Ten of the Best Features in Rareware Games

The way I see it, Rare is not the amazing company that it used to be. These days, their games are not quite as good as before, their plans are more secretive than ever, and their older properties are being reduced to showing up on the Xbox Live Arcade, which is nice for people who have never played those games or want to play them again, but it also means that no new games with those properties are coming out anytime soon. In their heyday, however, they could almost do no wrong, and in the process, they came up with a ton of features that added to their games' appeal and made them the masterpieces that they are today. I have selected ten of those features that I believe are among the best that Rare has ever created, and they are as follows...

Diddy Kong Racing: Multiple Vehicles: Whereas Mario Kart 64 only used karts, Diddy Kong Racing went the extra mile and gave the player a choice of three vehicles. Not only could Diddy and his friends drive around in cars, but they could also fly in planes and go sailing in hover crafts. Players could use each vehicle to discover items and shortcuts not accessible by every vehicle, giving the game a lot more variety than Mario Kart 64. Granted, not every course gave the player a choice of which vehicle he or she wanted to use, but this kind of variety is so neat, it makes me wonder why Rare did not opt to use multiple vehicles in subsequent racing games.

Donkey Kong 64: Warp Pads: The worlds of Donkey Kong 64 were so large that the amount of backtracking would be overwhelming if not for special pads that could be activated within each level. These numbered pads could be turned on by simply stepping on them, and once two pads with the same number had been activated, the Kongs could use them to teleport from one part of a world to another. This system cut back on the backtracking and made exploration of each world more bearable. Warps pads would also be used in Banjo-Tooie for similar reasons, and it is such a useful feature that there are some games that could have benefited from a warp feature, such as Star Fox Adventures.

Conker's Bad Fur Day: Pausing During Cut Scenes: There was so much to love about Rare's final Nintendo 64 game, including its hilarious cut scenes. Since some of them went on for quite a few minutes, Rare wisely made it so that people could pause the game while the cut scenes were playing. This way, they could go to the bathroom, grab some food, complete an errand, etc. without missing a single moment. This was especially useful since cut scenes could only be skipped after they had been seen at least once. Such a useful option is something that all games with cut scenes should use so that no one can miss their favorite cinematic moments of the game.

Donkey Kong Country 2: The Lost World: This game had a lot of things that the first game lacked, and that included a series of optional levels found in the Lost World. Going through the stages was not necessary if one merely wished to defeat K. Rool, but for those seeking to get the maximum score of 102%, these levels needed to be conquered. By collecting the Kremcoins won in the bonus stages of each level, players could enter some truly challenging stages with more hazards to deal with and more secrets to discover. This is the right way to add to a game's length, and the Lost World stages are among the most memorable levels seen in any Rare game.

Donkey Kong Land 3: Time Trial Mode: Even after accumulating every last Bonus Coin, DK Coin, and watch, and beating K. Rool, the player has one last challenge to try, and that is the time trial. Here, one must run through twelve levels, trying to beat a record time in each one. The times are quite hard to beat sometimes, but they do give the player more to do after fully completing all 36 stages. It is fun to practice each time trial until you are proficient with them. The reward for beating all twelve records is lackluster, but this, too, is a fairly good way to extend the game past the required stages.

Jet Force Gemini: Disco: Even in their more serious games, Rare has a knack for including things that are clever and amusing. In this game, that something is a night club that plays-of all things-disco music. It is quite funny to watch the drones dance the night away, and the disco track itself sounds like it was recorded in the 1970s, when disco was all the rage. If you are not into disco, you can have the DJ play other funky tunes, which is neat if you want to take a break from saving the Tribals. I love it when Rare's sense of humor and creativity shines through, like it does here.

Banjo-Tooie: Interlinking Worlds: In the past, every game world was merely tied to the hub world, whether it was Gruntilda's Lair of the DK Isles. For Banjo-Tooie, Rare decided to have the individual worlds linked to each other. Not only could you unlock ways of going from one world to another quickly, such as using Chuffy the train and opening up special tunnels, but completing a task in one world could cause something special to happen in another. As a result, it made the Isle of Hags as a whole feel like one huge world instead of a number of smaller worlds, and it added to the game's sense of exploration.

Banjo-Kazooie: Stop and Swap: This feature is not really used in the original version, but it did start a mystery that has fans of the game curious even to this day of how Rare wanted to implement it. Aside from viewing movies of Banjo grabbing the ice key and eggs, one could not even legally do anything about Stop and Swap until 2001, when a number of codes were released that enabled players to unlock a number of new areas. Doing so would finally lead them to the eggs and key, but all that did was unlock a feature in the pause menu in which the items would be stored until they could be used in Banjo-Tooie. Since Rare's original plans for Stop and Swap were ultimately scrapped, the items were rendered useless. Even so, this feature remains one of the most mysterious, and memorable, features that Rare has ever created.

Star Fox Adventures: The Saurian Language: Not everything about this game was mediocre or worse...even as Rare was starting to fall from grace, they could still include neat features in their games. Here, the stand out feature was the Saurian language spoken by various characters at the start of the game. What makes it fascinating is that it gives you the sense that the player is exploring a foreign land, and not one in which the life forms likewise speak English. Yes, the dialog is translated into English after Fox's translator begins to function, but having another language is a neat idea, and one of the few really good ones that Rare created for this game.

Donkey Kong Country 3 (Game Boy Advance version): Pacifica: For all of this game's flaws, it at least had something that the ports of the other two games lacked, and that was a set of new stages found in a world known as Pacifica. These stages presented some neat new challenges, such as swimming inside a sunken tree and dealing with riptides underwater. Many of these levels were quite creative, proving that Rare had not quite lost their creative juices. The game could have benefited from more cool features such as this, and less terrible features like the vehicle mini games.

These and other features are what made me come to love Rare over the years, and even after they moved to Mircrosoft, they still had some neat tricks up their sleeve. It is a shame that their creativity is becoming more of an exception than a rule nowadays, and one wonders how far they can fall before they hit rock bottom and never regain their former glory again. Still, we have neat features such as these that we were lucky to come across, and they are part of what made Rare such a wonderful company in the first place. I await the day when they come up with something else that is just as cool as, if not better than, the ones listed above, as I hope Rare can become a superior game developer once again.