Rare Ltd.

"We've been making golden memories and redefining gaming genres since 1985, and that's not about to change. Everything we do is true to our goals of pursuing new experiences and putting players first. Still ahead of the game after three decades of evolution, there's no other studio in the world quite like Rare."

- Rare

Rare Ltd., often known as Rare and formerly by their trade name Rareware, is a British video game development company. They have developed many video games, many of which were on Nintendo consoles. Since 2002, the entire company is owned by Microsoft and has since had their games on Xbox console. Rare has two studios: one in Twycross, in Leicestershire, England and one in Digbeth, in Birmingham, England. It was founded in 1985, as the successor company to Ultimate Play The Game.

History
Before Rare, Tim and Chris Stamper formed Ultimate Play the Game in 1982. They made games mainly for the ZX Spectrum, like Jetpac and the Sabreman series. In 1985, the Stamper brothers founded a separate company, Rare. Ultimate Play the Game was around for a while longer but was later sold off when the Stamper brothers invested in their Nintendo outpost solely. At the time, Nintendo restricted its third-party developers to a limited amount of games it was allowed to produce for the system in a given year as a quality-control measure. Rare was granted an unlimited license to release as many games as they wanted – leading to classics such as Wizards & Warriors, Battletoads, and R.C. Pro-Am. This started a long and lucrative partnership between the two companies that would fully take root in 1994 with the release of Donkey Kong Country.

In 2002, Microsoft bought Rareware. Since then, Rareware has made console games strictly for Microsoft, but also made handheld games for Nintendo, by publishing them through THQ. During the summer of 2010, Rareware opened a new studio in Digbeth, in Birmingham, England.

While working for Microsoft, Rare has also helped create the Xbox Live Avatars. They have stated that they are focusing more on Microsoft's new controller-free peripheral, Kinect. Rare's first game to be released for Kinect was Kinect Sports.

Famous Games

 * Jetpac (1983)
 * Sabre Wulf series (1984)
 * Battletoads (1991)
 * Donkey Kong Country (1994)
 * Killer Instinct (1994)
 * Goldeneye 007 (1997)
 * Diddy Kong Racing (1997)
 * Banjo-Kazooie (1998)
 * Donkey Kong 64 (1999)
 * Perfect Dark (2000)
 * Conker's Bad Fur Day (2001)
 * Star Fox Adventures (2002)
 * Kameo: Elements of Power (2005)
 * Viva Piñata (2006)

Famous Members

 * Tim and Chris Stamper: The original founders of the company. They left in January 2007 to pursue "other opportunities".
 * Grant Kirkhope: Composer for most of Rare's Nintendo 64 games, and also the composer of Rare's most recent games. Possibly most famous for the music of Banjo-Kazooie. He left Rare in July 2008, to work with THQ's studio, Big Huge Games, as audio director.
 * Robin Beanland: Composer for many of Rare's games. He was also the composer for Conker's Bad Fur Day (and its remake, Conker: Live & Reloaded) and co-wrote the script with Chris Seavor.
 * Chris Seavor: Originally working as a graphic designer for Rare, he eventually designed Conker's Bad Fur Day. He co-wrote the script with Robin Beanland, and voiced many of the characters, including Conker. He also voiced Slippy Toad and Peppy Hare in Star Fox Adventures.
 * Martin Hollis: Left in 1998 and began working with Nintendo on the GameCube. He eventually formed the company Zoonami.
 * David Doak: Left after Hollis and helped form Free Radical Design, the company behind the Timesplitters franchise.
 * Kevin Bayliss': Co-character design and animation, motion capture.
 * David Wise: Composer for Donkey Kong Country, Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest, and Diddy Kong Racing just to name a few.
 * Eveline Fischer: One of the few female staff members at Rare. She composed the music for Donkey Kong Country 3: Dixie Kong's Double Trouble and voiced Joanna Dark in Perfect Dark.
 * Chris Sutherland: One of the programmers, voices of Banjo and Kazooie.
 * Gregg Mayles: Designer of Banjo-Kazooie and Banjo-Tooie.
 * Mark Betteridge: Main programmer on many of Rare's games, including Battletoads. He was also the Studio Director from 2007-2010. He left the company that same year.