Rare has a new logo.

[Dark Jaguar]

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.