. Rare Replay retains the local and online multiplayer modes of the original games, and includes all of their downloadable content add-ons. Games developed by Rare that were not their intellectual property, such as the Donkey Kong

Did You Know?

• Rare Replay was codenamed 'Pearl' during development, named after the traditional theme of 30th anniversary gifts.
• The compilation was one of several celebration ideas; the '30 years' theme led to the 30 game limit and US$30 price point.
• Rare chose to emulate the original Conker's Bad Fur Day rather than using its Xbox remake Conker: Live and Reloaded (2005).
• Rare intentionally left the game-breaking bug in Battletoads (turbo tunnel slowdown) intact for the compilation, preserving the original experience.
• Licensed games like Donkey Kong Country and GoldenEye 007 were not included due to licensing issues, not solely because Rare wanted to focus on original characters.