Review cover Rare Replay (Xbox One)
Official GBAtemp Review

Product Information:

  • Release Date (NA): August 4, 2015
  • Release Date (EU): August 4, 2015
  • Release Date (JP): August 4, 2015
  • Publisher: Microsoft Studios
  • Developer: Rare
  • Genres: Everything

Game Features:

Single player
Local Multiplayer
Online Multiplayer
Co-operative
I hope your nostalgia meter is at an all-time high, because it’s time to take a look at one of the biggest collection of games available on the Xbox One. This, is Rare Replay!

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Timeless offerings abound

Rare has created some of the most beloved franchises to date. From Battletoads to Banjo Kazooie, Perfect Dark, and Viva Piñata, the genres and playstyles range from the criminally difficult, to extraordinarily entertaining all-out parties.

And you can bet Rare realizes how much their fans love their games. They realized what they had so well, in fact, that they took the care to have it presented to you in a lovingly crafted little museum of their timeless classics.

Games are selected by navigating through various portraits, and all the games are organized by release date. Every portrait offers a multitude of bonuses as well, from concept art to game music, in-game options, and more.

Play-By-Play of this Replay

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Rather than attempt to review every individual game, as that would very quickly turn into 30 full-sized reviews, I will instead give insight to games that have held up over the many years, to the games that seem to suffer even by today’s standards.

To start off, let’s look at Rare’s heavy hitter franchise, Banjo Kazooie. Both of the original N64 classics have been brought into the collection based on their Xbox Live Arcade HD remakes that were released earlier in the 360 era. The games play at a wonderfully smooth framerate and hold up fantastically.

In fact, many of the ports are wonderfully responsive ports. Killer Instinct is as fast paced and C-C-C-COMBO BREAKING as ever, the Battletoads kick and punch and turbo tunnel their way as smooth as butter, and the arcade titles beep and boop to your hearts content.

So obviously something may seem amiss right? There’s another big Rare title I've neglected to mention. One I, unfortunately, have to negatively mention.

Conker’s Bad Fur Day. Quite frankly, this was the title I was most excited to jump into, and I was very disappointed with what I was offered.

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The Conker port used is of the original N64 version, so there are no live and reloaded elements to the game at all. This isn't too big of an issue until you start playing the game. The platforming is imprecise, the framerate chugs at around 15-20 FPS in certain segments, and the game is laughably laggy in button commands. Conker is a huge game in the Rare collection, one that many a fan have been clamoring to have a new title in. The fact that the port couldn't have received the same treatment as the Banjo Kazooie games is highly unfortunate. To make things even worse, because it's a direct port of the N64 version, the game is locked to the 4:3 aspect ratio, making it look unfortunately ugly on modern displays.

There were only a couple other unfortunate offerings in the Rare Replay collection, from the dismally boring and only passably playable Grabbed by The Ghoulies, to the frustratingly simplistic and dumbed down Perfect Dark Zero.

Other problems include some odd slowdowns in the 360 titles. From odd startup times, to the occasional choppy framerate, it calls into question whether it’s an issue with the port, or the overall function of Xbox One’s new backwards compatibility function, as that is basically how the 360 games run in Rare Replay.

Some offerings you may have missed

I do want to go a little more in-depth about some of the other Rare games that you may never have touched before because I have to say, these titles are a blast!

Like say, Blast Corps, an over the top action-puzzler that has you trying to stop a Nuke from reaching its objective. Blast Corps is simple to pick up but gets maliciously difficult the further you go, and is a testament to the old days of difficult arcade games.

If you’re in the multi-directional shooter mood, (which let’s be honest, is incredibly specific and I’m totally reaching here), Solar Jetman is a space shooter where you pilot around multiple planets and fight alien hordes. Gravity constantly pulls and pushes you as you fight, adding to the challenge of the objectives.

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The best part of a lot of these older, and admittedly harder games, is there are options for save states, and rewinds, allowing you to re-challenge the horrific turbo tunnel over and over again, and go back up to 10 seconds so you don’t smack lose any of your lives! It’s a really nice addition for the people that value their controllers and haven’t insured them against being thrown at the wall.

These are just a couple of the other awesome arcade offerings Rare Replay has available, and all of them have their own means of entertainment! All of these arcade games are presented in 4:3 resolution, with awesome arcade borders around the screen. This helped prevent the stretching of the more pixelated games, and keeps everything looking great on some of our larger than life T.V's.

And if you like the nostalgic look of some things, other games such as BattleToads and RC Pro-Am offer an in game effect to add in-game fuzz an shape to the screen to round off the edges, simulating the old CRT feel. It's actually quite convincing to the eyes, and will bring back plenty of memories of burning your eyes out as a kid on the old 80's TVs. 

What else is there?

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Like I mentioned earlier, every game comes with its own unique assortment of concept art, music, and bonus goodies. But if you aren't feeling the history type, Rare Replay also offers more to play in its Snapshots mode.

Snapshots is a mode that allows you to play mini retro challenges that change the rules of games, very akin to Nintendo’s NES REMIX series.

From an endless Turbo Tunnel in BattleToads, to popping bubbles in sheer seconds in Jetpac, Snapshots adds some extra level of play to the arcade classics. You can challenge each snapshot individually per game, or you can play various playlists based on the objective of the Snapshot, such as collectathon or time attack,

Unfortunately, Snapshots is only limited to the arcade released titles, so you won’t see any challenges past Battletoads and RC ProAm. It would have been cool to see some challenges in Banjo Kazooie levels, or even in the old party games. Hopefully, it can be added in later updates.

The other awesome thing about Rare Replay collection is that anything that was split screen capable continues to be in the collection. You can still play the Banjo Kazooie minigames with friends, or team up and take on Battletoads with a buddy.

I think the hardest part about Rare Replay, is that there's so much content to discuss! Rest assured, anything that I haven't mentioned like Jet Force Gemini or Kameo is only because the games had no other issues and played perfectly fine. 

Full Games List

Jetpac 1983
Lunar Jetman 1983
Atic Atac 1983
Sabre Wulf 1984
Underwurlde 1984
Knight Lore 1984
Gunfright 1985
Slalom 1986
R.C. Pro-Am 1987
Cobra Triangle 1989
Snake Rattle 'n' Roll 1990
Solar Jetman 1990
Digger T. Rock 1990
Battletoads 1991
R.C. Pro-Am II 1992
Battletoads Arcade 1994
Killer Instinct Gold 1996
Blast Corps 1997
Banjo-Kazooie 1998
Jet Force Gemini 1999
Perfect Dark 2000
Banjo-Tooie 2000
Conker's Bad Fur Day 2001
Grabbed by the Ghoulies 2003
Kameo 2005
Perfect Dark Zero 2005
Viva Piñata 2006
Jetpac Refuelled 2006
Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise 2008
Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts 2008

Verdict

What We Liked ...
  • Enormous offering of content
  • Accessibility to everyone
What We Didn't Like ...
  • A few shoddy ports
  • Small framerate issues
7
Gameplay
Gameplay was tough to score, but this total was determined based on the playability of every game, averaged into one solid number. Conker and the 360 titles contributed to the lowering of the score due to frame issues and input lag, but rest assured that the rest of the content has solid gameplay.
9
Presentation
Rare Replay was presented with a whole lot of love, and it stands as a testament to the glory days of Rare.
9
Lasting Appeal
If there isn't something that appeals to you in Rare Replay, I don't know how you'd go about playing any video game. There's a genre for everyone, a story to every title, and enough gameplay here to keep you invested for months on end.
8.3
out of 10

Overall

Rare Replay is an incredible offering for the Xbox platform, at a cheap price. While some titles had hiccups, the full offering of games is enough to make Rare Replay an absolute must have for any fan of Rare, or anyone looking to play some of the most iconic games in the industry.
S
I didn't notice framerate issues in Conker, but the controls do feel a bit laggy and they did a poor job setting it up on an Xbox One controller, the multiplayer in particular (which is the main appeal over L&R for me) is difficult to control (throwing grenades and adjusting camera angle both assigned to tilting the right analog stick WTF?) and setting aim to right trigger and fire to left trigger made no sense, those 2 buttons do absolutely nothing else so there would be no conflict swapping them around for Xbox One players. Jetforce was even worse.
They made a bad call emulating the N64 over porting them to XB1 like PD and Banjo were ported to 360.

It also bugs me there's no original resolution option for the N64 games.
 
Your presentation and content for the review is fantastic! I'm still wondering how you got those coloured green and red boxes (pros/cons). I can't find an option for them anywhere in the BB Codes...
 
there's no online play. (maybe for perfect dark zero?) but yeah this is a game for couch buddies. *al gore voice* back in the year 2000
 
Originally I'd be complaining about Jet Force Gemini, but that was a quick patch - controls were horrific at first for that - 'better' now (though they still don't 'feel' right for me)
The slowdown present in some of the 360 titles via BC is apparently due to that feature not yet being complete: on full rollout in November most (all?) should be cleared up. Nuts N Bolts is the worst offender, averaging what looks like around 15-25fps, mostly on the 15fps side, and almost unplayable as a result.
Conker I'll agree with Snugglevixen on, and maybe the input lag might get fixed, but it's not a game breaker. Can't decide if I'd have preferred the Xbox version to a lag free N64 one, perhaps the choice would've been nice.
Viva Pinata has aged horribly! :lol: Feels like every soddin resource em up you get on mobile/facebook now... sequel is slightly better - strange, as back around release I'd have rated them the other way round... Not too sure why they gave us both titles and left out the likes of Alien 8 and others.
Oldies... Lunar Jetman was and always will be shite, ditto in my opinion Underwurlde.
All those niggles aside, fantastic review chavs of a fantastic collection, at a fantastic price! ;)
Also of note is if you buy the collection you get free access to Rash from Battletoads on Killer Instinct until early September - he's a bit unfinished but good for a laugh!
 
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S
Originally I'd be complaining about Jet Force Gemini, but that was a quick patch - controls were horrific at first for that - 'better' now (though they still don't 'feel' right for me)
The slowdown present in some of the 360 titles via BC is apparently due to that feature not yet being complete: on full rollout in November most (all?) should be cleared up. Nuts N Bolts is the worst offender, averaging what looks like around 15-25fps, mostly on the 15fps side, and almost unplayable as a result.
Conker I'll agree with Snugglevixen on, and maybe the input lag might get fixed, but it's not a game breaker. Can't decide if I'd have preferred the Xbox version to a lag free N64 one, perhaps the choice would've been nice.
Viva Pinata has aged horribly! :lol: Feels like every soddin resource em up you get on mobile/facebook now... sequel is slightly better - strange, as back around release I'd have rated them the other way round... Not too sure why they gave us both titles and left out the likes of Alien 8 and others.
Oldies... Lunar Jetman was and always will be shite, ditto in my opinion Underwurlde.
All those niggles aside, fantastic review chavs of a fantastic collection, at a fantastic price! ;)
Also of note is if you buy the collection you get free access to Rash from Battletoads on Killer Instinct until early September - he's a bit unfinished but good for a laugh!
Oh so that's what the patch was for, I was disappointed it didn't fix Conker, I guess I'll give Jet Force another go, then again, a cart is pretty cheap on ebay
 
The first good thing MS does with Rare comes 13 years after the original purchase and it's just a (great) collection of past games. Not that those games are bad, but I'm pretty sure MS could've used that $375 million purchase to make good games like they used to with all of Rare's franchises on MS's own systems (why on earth did MS allow Rare to work on Diddy Kong Racing DS instead of something for the 360) instead of all the crappy kinect stuff that they were doing.
 
Shame there will never be a good Bad Fur Day port. Live and Reloaded was supposed to be called Live and Uncensored or something like that, but turned out to be even more censored; aside from an odd, well hidden option in the multiplayer mode that only shows after completing the story mode.
 
Oh, and is the perfect dark an emulated n64 game or the xbla remake?

Unfortunately it's the XBLA version..


I didn't notice framerate issues in Conker, but the controls do feel a bit laggy and they did a poor job setting it up on an Xbox One controller, the multiplayer in particular (which is the main appeal over L&R for me) is difficult to control (throwing grenades and adjusting camera angle both assigned to tilting the right analog stick WTF?) and setting aim to right trigger and fire to left trigger made no sense, those 2 buttons do absolutely nothing else so there would be no conflict swapping them around for Xbox One players. Jetforce was even worse.
They made a bad call emulating the N64 over porting them to XB1 like PD and Banjo were ported to 360.

It also bugs me there's no original resolution option for the N64 games.

Unless they rebuilt the game, there would have been no way to get it to run properly. That or bring us L&R (NO!)
 
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S
Unfortunately it's the XBLA version..




Unless they rebuilt the game, there would have been no way to get it to run properly. That or bring us L&R (NO!)
They changed the ingame button icons, they could've just as easily mapped the Xbox One controller to N64 buttons like they have, and then remap the shooter commands (platforming mapping was fine) to better buttons in the ROM and maybe recalibrate the analog stick a bit.
 
Unfortunately? Did I fall into that portal to dimension crazy again?
My thoughts exactly, what's this kid smoking altogether?? Perfect Dark, as well as the 2 Banjo's, are Massively improved in their XBLA guises, online play in there too...

Shame there will never be a good Bad Fur Day port. Live and Reloaded was supposed to be called Live and Uncensored or something like that, but turned out to be even more censored; aside from an odd, well hidden option in the multiplayer mode that only shows after completing the story mode.

It's not huge censoring is it, we still get the gist :lol:, and otherwise the game was improved all round. The port of Grabbed by the Ghoulies is a rather excellent one, although granted the phrase that contains the words 'turd' and 'polish' does spring to mind. However, it's a pretty great 1080p/60fps conversion, and combined with THIS news I've just read (plus we're clearly not alone bemoaning the fact they chose the N64 version of Conker), maybe we will be getting it (and perhaps at 1080P/60fps)! ....could also mean we'll be able to get some of the other games they left out too (Nintendo/Licensed games not counted of course)
 
My thoughts exactly, what's this kid smoking altogether?? Perfect Dark, as well as the 2 Banjo's, are Massively improved in their XBLA guises, online play in there too...



It's not huge censoring is it, we still get the gist :lol:, and otherwise the game was improved all round. The port of Grabbed by the Ghoulies is a rather excellent one, although granted the phrase that contains the words 'turd' and 'polish' does spring to mind. However, it's a pretty great 1080p/60fps conversion, and combined with THIS news I've just read (plus we're clearly not alone bemoaning the fact they chose the N64 version of Conker), maybe we will be getting it (and perhaps at 1080P/60fps)! ....could also mean we'll be able to get some of the other games they left out too (Nintendo/Licensed games not counted of course)

I'm not smoking anything. They got lazy. No reason they couldn't have rebuilt them to natively run on the One. It's like they decided to do this a few months before the announcement, and just brought over the ones that were already released on the 360.
 
I'm not smoking anything. They got lazy. No reason they couldn't have rebuilt them to natively run on the One. It's like they decided to do this a few months before the announcement, and just brought over the ones that were already released on the 360.
But: a) It's the definitive version of the game anyway, and b) The resolution has had a boost over the 360 version to a native 1080p, while the XBLA version already offered 60fps - what the hell could they have done to improve that? :P Now if you were to moan about the 2 Banjo games (where they've stuck with 30fps on both XBLA and therefore Xbox One) then I might agree: Grabbed by the Ghoulies was reworked to 60fps, so perhaps it's a bit lazy of them to stick with 30...
 
S
The first good thing MS does with Rare comes 13 years after the original purchase and it's just a (great) collection of past games.
They remastered Perfect Dark and Conker and made Kameo. Despite lacking the original multiplayer and ruining the mighty poo song by cutting censored words instead of replacing them, Live and Reloaded is much better than it gets credit for.
Perfect Dark Zero was OK and I really liked a lot of it's visual effects like the crumbling body armor
 
No love for the Xbox 360? I remember the Banjo games. Funny, but way to collective. Is that even a word? What I mean is, you go into a level and collect the crap out of it. 100 notes, 5 Jinjos, 20 apples, 50 Mumbo-Jumbo Skulls .. and so on. It just annoyed me after some time.
 
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I just spotted an error on this page, Online Multiplayer should have a tick
 
Man, i would love to get this game but Xbox One only . . . no thx. I'll wait for a PC release . . .
 
The first good thing MS does with Rare comes 13 years after the original purchase and it's just a (great) collection of past games. Not that those games are bad, but I'm pretty sure MS could've used that $375 million purchase to make good games like they used to with all of Rare's franchises on MS's own systems (why on earth did MS allow Rare to work on Diddy Kong Racing DS instead of something for the 360) instead of all the crappy kinect stuff that they were doing.
What about Viva Piñata? I've heard that game is excellent.
 
Review cover
Product Information:
  • Release Date (NA): August 4, 2015
  • Release Date (EU): August 4, 2015
  • Release Date (JP): August 4, 2015
  • Publisher: Microsoft Studios
  • Developer: Rare
  • Genres: Everything
Game Features:
Single player
Local Multiplayer
Online Multiplayer
Co-operative

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