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Rare Ltd

The Fast & the Furriest is a cancelled party game that was in development in 2006 by Rare for the Xbox 360 Xbox Live Arcade digital service. Other than the normal joypad, the game could have been played with the Xbox Live Vision camera, to track players’ movements in a similar way to the PS2 EYE Toy or Microsoft’s own Kinect. The Fast & the Furriest would have included many different mini-games, as 100 meter dash, bungee run, hurdles and tip-tup curling. As we can read on Joystick:

Each player will be able choose a character like Conker or Banjo which will actually be a “suit” (think mascot suits). Players will then be able to scan their face using the Vision camera to skin the face opening of the character suit.

A playable prototype was created by a team headed by Dale Murchie and composed of developers of Perfect Dark Zero. Still, the project was canned, maybe for quality reasons. Only a short video from The Fast & the Furriest proto was shown at the Develop 2010 Keynote, a revelation that is not usual for a studio as secretive as Rare.. huge props to them!

Thanks to Celine for the contribution!

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Nes / Famicom, Nintendo

Screwballs Superleague [NES – Cancelled]

monokoma

13-07-2010

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Screwballs Superleague is a cancelled brawler / action game that was in development in 1990 by Rare. The game had two modes of play, battle mode and cooperative play: players would each start a level in their own “spin engine”, which would spin-up the character from their normal state into a spinning top. Players could exit the “spin engine” at any time, but it took time to spin the character up to full speed: the faster they were spinning, the more energy they had to throw either another player out of the battle arena (in battle mode) or an enemy monster (in coop mode).

As they player bashed into things, and over time, their spin energy would decrease making them more vulnerable to attack, so they would need to periodically head back into their own spin engine to spin-up to full power again.

Sadly Screwballs Superleague was canceled when the lead programmer left Rare. The game was pretty fun, but was months away from being completed and at the time they did not have a publisher for it yet.

Thanks a lot to Simon for his help in preserving some info on this lost project!

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Game Boy Advance (GBA), Nintendo

Banjo Pilot [GBA – Beta]

U64 Staff & Contributors

08-06-2010

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Banjo-Pilot is a handheld racer developed by Rare Ltd. and published by THQ in 2005. Originally, Nintendo announced it as Diddy Kong Pilot in 2001. When they sold their share of Rare Ltd. to Microsoft (2002), they opted out of their publishing contract. As the Donkey Kong IP is a property of Nintendo, they could no longer release the game in this state.

In late 2003, THQ decided to publish the four Rare GBA titles, including Diddy Kong Pilot – now reskinned with Banjo characters. By this time, most members of the original team had either left the company or been moved onto Xbox titles. Reskinning Diddy Kong Pilot was now the task for the remaining members of the handheld team who thought it would be easier to make a game from scratch. A voxel based racing title was developed, which can be seen in our gallery. After five months (mid 2004), however, the team was asked to stop working on this version. Instead, they were meant to revive and finish the previous team’s Mode 7 game for Q3 2004, but without the tilt sensor which was announced for Diddy Kong Plot. In 2005, Banjo-Pilot finally saw a release.

Special thanks for the information and videos to transparentjinjo!

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Unseen News

New Unseen Interview: Grant Kirkhope

U64 Staff & Contributors

04-06-2010

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Unseen64 has recently been given the opportunity to interview the legendary audio designer Grant Kirkhope, most notable for his work with Rare (GoldenEye 007, Banjo-Kazooie, Grabbed by the Ghoulies, Viva Piñata and more), he is currently Audio Director for Big Huge Games. As we can read on Wikipedia, before joining Rare in October 1995, he played for two bands called Syar and Maineeaxe where he played guitar, and already knew Robin Beanland, another Rare composer. Read the full interview with Grant Kirkhope to know more about his memories about the development of the Banjo series and other unseen Rare tales!

Unseen Features, Unseen Interviews

Unseen Interview: Grant Kirkhope

Unseen64 has recently been given the opportunity to interview the legendary audio designer Grant Kirkhope, most notable for his work with Rare (GoldenEye 007, Banjo-Kazooie, Grabbed by the Ghoulies, Viva Piñata and more), he is currently Audio Director for Big Huge Games. As we can read on Wikipedia, before joining Rare in October 1995, he played for two bands called Syar and Maineeaxe where he played guitar, and already knew Robin Beanland, another Rare composer. Continue to read below to know more about his memories on the development of the Banjo series and other Rare tales!

U64: Thanks for your time Grant! Would you like to introduce yourself to our readers?

Grant: Hello, I’m the Audio Director at Big Huge Games in Baltimore, prior to this I worked at Rare in the UK and was lucky to work on many of Rare’s big titles over my 12 years there.

U64: In your time in the games industry what were some games you’ve worked on that were never released, or that changed drastically throughout there development?