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main » mailbag monday, july 15, 2002

Mailbag Mailbag 2002-07-15

Raretopia will be answering all Conker 2 Cancellation
interesting queries relating to
Rare and its titles, so send in So, no Conker sequel, huh? That's a real heart-breaker
your question and it may get as the original is an amazing game, not to mention
answered when this section is one of my all-time faves. I did my part and pre-
updated. ordered my copy of Conker's Bad Fur Day. The
cancellation seems to support the whole Rare going
Submit Your Question thirdparty issue which really upsets me. I would
rather keep Rare than have Square back on board, to
be honest. If Rare does stay true to the Big N, do you
think they might eventually resume development on
Conker's Other Bad Day once there are more mature
games and mature gamers who are GameCube
owners? Thanks for your time. Long live Conker the
King!
Paul Patko

The termination of Conker 2 is surely a disappointment to a

lot of fans of the original game, but Rare is a business and
as such, it will not develop games it thinks will not yield any
profits. However, a sequel to Conker's Bad Fur Day should
never be ruled out and can very well happen in the future.
We can assure you that Rare's decision to put the game on
hold had nothing to do with any thirdparty plans that may
occur at the company.

The Meaning of MMORPG

I know that RPG stands for role playing game, but

what is MMO? I can't seem to figure it out. Could you
please inform me of what it is?
Chris

MMORPG stands for Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing

Game and is the term used to describe titles such as Ultima
Online, EverQuest, Asheron's Call, and Dark Age of Camelot
which enable thousands upon thousands of gamers to play
against each other in huge online gaming worlds. The genre
has existed on the PC market for several years and is just
now finding its way to videogames systems.

Kameo

The first and last time we saw Kameo was last year at
E3 along with the first showing of Star Fox
Adventures. IGN reportedly said Star Fox Adventures
went through a complete overhaul graphics-wise. Will
Kameo also be totally changed for E3 2003? Or was it
cancelled? Why wasn't it shown at E3 2002?
Jon

The status of Kameo: Elements of Power has not changed.

The game is still in development at Rare and will be released
next year. While no new details have been divulged to the
public since its appearance last year, you can be sure that it
has been much improved over the past year. The games in
development at Rare are constantly evolving and seldom
look like the early builds demonstrated at trade shows.

Rare's official statement about why it only showed Star Fox

Adventures at E3, as given to IGN by the director of its US
subsidiary, is that the developer felt it would be overkill to
show additional titles as Nintendo already had an impressive
line-up. Some people think that the reason for the omission
of Kameo is that the game is turning online, but this is pure
speculation and not based on any tangible proofs.

On a related note, there has been some speculation on the

Internet about the MMORPG we reported on recently being
Kameo, but this is not the case. They are being worked on
by two different teams.

GBA Whereabouts

Nintendo said that it didn't want to show games at E3

that wouldn't be out this year, but what happened to
Rare's handheld games? There were several of them
shown last year and none of them have been released
yet. Were they all cancelled?
Andy A.

Rare unveiled four GBA titles at the E3 of last year ___ Sabre
Wulf, Donkey Kong Coconut Crackers, Diddy Kong Pilot, and
Banjo-Kazooie: Grunty's Revenge. Nothing official has been
said about the titles for a long time, but Raretopia has been
informed that they have not been cancelled and that some
of them, including Sabre Wulf, in fact are complete and just
waiting to be released. We also know that DKCC is going to
be released under a different name.

The reason for not showing the games at E3 might be that

Rare is considering letting another publisher release them. If
this is the case, the games would most likely be stripped of
all likenesses to Nintendo's licensed characters. This theory
is supported by the fact that DKCC has received a new title
and that IGN recently reported about Grunty's Revenge not
being published by Nintendo.

The Rare Acquisition

I heard that Nintendo owns some part of Rare. If this

is true, how can Rare develop for other systems than
the GameCube? Also, do you by any chance know
exactly how much Nintendo owns and if it can stop
Rare from going multi-platform?
Kevin

When Nintendo first invested in Rare back in April 1995, it

purchased a 25% share of the British developer. However, in
October 1997 Rare expanded its operations and increased
its nominal capital from £10,000 to upwards of £14.7
million. The shares were split between three companies.
Rareware Ltd. is the majority shareholder (52%) and is
owned and run by Chris and Tim Stamper. Rare Acquisition
Inc. (37.8%) is owned by Nintendo Co., Ltd. and is
represented by ex-NOA executive Howard Lincoln. The third
partner is Rare Coin-It Inc. (10.2%), which is headed by
Joel Hochberg.

Rare's board of directors currently has twelve members of

which only three are Nintendo-appointed. What this means
is that Nintendo's powers are limited to receiving dividends
and voting on motions put forward at meetings. Since there
are more directors from Rare on the board, Nintendo can in
practice not prevent the company from developing titles on
competing consoles.

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