Nintendo & Rare (94-02): Best combo in gaming history ?

[Scuba 06]

Looking at the Rare(ware) games that Nintendo released in the period where they had a stake in the company (1994-2002), I would argue that this stretch of titles may have been the most impressive run, although short, of any developer/publisher combo in the history of gaming. We have seen what has become of Rare under the guidance of another company in Microsoft, and it is obvious after the release of several lackluster titles, Rare dosent have the same magic it used to. But during the 8 year pairing with Nintendo, we got groundbreaking games like DKC, GoldenEye, Banjo, Perfect Dark, CBFD among others. Each year they just kept putting out solid games and they seemed like a great match for each other. Can anyone think of any other stretch of amazing games from another developer/publisher combo, especially in such a short span of time with back to back major titles ?

Donkey Kong Country 1-3
Killer Instinct 1-2
Blast Corps
GoldenEye 007
Diddy Kong Racing
Banjo-Kazooie & Banjo-Tooie
Donkey Kong 64
Jet Force Gemini
Perfect Dark
Conker's Bad Fur Day
Star Fox Adventures

 

[Cracka Jack]

Weird, I was actually thinking about this earlier today. Just trying to count up all of the great games they put out during their run with Nintendo is astounding. Plenty of all time greats and personal favorites, like Goldeneye, Banjo, Conker, etc.

If I could pick one other developer/publisher combo to compete with this one, I would take Insomniac's recent run with Sony (which will be partly over now that they're going multiplatform). The Spyro series, Ratchet, and Resistance are all consistently high-quality games. I would also mention Naughty Dog, for the greatness of Crash and Uncharted, but I'm yet to play a Jak game, so their consistency is something I can't quite judge. That said, I doubt any combo could hope to compete with what Rare did with Nintendo all those years ago. Too bad Microsoft had to go and ruin them.

 

[poppycock]

I really enjoyed all the Rare games I played for the Nintendo 64. Goldeneye and Banjo Kazooie being my favourites. I probably played banjo kazooie as much as mario 64 and thought the story and characters where great. It was just a real fun game. Killer Instinct was a great game and I still wonder why a next generation version has not yet been produced. Is there a reason for this?

I enjoyed Perfect Dark also.