Theoretical What if

[Jack7]

What if rare was never bought by rare and nintendo still retained most of the company. What do you think would have happened or how do you think today would be different?
I would like to think that Rare characters would have a prominent role in the smash bros games. like banjo and kazooie in melee or conker. What do you think?

[buzz_n64]

What if rare was never bought by rare and nintendo still retained most of the company. What do you think would have happened or how do you think today would be different?
I would like to think that Rare characters would have a prominent role in the smash bros games. like banjo and kazooie in melee or conker. What do you think?

I think you mean, what if Rare was never bought by Microsoft. As to your Smash Bros. idea, the first two Smash Bros. games were made while Rare was a 2nd party publisher of Nintendo, so I don't think so. I know Sonic was in the last Smash Bros. game, but he is a much larger draw than most of the Rare characters. Rare would do much better on its own in my opinion.

[Jack7]

like as a third party working for everyone? and arent the two statements synonymous? if microsoft hadn't bought it, nintendo would still hold the 49% of the company. I can understand why they wouldnt include them in n64, put their best and most well known characters on the first one, if it succeeds then continue and you can add more. but as far as melee I think microsoft bought Rare before melee.

[buzz_n64]

as far as melee I think microsoft bought Rare before melee.

Melee came out on September 2001, Microsoft bought Rare in November 2002.
So, it was about a year later that Rare left.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare_Ltd.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Smash_Bros._Melee

[Jack7]

well i stand corrected, i guess i thought the rare buy out was before gamecube or melee was later. still tho, what would you like to have seen had microsoft not bought out rare?

[buzz_n64]

well i stand corrected, i guess i thought the rare buy out was before gamecube or melee was later. still tho, what would you like to have seen had microsoft not bought out rare?

Rare did Star Fox Adventures for the Gamecube right before they got bought out by Microsoft. As part of Microsoft, Rare developed some Banjo Kazooie games, a Conker remake and a few other games, but they have not lived up to their true potential, like the pre Nintendo publisher days. The only game they came out with last year was a damn Kinect game, and the game they did before that was a Kinect game as well. They could easily make sequels to some of their popular franchises like Battletoads, RC Pro AM, Narc(don't hold the rights to), and many others that they just sit on.

[Jack7]

i thought star fox was some contractual obligations. i know the gbc games microsoft allowed bc they have no portable

[Jorpho]

Rare was looking for a buyer at the time. Nintendo had an option to buy the rest of the company and chose not to exercise it (or rather, they would only put forward a very low value).

I was just reading a very informative article on the subject:
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...ho-killed-rare

It's a little hard to interpret, but it seems to me the Rare culture was an inevitable casualty of progress as games became larger and more expensive and required correspondingly large development teams.

[tom]

What were they thinking doing Taboo: The sith sense for NES......

[Aussie2B]

To be honest, I almost wish Rare never became a second party to Nintendo. I'd never want to give up the Donkey Kong Country games, but I think Rare would be better off had they stayed an independent third party. If only the DKC games were just special projects that had been arranged. Personally, even though I'm in the minority and the sales certainly don't agree with me, I think Rare was already in decline in the N64 days. The more I play of Rare's N64 games, the more I realize that just about every single one is bogged down by intensely moronic design decisions. I think they struggled with how to craft a game within a 3D world. Too many of their N64 games feel like little more than wandering around hubs collecting a million-and-one little useless doodads without accomplishing much of anything. I mean, Donkey Kong 64 isn't even a platformer. Where's the platforming? The stages are just big hubs housing a bunch of mini-games. The Banjo games are about the same. Banjo-Kazooie, outside of the final boss, doesn't even have boss battles. Super Mario 64 didn't have the greatest boss battles, but at least the game was peppered with them. And it had real platforming too. Or how about Jet Force Gemini. After you get a ways into the game, you have to backtrack and collect EVERY Tribal to beat the game? Did Rare completely lose their sense of what is and isn't fun? Their N64 games are plagued with busywork, making a good chunk of the gameplay feel more like performing chores. Maybe this too could be attributed to the evolution of the game industry. They couldn't get away with making their games blistering hard like on NES, but despite the easier difficulty level, they had to find a way to lengthen their games and offer a more "epic" adventure-like experience.

[kedawa]

Rare sure does love monotony and repetition. Judging by the tedious boss battles in DK64, I'd say we're lucky BK didn't have them.

[markusman64ds]

I have a feeling that Rare would have:

a) Made a Banjo-Kazooie game for Gamecube, without cars.

b) Made a sequel to Conker's Bad Fur Day, with better graphics and larger levels.

c) Made Wii Sports better.

[calthaer]

This is kind of a fun type of thread - it's kind of like those Marvel "What-If" comics.

There's a lot more than just Rare, though. What if id Software had made that port of SMB3 for the PC? Mario FPS here we come.

EDIT: In before thread merge!

[Jack7]

This is kind of a fun type of thread - it's kind of like those Marvel "What-If" comics.

funny you should say that. thats where i got the idea

[Jorpho]

Too bad the subject line kind of sucks.

There's a lot more than just Rare, though. What if id Software had made that port of SMB3 for the PC?

There was a download for that floating around at some point. It's really not all that impressive. The same software techniques were made to create Keen 1, recall, and there's a considerable gulf between Keen 1 and SMB.

There was no shortage of PC games back then trying desperately to look like some console or arcade game and failing miserably at it. The platform just wouldn't be adequately powerful for another couple of years.

[Kiddo]

This is kind of a fun type of thread - it's kind of like those Marvel "What-If" comics.

It is interesting to think of "What-if" scenarios.
Especially considering how sometimes, a decision by a single man or small group has greatly impacted the future of gaming at that point. Incidentally enough, much of my "What-ifs" involve lawsuits:
"What if Atari won against Activision in the 2600 Third-Party game lawsuit?"
"What if Universal Pictures won against Nintendo in the Donkey Kong lawsuit?"
"What if Tengen won against Nintendo in the Tetris lawsuit?"
"What if Nintendo got to keep it's monopolistic third-party practices in the 16-bit era?"
"What if Night Trap flew completely under the radar?"
"What if SNES Mortal Kombat was not censored?"
"What if the SNES Play Station actually got out?"
"What if Sega didn't release the 32x? What if Sega waited until later to release the Saturn?"
"What if Nintendo accepted the CD format for the N64?"

... I'm almost trying to imagine an alternate universe where every single one of these is true!

[Jack7]

It is interesting to think of "What-if" scenarios.
Especially considering how sometimes, a decision by a single man or small group has greatly impacted the future of gaming at that point. Incidentally enough, much of my "What-ifs" involve lawsuits:
"What if Atari won against Activision in the 2600 Third-Party game lawsuit?"
"What if Universal Pictures won against Nintendo in the Donkey Kong lawsuit?"
"What if Tengen won against Nintendo in the Tetris lawsuit?"
"What if Nintendo got to keep it's monopolistic third-party practices in the 16-bit era?"
"What if Night Trap flew completely under the radar?"
"What if SNES Mortal Kombat was not censored?"
"What if the SNES Play Station actually got out?"
"What if Sega didn't release the 32x? What if Sega waited until later to release the Saturn?"
"What if Nintendo accepted the CD format for the N64?"

... I'm almost trying to imagine an alternate universe where every single one of these is true!

hmmm my theory
1. half the crap that came out unlicensed for the 2600 wouldnt have come out. but then agin neither would the good third party games like pitfall or kaboom
2.no donkey kong, or at least a more reserved use due to royalty usage.
3.Tengen Tetris wouldnt be so damn expensive.
4.im not sure, maybe things would have stayed the same, only you know without lester the unlikely or home improvement
5.people would find something else to criticize
6.it would have outsold the genesis and most likely the genesis wouldnt have done quite as well as it did
7. this one I wonder alot. maybe sony would have branched out into their own development, maybe not. maybe they would stay with nintendo and leave room for the big three to be Microsoft, Nintendo and Sega
8.kinda goes with 7. Sega wouldnt have pissed off as many consumers and the saturn would have been accepted more and the holy dreamcast wouldnt have died. we'd be playing dreamcast 3s
9. It would prolly be the best system ever. N64 games tended to look better. but were very limited. case in point, tony hawk looked so much better on n64 but had like 5 half songs that sounded pretty shitty. while the ps1 version looked grainier but had a full soundtrack to it. (and well dreamcast looked the best and had a full soundtrack)
just my theories

[substantial_snake]

"What if Sega didn't release the 32x? What if Sega waited until later to release the Saturn?"

I still think Sega would of self-destructed due to mismanagement, might of taken a bit longer but it still would of happened. It seems like in a lot of hindsight interviews I've seen that there was always a lot of friction between what Sega Japan wanted to do and what Sega America wanted as well even during the genesis days.

Dropping the 32x (or just dropping the other genesis lines and releasing it as the Neptune :P) and releasing the Saturn at its later original date would of helped Sega keep its good standing with major 3rd party developers. It wouldn't of solved the inherent problems of the Saturn as a primarily 2D machine in a market shifting towards 3D. With a more successful Saturn the Dreamcast could of been a completely different machine since most of the positive changes in the Dreamcast were brought along by the abysmal failure of the Saturn.

Still on the flip side of that I suppose they could still be around making console hardware today. It would be kinda wicked seeing a Sega NeXt or something competing side the current gen consoles. Or even weirder a Sega that is successful in the hardware market but still basically bought and incorporated into Microsoft as a games division. The Microsoft Dreamcast 2 heading against the Wii and PS3...alternative histories are fun. lol

[Tupin]

Here are some other "what ifs", some related to computing:

"What if the Commodore Amiga, not the IBM PC, became the standard that future computers were based on?"
"What if the Famicom Disk System/N64DD were released in North America?"
"What if the Dreamcast had DVD playback capabilities, as well as MP3-capable VMUs?"
"What if Steve Jobs didn't leave Apple after the Macintosh was released?"
"What if Atari had accepted Nintendo's proposal to market the NES in the USA?"
"What if Duke Nukem Forever was released in 1999?"

[Jorpho]

"What if the Commodore Amiga, not the IBM PC, became the standard that future computers were based on?"

Y'know, the group responsible for designing the 5150 might have gone for a 68k chip if they'd just had a little bit more money. Considering that the Mac and Amiga seemed to be a lot more capable than the PCs of the day even with the same piddling amounts of RAM, it might have made the typical home PC a lot more easier to use.

Anyway, pointless speculation is pointless. We already had a generalized What If thread.
http://www.digitpress.com/forum/show...t-What-IF-quot