Rare Replay

Still the best damn compilation ever made after 5 years. To empathize how absolutely incredible this was, we have to go back to when the Xbox One launched Rare was a bit on a downturn over the past few years, after Nuts & Bolts. A unique game concept tarnished by backlash over it being slotted into the Banjo series, flopped. The company was pushed into making more casual Kinect games alongside creating a competitor to Nintendo's Mii avatar system. While the Kinect Sports games weren't 𝘣𝘢𝘥, per se. They were rather generic and formulaic in terms of gameplay and setting. A far cry from their previous days back at Nintendo. But that all changed at E3 2013, when Microsoft dropped the surprise reveal that Killer Instinct was getting a brand-new game. As a launch title for their fresh new console. Rare wasn't 100% involved with the project (The actual dev was Double Helix, with Iron Galaxy hopping on-board after the former was bought by Amazon.) but it showed that MS was 𝘴𝘵𝘪𝘭𝘭 actively thinking about using those older IPs, a process which eventually culminated in the release of this collection. Made 𝐬𝐩𝐞𝐜𝐢𝐟𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐲 to celebrate the studio's 30th anniversary. Right from the start you can tell the collection was made out of genuine love for the company. Opening with a brilliant musical number that leads into a clever menu system. Rather than a basic text-filled UI cheaper compilations tend to make use of, Rare Replay embraces it's set up of being a theater presenting the history of the studio. Characters are turned into cardboard cut-outs, the unlockable videos are first shown off covered in film grain before loading the crisp 1080p video contained within, the curtains rise and fall for each menu transition, and the music.... 𝐀𝐥𝐥 𝟑𝟎 of the games contained in the collection get their own custom menu themes, and it's not an exaggeration to say that they knocked it out of the park for every single one. Even with Robin Beanland being the only member of the "big 3" Rare composers to still be working there, he manages to pull it off all by himself. In fact, one of the few flaws i can think of with the collection is that they never did a proper release of the OST, you can legally listen to the tracks on Rare's Youtube channel. But there's no proper album containing everything, Which is especially unfortunate considering the uploads show off a prop vinyl record "playing" the music. As for the games themselves, two (Perfect Dark and Banjo-Tooie) i'd personally consider to be the best games ever made. Which that alone makes it worth it's initial $29.99 asking price. But that doesn't mean the rest aren't absolutely incredible, some highlights.... 1. Jetpac, while redundantly including a copy of the original 𝘢𝘯𝘥 Refuelled despite the latter already having the original game bundled in. Is an arcade classic that serves as the perfect introduction to Rare. Then known as "Ultimate Play The Game". 2. Slalom is similarly simple enough for modern players to understand and play, alongside it's historical value of being 𝐭𝐡𝐞 first NES game to be developed outside Japan. 3. Battletoads NES marks the beginning of Rare's noted history for making excellent music, in particular the legendary David Wise. Though the Arcade game (Which 𝘧𝘪𝘯𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺 acquired a home release through this.) is mechanically the much better game, lacking the overwhelmingly painful difficulty the NES game was known for. 4. Killer Instinct Gold is a bit of an unusual choice, as the Arcade version (It's a renamed N64 port of Killer Instinct 2.) was already re-released as part of the 2013 KI game. But i still appreciate them going through the effort of making as many ports of the game available as possible. 5. Banjo-Kazooie speaks for itself, really. Though i prefer the sequel. 6. Grabbed By The Ghoulies is actually nowhere near as bad as the initial reviews say it is. It's just as charming as any of their other titles, and the simplistic beat-em-up gameplay is quite fun. Not every game included is good (Looking at you, Perfect Dark Zero.) but it's far more hits than misses here. The emulation tech being used is also 99% perfect. ZX Spectrum, NES, and Xbox 360 (They actually used this game to test out the Backwards Compatibility functionality on the One.) are all practically 1;1 with the real thing, and while N64 is similar. Jet Force Gemini 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺 doesn't control all that well. Even with the attempts at providing a more standard dual-stick layout for movement and aiming. It 𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘆 needed a native port similar to Ghoulies (which acquired one due to Original Xbox emulation/Backwards Compatibility not existing at the time.) The same problem also applies to Conker's Bad Fur Day, but only a few short segments actually require you to shoot and aim at things. The extras are similarly well done, with a massive cache of interviews, looks at unreleased games, and concept art galleries. Though i do wish they tried working out the legal kinks that prevented them from including actual Rareware protos in playable form. They even spent at least a year after the collection's release uploading further archival content on their Youtube channel, providing further insight onto their history. In short, there is really 𝗻𝗼 reason you shouldn't have picked this up yet if you own an Xbox One, and in fact it's still worth buying the system 𝘫𝘶𝘴𝘵 to play the compilation. It's even on Game Pass nowadays, making it especially easy to acquire on the cheap.