Rare Ltd Celebrates 40th Anniversary

As we continually note on this site, anniversaries are an important thing, especially when it comes to the gaming space. The longer you’re around, and the more you do in that time, the more you are respected not only by the game developer/publisher community, but by the gamers themselves. Gamers have a long memory, when they want to, and they aren’t afraid to show their love for those who have been around a long time and developed their favorite titles. Enter Rare Ltd, or just Rare, if you want. They are celebrating an anniversary, and it’s for a number that might honestly surprise you.

As you’ll see in the post below, Rare Ltd is officially celebrating its 40th anniversary in the gaming space! That’s…a really long time. Just as important, that would mean that they were “born” in 1985, which was when the gaming boom started to ramp up in the US, and certain other areas, again, thanks to Nintendo, with whom Rare would have a long relationship.

As you can see in the post above, Rare has made many franchises and worked on plenty of characters over the years, including the Battletoads, Conker, Banjo-Kazooie, Joanna Dark, and so on.

What arguably was their “biggest move,” though, was getting bought by Xbox, which would lead them to eventually create the multiplayer-focused pirate title Sea of Thieves, which continues to this day and has gotten a lot of fan love.

Sadly, here’s where the “catch” comes into play. You see, while the game they’re currently working on is doing well, all the other franchises you see in that picture aren’t being worked on in any meaningful way. In fact, Joanna Dark’s reboot, which would’ve been “Perfect…”, recently got canceled due to the Xbox layoffs that Microsoft issued last month.

Just as important, gamers have been BEGGING Xbox and Microsoft to let Rare make a new title with Banjo-Kazooie, and yet, they haven’t done so. That’s infuriating to many because recent platforming titles with Donkey Kong, and past ones with Mario, Astro Bot, and more, highlight just how well the genre is doing, and that now is the perfect time for the duo’s return.

Even more sad is that after the most recent layoffs, some of the original Rare team don’t work at the company anymore. In fact, very few remain from that 1985 squad. One can only wonder what will happen with the team next. Hopefully, it’s more anniversaries, and not more layoffs.