the house of cards character see tim stamper fictional character . rare rare headquarters in twycross leicestershire type subsidiary industry interactive entertainment video game industry predecessor ultimate play the game founded 1985 ; 31 years ago 1985 founders tim stamper chris stamper headquarters twycross england united kingdom key people craig duncan studio director gregg mayles creative director simon woodroffe creative director products list of video games developed by rare owner microsoft number of employees 200 as of 2008 1 parent microsoft studios website www.rare.co.uk rare is a british video game developer located in twycross leicestershire . the company was established in 1985 by tim and chris stamper founders of ultimate play the game . during its early years rare was backed by an unlimited budget from nintendo primarily concentrated on nintendo entertainment system nes games . during this time they created successful titles such as wizards & warriors battletoads and r.c. pro am . rare became a prominent second party developer for nintendo who came to own a large minority stake of the company . during this period rare received international recognition and critical acclaim for games such as donkey kong country goldeneye 007 banjo kazooie perfect dark and conker s bad fur day . in 2002 microsoft acquired rare who retained their original brand logo and most intellectual properties . it has since focused on developing games exclusively for microsoft studios video game consoles . notable releases include kameo elements of power perfect dark zero and viva pi ata . in 2007 founders tim and chris stamper left the company to pursue other opportunities and in 2010 the company s focus shifted to the xbox live avatar and kinect releasing three different kinect sports games . in 2015 rare released rare replay a compilation of 30 games produced by the company to celebrate their 30th anniversary . rare is currently working on sea of thieves a multiplayer adventure game . several key employees left rare to form their own companies such as free radical design and playtonic games . rare was widely recognised by the gaming industry and received numerous accolades from critics and journalists . rare s operation was often held off from critics and the company is often described as secretive and seclusive . contents 1 history 1.1 founding 1985 1993 1.2 partnership with nintendo 1994 2001 1.3 microsoft era 2002 present 2 culture 3 related companies 4 games 5 awards 6 references 7 external links history edit founding 1985 1993 edit rare evolved from ashby computers & graphics ltd better known by the trade name ultimate play the game and founded in ashby de la zouch leicestershire by former arcade game developers tim and chris stamper . 2 after multiple critically and commercially successful releases including jetpac atic atac sabre wulf and knight lore ultimate play the game was among one of the biggest uk based video game development companies . 3 the zx spectrum home computer the platform the company usually developed games for was only popular in the uk and they believed that working on that platform would not be beneficial to the company s growth as they considered it a dead end . 2 3 4 meanwhile the company inspected an imported console from japan the famicom and believed that it would be an ideal future platform of choice for the company as it was more sophisticated than the spectrum had a worldwide market and its cartridges had no load times . 5 as a result a new subdivision named rare ltd was established by ashby computers and graphics ltd in 1985 . 6 its main goal was to reverse engineer the console and investigate the codes for famicom s games to learn more about the console s programming . 2 with successful results the company decided to sell the ultimate brand to u.s. gold and ceased games development for the zx spectrum in the following year . 3 famicom s owner nintendo once claimed that it would be impossible for their console to be decoded . 3 using the information the ashby computers and graphics team learnt from the rare division the team prepared several tech demos and showed them to the nintendo executive minoru arakawa in kyoto . 2 6 impressed with their efforts nintendo decided to grant the ashby team an unlimited budget for them to work on games for the famicom platform . 2 after they returned to england they moved from ashby de la zouch to twycross and established a new studio using the name of the subdivision ; rare . they set their headquarters in a manor farmhouse . 6 rare also set up another company known as rare inc. in miami florida . headed by joel hochberg the american company was involved in maintaining rare s operation in the us and contacting major us publishers . 6 famicom was eventually released in the uk under the name nintendo entertainment system nes . 3 my goal at rare was to bring products that you wouldn t see for six to eight years and make it available as soon as possible . tim stamper founder of rare with the unlimited budget the rare studio could work a large variety of different games . 2 the first project rare worked on was slalom an ice skiing title . 7 the company then worked with various gaming publishers that included tradewest acclaim entertainment electronic arts sega mindscape and gametek 4 to produce over 60 games for the nes and several additional game boy conversions . 2 7 they helped in creating new and original intellectual properties including r.c. pro am a vehicular combat game with racing elements 7 and snake rattle n roll an action platform game with tim stamper developing the game s graphics . 8 rare also developed battletoads a beat em up inspired by the teenage mutant ninja turtles franchise . 2 the game became known for its extreme difficulty and upon seeing success publisher tradewest published multiple ports for the game and tasked rare to develop sequels . tradewest also gave their own double dragon licence to rare allowing them to develop a crossover game between the two franchises . rare released three battletoads games in 1993 including battletoads & double dragon the ultimate team battletoads in ragnarok s world and battletoads in battlemaniacs . the last battletoads game was released for the arcade . 9 several battletoads games were also ported to sega s mega drive . 10 rare worked on licensed properties such as a nightmare on elm street and hollywood squares and ports including marble madness narc and sid meier s pirates . 2 the development of four rare s games were outsourced to zippo games including wizards & warriors and the third instalment of the jetpac series solar jetman hunt for the golden warship . 10 rare eventually acquired zippo games and renamed them to rare manchester . 3 according to ste pickford a rare team member through the late 80s and the early 90s rare just wanted to make as many games as they could in their window of opportunity . 11 however despite the huge catalogue of games none became a critical success for the company while less creativity and innovation were shown despite the games making large profits . 2 when the super nintendo entertainment system was conceived the rare studio was not yet ready for the change . rare limited their releases to some battletoads games and decided to invest their significant nes profit in purchasing expensive silicon graphics workstations to make three dimensional models . this move made rare the most technologically advanced developer in the uk and situated them high in the international market . 2 their priority also changed at that time as the team decided to focus on quality instead of quantity . 12 partnership with nintendo 1994 2001 edit former rare logo used for the rareware trademark used from 1994 2003 rare using the sgi systems created a boxing game demo and presented it to nintendo . 12 as the snes system at that time could not render all of the sgi graphics at once rare used the sgi graphics to produce 3d models and graphics before pre rendering these graphics onto the cartridge of the snes system 12 a process known as advanced computer modelling . 6 their progress with the 3d graphics on the sgi systems impressed nintendo and in 1994 nintendo bought a 25 % stake in the company that gradually increased to 49 % making rare a second party developer for nintendo . 2 during this period rare started selling their games under the trademark name rareware . the company was considered one of nintendo s key developers and had enough recognition that nintendo offered the rare studio the nintendo catalogue of characters to create a 3d cgi game . 2 the stampers asked for donkey kong . the resulting game was donkey kong country which was developed by a total of 20 people and enjoyed a 18 month development cycle . 13 rare staff also visited twycross zoo observing and videotaping real gorillas . 13 14 the game was a critical success with critics praising the game s highly advanced visuals and artstyle . 12 donkey kong country sold over eight million copies worldwide making it the second best selling game in the snes library . 2 the game received several game of the year honours and was followed by two sequels donkey kong country 2 diddy s kong quest and donkey kong country 3 dixie kong s double trouble as well as several handheld spin offs such as the donkey kong land series . 2 nintendo s stake purchase allowed rare to expand significantly . the number of staff members increased from 84 to 250 and rare moved out from their headquarters at the manor farmhouse . 6 rare also developed a cgi arcade fighting game killer instinct on their own custom built arcade machine . 2 killer instinct was set to be released for nintendo s own 64 bit system the nintendo 64 in 1995 but was forced to release the game for the 16 bit snes system and had to downgrade the game s graphics . killer instinct sold 3.2 million copies and was followed by a sequel killer instinct 2 . 15 killer instinct gold the console version of killer instinct 2 suffered from a graphical downgrade due to the compression technology used to fit the arcade version onto the smaller nintendo 64 cartridge . 4 rare then developed blast corps for the nintendo 64 . the game sold one million copies which was considered disappointing by rare . 16 at that time rare was split into several teams working on different projects . a large scaled platformer was set to be released afterwards but was delayed . as a result rare changed their schedule and released their smaller projects first . the first project was goldeneye 007 a game based on the titular film . the project was led by martin hollis and development was conducted by an inexperienced team . 17 inspired by sega s virtua cop goldeneye 007 had originally been an on rail shooter before the team decided to expand the gameplay and turn it into a free roaming first person shooter . new elements such as stealth headshot mechanics and reloading were introduced . a split screen multiplayer was added to the game by the end of its development . goldeneye 007 was the first console first person shooter developed by rare and it was released two years after the release of the film . the game received very high critical praise and received numerous awards . it is often credited for having revolutionised the genre of first person shooting video games . goldeneye 007 remained as one of the best selling games for two years and sold more than eight million units worldwide . 2 rare then developed