| Rare Ltd. | |
 The current logo of Rare, used since 2015 | |
| Type | Subsidiary of Xbox Game Studios |
| Founder(s) | Tim & Chris Stamper |
| Headquarters | Twycross, England |
| Key People | Craig Duncan (Studio Head)
Robin Beanland (Head of Music) |
| Parent Company(s) | Independent (1985-1994)
Nintendo (1994-2002) |
| Website | https://www.rare.co.uk/ |
Rare, Ltd., also known simply as Rare and, formerly, Rareware, is a British video game development company with approximately 200 employees. They have developed a huge amount of games. Rare has two studios: one in Twycross, in Leicestershire, England and one in Digbeth, in Birmingham, England.
History
Rare was founded in 1982 by Tim and Chris Stamper. They published their games as Ultimate Play The Game, for 8-bit consoles like the ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64, and BBC Micro. In 1995, Rareware made an agreement with Nintendo, and began publishing games for them. In 2002, Microsoft bought Rareware. Since then, Rareware has made console games for the Xbox family of systems, but also made handheld games for the Nintendo Game Boy Advance and DS, with THQ as a publisher. 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, a game that managed to sell 3 million copies. After Rare released two sequels to Kinect Sports, their focus shifted to the development of Sea of Thieves.
Games
Main Article: List of Rare Games
Notable Members
- Tim and Chris Stamper: The original founders of the company. They left in January 2007 to pursue "other opportunities".
- Grant Kirkhope: Composer for many of Rare's Nintendo 64 games, as well as for much of Rare's recent games. 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 many of the Donkey Kong titles created by Rare.
- 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 who still works at Rare.
- 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.
Gallery
Former Logos
