http://www.joystiq.com/2010/06/02/rare-g...niversary/
So, Rare updated their logo again.
We all remember the large blue and gold plaque with an R in it, and a lot of us have seen the modern logo which takes away the plaque and is just a large stylized gold R (which, well, doesn't look as good in some of the animations, but still looks nice enough).
...I know I said that "emblems" and such are out and just stating the name in a clean font is "in", but they managed to make a logo that has NO flavor, no character, whatsoever. And it STILL has a big emblem in it so they fail twice.
It looks like a logo for a propane company, like they teamed up with Phillip 66 or something. The R's themselves look like lazy road signs.
I don't mind a remodel, and I do love "neat and clean" as an aesthetic choice, but this just seems like... boredom incarnate.
It's not like it's a big deal, but I get the impression, just looking at it, that some just out of college marketting students "wow'd" Rare executives in some meeting with made-up nonsense about prioritizing opportunities and pointing to graphs without numbers or data-points on them to suggest this is some super science optimized logo that'll grab everyone's attention, and they probably spent a lot of money on it. They should just focus on the games, that's where they are losing people, not the logo. The sales of Perfect Dark Arcade should confirm no one is skipping out just because of that.
The funny thing is, to this day Nintendo has NEVER changed their logo. It's the same thing it's always been, the word Nintendo in a round outline. The most variation it gets is sometimes it's some color other than red.
Kind of gross, but I don't really care.
They kept the shape of the R logo the same, they just changed the colors and stuff surrounding it... and yeah, it doesn't look great. At least that R is the same shape though, so it's not all bad. :)
Quote:The funny thing is, to this day Nintendo has NEVER changed their logo. It's the same thing it's always been, the word Nintendo in a round outline. The most variation it gets is sometimes it's some color other than red.
They sort of did change their logo a few years ago really... they don't use the red logo much at all anymore, it's white now for the Wii. But that is pretty much the only change to their logo since they got into the industry. It's a great logo, it doesn't need change... :)
Another company that has been using the same logo since the beginning is ActiVision... if you go back and look at their Atari 2600 games, their logo there is the exact same from what they have now. That's not true for almost anyone else... Activision, the only survivor of the "Vision" gaming companies/platforms of the early '80 such as the Intellivision and the Colecovision, etc. :)
Holy krap. At least the Wii branding has a stylized rounded font. That looks like the branding on a magazine, and even then they are more stylized...
Rare is getting ready to enter a new phase, one that is probably going to be mostly fun little quirky games on Natal. So I think they are going the Wii-route of over-simplified. I really do need to face that Rare as I loved it is gone, it's sad.
Shenanigans.
The logo looks like crap wrapped in shit.
It's just odd considering that their recent change to the logo already was simplified, JUST the golden R. Adding all this to it, somehow making it more boring, seems silly.
ABF, it's not really that big a change. Nintendo has always had alternate color schemes for their company logo. I have a number of Wii and DS games, some are classic red, some are white, a few are black, and I even have a couple that are gold or silver. This goes way back though. My Gameboy Pocket Nintendo logo is silver, mainly because it's just a raised part of the silver case of the system. It mainly seems to be based on what colors will stand out best on the background. For instance, Twilight Princess and Metroid Prime 3 both use red, but New Mario Bros Wii is white, an obvious choice since the whole box is red.
Just look at Nintendo's website and try to find a Nintendo logo with the red oval, it won't be easy... sure, Nintendo could easily change it back at any time because it's just a color change, but they have mostly dropped the red color. Sure, I agree that it's not a huge change, but it is a change.
Has Rare done anything since Grabbed By the Ghoulies?
That $300 million investment by Microsoft has to go down as one of the most disappointing payoffs in the history of videogames.
Going from a red logo to a grey logo is barely worth noting. Radically changing the logo to something completely different is.
A Black Falcon Wrote:Just look at Nintendo's website and try to find a Nintendo logo with the red oval, it won't be easy... sure, Nintendo could easily change it back at any time because it's just a color change, but they have mostly dropped the red color. Sure, I agree that it's not a huge change, but it is a change.
So is it white or grey or red? I think if anything they just made the color non-specific. It's all over the board on Wii and DS games, as I noted. There's still games with the red one.
White or grey or black, but not red. Have you seen the red logo on anything released after 2006, DJ?
Yeah, that's pretty much soulless and ugly. A pink octagon? Thumbs-down.
Okay, I see there's a few more (green circle, orange square, etc). Those are less ugly, but they're still bland and lack the elegance of the golden plaque. I guess that's the point if they will indeed move in the direction of simplistic games, but blah. It's so bland and generic.
Weltall Wrote:Has Rare done anything since Grabbed By the Ghoulies?
That $300 million investment by Microsoft has to go down as one of the most disappointing payoffs in the history of videogames.
Conker Reloaded, Perfect Dark Zero, Kameo, Viva Pinata, Banjo Nuts and Bolts, and those recent ports of various N64 games. There's been a good handful since then, though let's face it, not as many as the N64 days when they basically released half the top quality games on the system. In fact, literally not as many since then. They released:
4 platformers
Banjo Kazooie
Donkey Kong 64
Banjo Tooie
Conker's Bad Fur Day
2 FPSs
Goldeneye
Perfect Dark
1 3rd person shooter
Jet Force Gemini
2 Racing Games
Diddy Kong Racing
Mickey's Speedway USA
1 Fighting Game
Killer Instinct Gold
And... miscellaneous
Blast Corps
Not to mention they had the spare time to release a number of handheld games...
There are a number of games released since MS's buyout... for Nintendo's handhelds... and of those most of them are ports.
Yeah...
Let's face facts here, something internally happened with Rare, and that seems to be a huge number of teams leaving. The problem is, in tracking those other teams, I am disappointed with them too. Free Radical is focusing on FPS games, and well, I just don't CARE about any of those. Never was a big fan of Timesplitters, which is apparently the best of their 3 FPS franchises. The other one I don't even remember the name of, and certainly haven't run into any top rated games from them that'd remind me of their existance.
Okay the other was "Zoonami" and they've released a total of 3 games, all of them "casual" puzzle games.
The split-up was the worst thing to happen to Rare. In spite of the (small) popularity of Time Splitters, Rare themselves are still the best of the remaining teams. Nuts and Bolts is a great game in my opinion. Still, they simply aren't able to keep up with their previous rate of release or their previous fame for releasing nothing but solid gold. The sad thing is, even their old release rate was considered slow at the time. I'd really like to know what inspired that split up. I mean, was the desire to make Time Splitters that bad? Were they really feeling "held back"? I really don't see how it was worth it to those guys. Did Zoonami feel they weren't being allowed to pursue the puzzle game genre before? What about that newest one from Doak, Pumpkin Beach? What are they doing that just wasn't possible with Rare? My thinking is, give up these upstarts no one really seems to care about, merge back into Rare, and start publishing 3rd party. How do you get there? My thinking is Microsoft is probably getting ready to cut the cord once they make their money the only way they can, getting 4J games (not even Rare) to port their non-Donkey Kong games to XBox Live.
Eh, the whole thing is annoying, but the first clue was in the very incomplete feeling Star Fox Adventures. I'm actually wondering what their next project even is.
A port of Star Fox Adventures!
Face, meet palm. *slap*
In all seriouslyness though, I'd love to see Star Fox Adventures actually finished at some point. MS would never allow it, but... Anyway, aside from filling in all the obviously missing content (like boss fights, dungeons, and so on) they could add new stuff on top of it, and what I'd really like to see, making the puzzles actually puzzles instead of literally just telling you "use that item RIGHT THE HELL HERE".
That logo is boring and fugly.
And yeah, a completed Starfox Adventures would be nice. It was a potentially awesome game with a nice atmosphere, but... too damn rushed. I doubt we'll ever see a better version though. Even if Rare ditched Microsoft and went back to Nintendo or Microsoft allowed Rare to work on a remake of the game, Starfox Adventures just wasn't all that popular among Starfox fans (who wanted traditional space shooters and not Zelda clones).
I miss Rare. When I heard there was going to be a Sonic the Hedgehog 4 for WiiWare, I thought, "Wouldn't it be awesome if Rare and Nintendo could team up one last time for a Donkey Kong Country 4 on WiiWare? A traditional sidescroller, but with better graphics?" I even have some ideas for gameplay mechanics, but... it ain't happening, so what's the point in dreaming about it? :(
Remember everyone, dreaming about things is pointless. We're all dead in the long run anyway!
We have gotten a bunch of awesome revival titles this generation, though, from Bionic Commando Rearmed to Rocket Knight to Contra, Castlevania, and Gradius ReBirth to of course Mega Mans 9 and 10, and more (other examples would be Hudson's new Adventure Island and Alien Crush titles, and perhaps also Star Soldier r)...
Besides, in this case...
Quote:And yeah, a completed Starfox Adventures would be nice. It was a potentially awesome game with a nice atmosphere, but... too damn rushed. I doubt we'll ever see a better version though. Even if Rare ditched Microsoft and went back to Nintendo or Microsoft allowed Rare to work on a remake of the game, Starfox Adventures just wasn't all that popular among Starfox fans (who wanted traditional space shooters and not Zelda clones).
I don't want that. I want Dinosaur Planet, the version with the two playable characters, the no Star Fox shoehorned in, the original gameplay and design, etc. You know, back when it looked like it would actually be a good game, instead of deathly boring and dull.
I know it won't happen, but yeah, if anything ever does happen, I'm hoping for Dinosaur Planet. :)
Oh, as for Sonic 4, we'll see if it's any good. It's a modern Sonic game, so no guarantees. :)
The original didn't really look all that different. It was still a game with weird animal people. Playing as two people would have been nice, but that's just one of the things that got cut. I get the impression you were originally meant to play as Krystal for a much larger portion of the game. The original screenshots here and there didn't give me the impression the game play would have been all that different.
In the original game Krystal and the removed male character were both playable throughout the game.
That was the original GOAL, but the original game was never complete ABF. They kept that goal when making Star Fox Adventures too. The switch didn't do much to development ya know. Rare themselves said that. It required only small changes to the overall plot. The switch to Gamecube was a bigger delay than a few setting changes.
The whole game ended up very rushed, very boring, very lacking... that is just one of the many problems with Star Fox Adventures, but it had many problems.
Well, if we're talking about games that were rushed, shipped incomplete and lacking, then I have a long list of titles that I'd like to see properly finished and SFA isn't near the top.
Really? Yes, there are plenty of unfinished games out there, but not counting ones that were fixed later (PC games fixed through patches, primarily), I don't know, Star Fox Adventures would probably be on my list... Rare's N64 games were all so amazing, and SFA is so disappointing in comparison that I'd have to put it on the list, I think. If they hadn't been forced to redo it as Star Fox and had instead finished the original game, and also weren't rushing to get it out before they left Nintendo, I can't help but think that it would have ended up much better...
Actually I'd like to hear that list. SFA has always been near the top for me because that's about the only "rushed incomplete" game I can think of that had major hype aimed at it. There's plenty of others, but most don't interest me nearly as much. I mean there's little incomplete things in big name games like Ocarina of Time and Final Fantasy VII people talk about, like entire towns or, say, a quest to thaw out Zora's Domain, but the games don't reek of incompleteness in the same way SFA does. Wind Waker is a little closer with things like the 3rd Pearl just being forked over, Ganondorf having literally BLOWN UP a dungeon before you could have fun in it. That, and the feeling you got that maybe those triforce pieces should have been in dungeons instead of just going on a long fishing expedition for them. However, though it has a more incomplete feel to it, it still overall felt like a "done" game, and while the puzzles were easier than the norm for Zelda, they weren't literally telling you the answers to everything like SFA did (note to future puzzle designers, NEVER just show an icon over objects instructing people as to exactly what item to use and where to use it over EVERY puzzly object in the game).
ABF, I really don't think the switch to Star Fox characters changed all that much. Lots of things change in much more complete games all the time from inception to finish. Most of what we ever saw from the original prototypes were just small screenshots of locations and people anyway. I never saw any signs that basic puzzle design or other things were like that. I'm sure that it did delay the project a little, but by Rare's own admission it wasn't that big a thing to work into the project. The big issue is much more likely the "push it out the door" thing when Microsoft bought them out. I mean the start of the game was pretty well done. It fell apart at later stages and just felt slapped together. It still LOOKED amazing, but change of setting or no I'm sure it'd have been far better had they been able to work on it "until it's done". Mind you, it'd probably have ended up being released 2 or so years later...
Oh! I bet GR's talking about Fable's unrealized promises :D. That's more an example of that crazy man's lying hype machines telling you they're giving you the moon and then giving you a mobius strip made of moon dust to play on later. The game is pretty good until you recognize just how far it is from that original promised vision. SFA isn't quite the same...
All in all, when Miyamoto says a bad game is bad forever but a delayed game is just a few months, I know the truth of it now. I never raise a fuss when a Zelda game is delayed.
Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines
Knights of the Old Republic 2
There's probably some that I'm missing, but those are the two main ones.
Fable doesn't really count because, like you said, it was more unrealistic hype than anything else.
When I see the phrase "Vampire the Masquerade" I get this frothing rage, like every single word exists just to make me want to beat up nerds, and I AM one. I don't know why. I think it's Gabriel's Disease.
I never played Knights of the Old Republic 2, but my friends have it. They say it's pretty good. I did hear there was a lot of cut content, but I wasn't under the impression it showed in the game itself. Didn't some fans already put together a huge patch to restore a lot of it?
Some of the content has been restored, but not all of it.
Quote:When I see the phrase "Vampire the Masquerade" I get this frothing rage, like every single word exists just to make me want to beat up nerds, and I AM one. I don't know why. I think it's Gabriel's Disease.
It's one of the best RPGs since the 90's.
Great Rumbler Wrote:Some of the content has been restored, but not all of it.
Didn't they restore almost everything they could, and the stuff they didn't was mostly just stuff that wasn't far enough along to do anything other than just make up? I mean, did they not restore everything clearly finished and removed, leaving out only things which are unfinished on the disc?
Quote:It's one of the best RPGs since the 90's.
Which? The pen and paper game? The PC RPG of ten or so years ago? The PC FPS-RPG of a few years ago?
I've never had a strong interest in the White Wolf games like Vampire, Werewolf, etc., but they are definitely quite popular and potentially interesting. I've not actually played any of the games based on it either for any length of time, but sure, I would like to try them sometime...
Quote:Which? The pen and paper game? The PC RPG of ten or so years ago? The PC FPS-RPG of a few years ago?
Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines, which is the game mentioned in my post.
I just once saw someone playing it all dressed up. Damn vampires... If there's people calling themselves vampires there should be vampire hunters to put them down. Screw you Dracula.