“Rare is recruiting designers. Excited by Natal? Got loads of cool new ideas? Think differently to others? Take a look on our website. [GM]“

These news arrive shortly after 12 artists and designers were fired from Rare, including Diddy Kong Racing, Banjo-Kazooie, Perfect Dark, Grabbed by the Ghoulies and Kameo veteran Steve Malpass. So beware, it may end up being a pretty demanding job.

“I was totally blown away from the amount of talent there is at Rare,” added Molyneux, “but it’s just that they come from a background where Nintendo required them to be this very, very secretive company. I just want to give them the confidence to tell the world what they’re doing. I hope you’re going to see more from Rare and I want to help them get well known.” However, he also guaranteed that this new policy wouldn’t interfere with the company’s philosophy when it comes to game development. “You’ll definitely still recognise a Rare game,” he concluded.

Although Molyneux’s infamous tendency to overexpose things took its toll in the past, this time he certainly makes a point. The fact that Rare’s secretive behaviour hasn’t helped at all during the last seven years shouldn’t be news for anyone. Except, perhaps, for Rare itself. Since the very first day they started working for Microsoft, they continued to be the same cryptic studio they were during their Nintendo phase. Yet the only result of such practice was a total lack of interest from the Xbox users and the media as a whole.

For seven years, Rare has been hiding in the dark and slowly becoming a second-class developer in the public eye. And while some argued that this was due a decrease of their games’ quality, the actual reason had always been more apparent. Back in 2002, they faced a new audience that was constantly being bombarded with information about upcoming games like Halo 2 or Fable. As a consequence, those new titles became hits and classics among the Xbox fanbase, while nobody really cared about established IPs like Conker or Banjo. Even today, there is clearly something wrong with Microsoft Game Studios’ priorities, considering that the original Perfect Dark’s arrival to the Xbox Live Arcade wasn’t even mentioned during the E3 conferences.

As obvious as it main sound, in order to get somebody interested in something, first you need that person to know about the product. And the time when the audience would eagerly wait for whatever game was on the works only because of its Rare brand was gone long ago.

According to Shane Kim, “Rare is intimately involved with Project Natal in a number of different dimensions.” He adds: “They’re doing an awful lot of work, even outside the traditional game space, I would say. Unfortunately I can’t go into a lot of detail about that. Rare is alive and well and really having a broader impact on the entire Xbox world than just doing the games they traditionally have in the past.”

And there you have it. The comment, at least from this end, seems to imply that, much like Peter Molyneux with Milo, Rare has had Project Natal in their headquarters for quite some time. What they’ll use it for is anyone’s guess, although, as mentioned previously, Killer Instinct 3 needs to happen now that the revolution is there. Personally, in terms of games that would be interesting to play with the Natal, Perfect Dark and Banjo (as a platformer, mind you) sequels may prove to be interesting with the body as a controller.

Feel free to comment on what Rare games you think could take advantage of Project Natal.

Besides the fact that one rumor has been cleared up, it’s frankly a pathetic way to reveal a game from a company that Microsoft holds in high esteem. It’s the only game from Rare (and a classic one at that), and it’s revealed via a Twitter message, of all things. Seriously, what happened to montages of games coming soon? Sony’s conference seemed to be the only one to realize that it’d be nice to get glimpses of the future, even if they aren’t high-profile games. Both Nintendo and Microsoft’s conferences could’ve benefited from that. Instead, we get announcements like these.

Anyway, as Major Nelson said, there’s a free theme coming out for the Marketplace. According to Rare, “it’s due to become active on Xbox Live Marketplace at 9am PST/5pm GMT today [Wednesday 3rd], be available for two weeks, and check in at the astonishing price of zero pence/cents/Armenian dram for Gold and Silver members alike (Gold-only for the first week, as usual)”.

The project is being carried out by 4J Studios, the people behind the Banjo ports, who are already “sorting out the high-definition makeover and kick up the framerate you’ve come to expect”. Rare don’t have “any further tweaks or additions” to announce yet.

Based on this, perhaps there will be more information than just a Twitter announcement. Hey, maybe Major Nelson will decide to upload screenshots and videos on LiveJournal! Wouldn’t that be swell?

Rare, however, doesn’t seem to be on the same boat.

Just like E3 2007 before it, there was no mention of any games regarding the company whatsoever. Even with the revelation of the body-controller known as Project Natal, none of the prototypes shown were mentioned as belonging to Rare. Admittedly, the existence of Natal brings forth some interesting concepts that Rare can use: specifically, that “revolution” that Gregg Mayles has gone on record stating in terms of making a Killer Instinct 3. How they’ll use it is another story entirely, and one that would be nice to see at E3 2010, or even before that.

While it’s incredibly disappointing to not see anything that has been rumored confirmed or denied in some shape or form, Project Natal may change the way we’ve played Rare titles in the past.

Community Manager George Kelion left last Friday May 29th the position he had occupied since July 2007, when he was entrusted to change that policy. Rare had assumed they had to be more open with the media, and also give some extra support to their loyal fanbase.

It wasn’t an easy task, though. Back in the Nintendo days, Rare games sold like hot pancakes. But with Xbox base of users loving Halo rather more than Ghoulies, Rare needed to get some extra publicity towards their new projects if they wanted to recover the position that they had in the past. And what a better way thangathering all your followers together and making their voice be heard loud?

During this period, George K. worked hard to rise a strong Community of fansites knowing that they would all be more than willing to do the job the company needed to be done: talk about their franchises, and doing so in great detail. Moreover, he developed a fantastic conection with people through all the major forums and websites around the Net, linking his public image with the online presence of Rare itself only like a charming English bloke can do.

From now on, George would be joining the European PR team at Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment in London, passing the baton to his mate at Rare Mike Wilson. We wish them both our best wishes within their new professional commitments!

• As 4J Studios told MundoRare, Bottles’ Revenge was a casualty of Tooie back in 2000, and things this time around were no different, on account of the fact that Devil Bottles mode “was never completed and online play was obviously never even started.” On a Stop ‘N’ Swop-related note, Rare finally admitted that the “self-contained approximation” found in the original game was what Stop ‘N’ Swop ultimately rewarded, as we saw (for the most part) in Tooie XBLA.
• When asked about what a Banjo-Fourie would have, Loveday, besides commenting on the horribleness of the name, said that he doesn’t know any more than you do on a possible sequel. Keep in mind that, before the game’s release, the team originally wanted to build upon (sorry) the vehicle concept. Who knows what the plans are now, if any?
• Loveday, in a rather creative manner, acknowledges, once again, the lack of a Blast Corps and a Jet Force Gemini sequel. However, he does wonder if XBLA would “be a good place to reintroduce the whimsical savagery of the originals first.” In which case, yes, it would. Bring on the difficulty of Blast Corps and the painfully long Tribal fetch-quest in Jet Force Gemini to a new audience!

• It seems that in this day and age, an edition of Scribes can’t go by without denying Killer Instinct 3. Again. As usual, “KI3 is not an impossibility, but we’ve got nothing to tell you right now.”
• While the economic recession has been quite the bitch, it can safely be said that it didn’t result “in the canning of entire projects.”
• On a similar note, when a few of Rare’s staff were unfortunately compromised, an employee let slip of four projects. Loveday commented, “I don’t know where and when this confirmation happened, but it must have passed me by. The actual situation here is that things are so TEH TOP SECRAT at the moment, I’m a loooong way from being in a position to spill the beans on everything that’s cooking. What I will say is that there’s little talk of the ‘obvious choices’ I’ve seen rumoured elsewhere.” This begs the question if he considers KI3 an obvious choice, but as it stands, we hopefully won’t have long to find out what Rare’s been cooking.

• Loveday takes a stance on the moderate successes of their games on the 360 versus what fans want from Rare: “We won’t argue the case of our games making the same splash with the ‘traditional’ fanbase as they did at the peak of our success to date, but that’s down to a number of factors rather than a simple, blasé claim of Rare going down the toilet. With Banjo in particular, if Nuts & Bolts wasn’t for you, that’s fine, but it is still a Banjo game. Our reasons for the gameplay shift are well-documented, and it remains part of the Banjo franchise, designed and built by the same core team. The fact that you would have preferred a straight-up platformer doesn’t change that.”

  “We know where you’re coming from, and we’re not blind to the fact that the old-school fanbase isn’t necessarily getting all it wants from us right now (in as much as the fanbase has a consensus opinion, which historically it never has). We do listen to feedback, and we are aware of decisions made that have and haven’t been appreciated. But like any other company, Rare has to do what’s necessary to stay on the map at any given time.”

  While it’ll never stop the fanboy bitching, it’s still nice to hear another perspective.

• Even though Rare has stopped development on DS titles at the moment, we’ll apparently see what’ll happen with that sooner or later in terms of permanence.
• As documented by GamesTM, Diddy Kong Racing didn’t start as RC Pro-Am, but it went through that stage.
• Last but not least, despite being a popular rumor, Timber 64 never existed, according to DKR’s team leader.

That seems to be everything important from this edition. To check the entirety of this edition, as well as someone getting what’s possibly the first Conker tattoo, Rare’s site is the place to go. Don’t forget to check out the Nuts & Bolts artwork section, where you can get wallpaper from two of Rare’s greatest games-within-a-game to hit this century.

• RPG, like Mass Effect. (223 votes) - 32%
• Graphic Adventure, like Monkey Island. (200 votes) - 29%
• Survival Horror, like Resident Evil. (103 votes) - 15%
• Flying Combat Simulator, like Rogue Squadron. (16 votes) - 2%
• Music Game, like Guitar Hero. (16 votes) - 2%
• Adult Game, like those you tell nobody about. (131 votes) - 19%

Rare’s Creative Director George Andreas dropped us a line, noting that he certainly feels happy to know what people care about, while assuring that Rare is capable of all that and much more. “It’s always fun to find out what the community would most like us to work on next,” he said. “But what’s with all these traditional genres? Give us some credit, we’re far more interesting than that! We like to mix things up a little, so why not a combination of all six - like a zombie-flight-sim-point-n’-click-RPG-rhythm-action game?”

I’d definitely buy that game. Anything starting with the word “zombie”, I already like it.

“There’s always someone with some exclusivity agreement, so there’s lots of lawyers,” Hollis said when inquired about the chance of having GoldenEye on Nintendo’s Virtual Console. “I’m not going to hold my breath. I’d love it to happen, but I can’t see it.”

As we all know by now, it is highly unlikely that GoldenEye may get released for any Nintendo platform for the same reasons it can’t be ported to Microsoft’s ones. So the next question we should ask ourselves is why did Hollis need so much time to comment on the issue? Can we actually believe that nobody dared to ask him about it in 15 months and a half? Is there any connection between the fact that Nintendo just became Zoonami’s publisher and him backing the Virtual Console version of GoldenEye now?

Of course, there is always the possibility that no major website or publication actually contacted him over time, so he didn’t get the opportunity to talk about the Rare-developed Xbox Live Arcade remake or the GoldenEye controversy in general when it was on everyone’s lips. There is even the option that he simply decided not to make any public statements whatsoever until Bonsai Barber was finished. But still, it’s a bit disappointing the see GoldenEye’s project leader washing his hands of the problem in such way, only to eventually support the particular project of the very same company which hindered the task of delivering the game to the broadest audience in the first place.

Obviously, this could be a fake, but there’s an extra element that somehow proves that, if that was the case, it would be a very documented one.

More than the Perfect Dark file, it also came to our attention the ‘other’ Joanna Dark icon, showing the Xbox 360 model from PDZ, which comes along with the title “Bean”. As both Xbox Evolved and MundoRare confirmed through their own sources a year ago, this was the codename for GoldenEye XBLA, ‘Project Bean’, before Nintendo ruined its release. ‘Bean’ was also supposed to feature a Jo Dark icon during the development process.

This is important because it would corroborate that the snapshot was directly taken from a development kit from Rare Ltd, where a copy of GoldenEye -or let’s call it ‘Bean’- still remains. This would also mean that this port, or most probably remake (or simply both, since GoldenEye XBLA featured an option to switch between both versions with a single button during the match), is also being developed in-house at Rare, and it wouldn’t be 4J Studios or another company who is dealing with the project.

Stay tuned for any development of this rumour as E3 approaches this June 2nd-4th.