Rare are back with a new compilation of some of their greatest games of all time, all on Xbox One. With a huge 30 games to go through from 1983 to 2003, we give you a rundown of 5 of the best games in the collection, why you should play those ones first, and tips on how to get through these old school and classic games!
Jetpac
The first game that Rare ever made (back then they were known as Ultimate Play The Game). Jetpac sees the player trapped on an alien planet, and to escape they must re-assemble their space ship. But this isn’t just a ship-building game, oh no. At the same time you’re being attacked constantly by hordes of alien nasties. Once you’ve built the ship after the first level then you just have to refuel it, but it doesn’t get any easer, because the enemies and their attack patterns keep changing!
One solid hint for this is to stay on the platforms near the top of the level. This is because the aliens spawn mostly along the bottom larger part of the screen, and the fuel spawns at the top, that means that you can easily camp the fuel spawns at the top, while fighting minimal enemies to get through the levels!
Battle Toads
Think of them like the badass version of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Zits and Rash with their shades and fiendishly difficult gameplay for a lot of people constitute the closest you’re going to get to an original Dark Souls. The Turbo Tunnel is particularly hailed as being one of the most difficult sections in gaming, with the frogs dodging through falling blocks on a race track. Not only was it hard because of the actual track itself, and the fact that later one aliens in spaceships come to drop more stuff in your way, but what made it even harder was that due to the refresh rate of older tellies combined with the speed that the frogs were flying along at meant that often you wouldn’t know an obstacle was there until it was too late!
Hint: Just give up hope, you cannot get past this game mentally unscathed (ok, ok, for the turbo tunnel try to memorise the sections and make sure you’re always at the left-most part of the screen when the blocks come up to give yourself the most time to react).
Banjo-Kazooie
Who thought a platforming duo of a bird and a bear could get so far? Well in Banjo-Kazooie they really did. Many saw it at the time as the successor to the massively successful N64 platformer Super Mario 64, but with improved graphics, sound and gameplay. But the truth is that Banjo-Kazooie is in a league of its own. A truly original story, characters and soundtrack combine with some of the best 3D platforming. What was also awesome about this game is that it’s fairly non-linear, if you get enough of the puzzle pieces to progress then you don’t actually have to do every level, and apart from the order at which the levels unlock, you can complete them in any order you see fit. There’s a new spiritual successor coming soon with Yooka-Laylee, which should channel the feeling of the original game!
There are a lot of tips for the animal duo. The first is to make sure you explore everywhere to find the hidden puzzle pieces, which will make your trip through the levels so much easier. One particular tip is that when you transform into the different animals using mumbo jumbo, you can leave the levels and the transformation will still be active, which is really useful in finding the hidden puzzle pieces that are outside the levels. Another tip is to make sure you visit bottles to get all the new moves, because otherwise sometimes you can’t get to the next areas and levels!
Conker’s Bad Fur Day
Maybe you might not have expected much from a game about a squirrel with a hangover, and in fact at the time the game didn’t sell particularly well. But Conker’s Bad Fur day is revered as one of the greatest N64 games, and it’s not only because of the jokes about excrement. Conker’s bad fur day also pushed the boundaries of the console graphically, including generating “reflections” by putting a mirrored version of scenery below partly see-through floor! It’s a great game that is brimming with good ol’ fashioned British humour – and on the Rare Replay version you get the whole, uncensored, original version (unlike the Xbox reboot).
If you want to help the swearing squirrel then the first step is to always use the context sensitive light bulbs… literally 90% of the puzzles in the game can be solved using the light bulbs. Also don’t forget to use your frying pan.
Viva Piñata
This game is a cross between animal crossing and the sims, which sees players try to improve their gardens to attract piñatas, which are half animal, half sweets. The nicer your garden, the rarer piñatas you will collect, with the end goal of finding two of the same piñatas to make piñata babies. No seriously, once you find two piñatas and raise the romance metre high enough, you can get the piñatas to perform a “romance dance” which results in a piñata egg being delived! It’s a very relaxing and open-ended game, which lets the player focus on what parts of their garden they want to improve.
Viva Piñata is a slower-paced game, so it isn’t that hard, but there are still some things you can do to make the game a little easier for yourself. The first is getting a Captain’s Cutlass to keep the sour Piñatas away, which do damage to your garden. The second tip is to make sure not to get too many of the same time of Pinata, that is because the more of them you get, the harder the minigame for the mating ritual becomes, meaning it’s more beneficial for your garden to get lots of different types of piñata.
