Stamper Brothers Leave Rare

It's an end of an era. Reported here, the original founders of the iconic games developer Ultimate: Play the Game, later to become Rare have left the company four years after it was bought by Microsoft.

It could be argued that Rare have not been firing on all cylinders since Microsoft bought them from Nintendo for $375m in 2002.

However, anyone who grew up playing the ZX Spectrum or Commodore 64 cannot forget the greatness of games from Ultimate: Play the Game. Not only for the great cardboard boxes they came but also the founding of innovative gameplay with the likes of Jet Pac, Lunar JetMan etc and the series of much copied 'isometric' games such as Alien8, Gunfright and Knightlore.

Becoming Rare in the late 80's creating many great games for the original Nintendo Entertainment System and in the 90's some classics such as the brilliant Goldeneye, as well as Blast Corps, Killer Instinct on the N64 and Donkey Kong Country on the SNES (to name just a few).

In a games industry dominated by the US and Japan, it's worth noting the impact that this UK firm has had on gaming over the past 20 years and although sad for nostalgia fans, its worth highlighting that Rare are just one of many UK games development companies that continued to create revolutionary games for all leading platforms.

My Games of the year! (part 1)

This year has seen the new Xbox 360 become an established and competition free addition to many homes throughout the country. Reportedly already shifting 10m units worldwide. However, the Nintendo Wii, only release at the beginning of December 06 has already shifted over 3 million units; an impressive achievement in less than a month.

Sony's year on the other hand has been less than impressive. After the cringeworthy press conference they gave at the E3 show they displayed an arrogance about the new PS3, bragging about the amazing 'new' (see copied) features of thee PS3 that seems to, as usual over-promise yet under deliver. Their tilt-sensing 'sixaxis' controller is a poor comparison the the truly revolutionary Wii remote as is their online proposition which pales against Xbox Live which is for me a 'killer app' on the Xbox 360.

The latter half of the year has seen the Xbox 360 really show of its potential. Anyone who has seen Gears of War played on an HD TV cannot fail to be impressed by the quality of the graphics. But such an over hyped game could have easiliy not delivered on the gameplay which I'm happy to say it didn't.

For me Gears of War is one of those games that takes a genre and adds many new and innovative gameplay features, like Halo did 5 years ago, that should make other games developers take note, and makes it one of my games of the year.

To be continued...