mainnews25.jul.10
the mundorare staff


MundoRare Closes
2001 – 2010

Saying goodbye is never easy, especially after nearly a full decade of dedication and commitment. MundoRare opened its doors on January 19th, 2001 and it closes them down today. The decision to take this final step is a carefully thought-out one, although we make it under an atmosphere of mixed feelings.
We started our journey back when Rare was at the closing stages of its golden age as Nintendo 64’s mainstay, oddly struggling to release Conker’s Bad Fur Day in the European market due to Nintendo’s notorious lack of support. About a year after, both companies ended a long and fruitful exclusive partnership when Microsoft acquired Rare for $375 million. Even though this divided the fanbase, we continued to express our support for many years to come on the Xbox. For us, loyalty never had anything to do with logos: it was all about games.
Over this time, we constantly evolved from a minor Spanish-speaking site to a much bigger English portal. We offered exclusive interviews, hands-on impressions, videos on location and insider reports. We were the first ones in the world to inform about the infamous GoldenEye 007 adaptation that got cancelled on the Xbox Live Arcade. We were the only ones to tell the truth behind the Conker sequel that was never made and Sabreman Stampede’s fate. We repeatedly debunked rumours about future titles, like Killer Instinct 3, even before official sources commented on the subject.

However, keeping such rate of work soon proved to be too time-consuming. What we started as a hobby had become something else, and we decided that if we wanted to keep the website alive, we had to start getting something in return. So as Rare reached its 25th Anniversary this year, we felt that the site needed to grow again. But this time it had to help us grow professionally as well.
Wrong Turn
Early in May, we showed Rare our most ambitious project to date. We planned to film an hour long documentary about their 25 years of history, to be shot on location in England, presented in HD and ready to be distributed freely via Xbox Live and Internet.
The project was formally introduced through a briefing that included a fact sheet, script, interview guidelines, several resumes and a demo reel. The crew behind the movie consisted of none others but us, since we also happen to be a team of filmmaking and journalism graduates with very good knowledge of Rare’s history. And best of all, the project was going to be shot at zero cost, because we had access to all the equipment we needed through a variety of professional sources.

Unfortunately, some days ago, Rare’s PR department finally denied our permission to shoot arguing that the film wasn’t going to be “on message.”
Shutting down the website was an option we were already considering in case we couldn’t make the process of working on it worth the effort. Therefore, we designed a win-win deal that could have resulted in a wonderful project for us and a terrific treat for fans everywhere. Despite its ambitious scope, we felt it was an irresistible offer. In fact, we are still puzzled over their response. It was a risk-free operation to be carried away with all legal safety measures deemed necessary and full of good intentions. It simply makes no sense. It has changed our perception of Rare forever and leaves us with no other option but to end our support for them. Yet it wasn’t the only cause.
A Series of Unfortunate Events
During the last nine years, we have never criticized Rare without a good reason. Still, ever since Microsoft’s buyout, they have been receiving negative backlash in almost a constant basis. People turned their backs at Rare because they never really managed to deliver a hit like the ones of their Nintendo years. Still, their games were good enough and deserved more attention. The first and only time we wrote an openly negative review of one of their products was last month with Kinect Sports, which ironically was used as an argument to oppose our documentary idea at a time when negotiations where already going bad. Kinect Sports may have been Rare’s biggest artistic disappointment in years, but it’s far from being their only misstep.

At the time development focused on Kinect, projects like a third Perfect Dark were ruled out. Rare also spent an entire year working on GoldenEye 007 without even knowing if Microsoft was going to be able to release the game, which led to the cancellation of a finished product after wasting months of hard work.
Way before that, they debuted in Xbox with a minor title lacking the right audience, Grabbed by the Ghoulies. They adapted the controversial Conker late in the lifetime of the original Xbox, censoring some of its contents despite the alleged freedom that Microsoft’s ownership offered. Kameo and Perfect Dark Zero were delayed an endless number of times, only to be transferred into the Xbox 360 in a hurry, which affected negatively the quality of both games. More recently, Banjo-Kazooie Nuts & Bolts changed drastically the formula of its predecessors, a turn of events that was not well received by everyone. Only Viva Piñata seems to endure unblemished, although it was followed by a sequel that felt more like an add-on than a truly independent game.
Many blame Microsoft for these situations, although Rare claims to take its own decisions with little to no interference by the suits at Redmond. We don’t know what’s worse. And even though we can believe Nuts & Bolts to be an honest try to re-imagine an old saga gone wrong, it is really hard to think that a blatant copy of a four-year-old Wii game is the best idea Rare could come up with when facing a device with so much potential as Kinect. Sadly, we see Kinect Sports not only as an uninspired response to Nintendo’s success, but also as a major turnabout that collides with the interests of our website. As a game targeted to casual players, its audience doesn’t include our readers or us. Naturally, if that’s the path Rare wants to follow from now on, we can’t go along with them.
Farewell
Despite the circumstances in which we leave, we will always remember MundoRare fondly. Over these nine years and a half, we made new friends and started partnerships that forged our professional future. We also met excellent people from Rare itself and we wish them the best in their lives. While we may disagree with Rare’s direction as a company at the moment, we still believe many talented artists work at their studios in England. We sincerely expect to see more great games coming from them in the future, released either as Rare titles or under the seal of any other developer.
Finally, we also wish to thank all our past collaborators, partner websites and readers that supported MundoRare for such a long time. We wrote each word, took each picture and edited each video for you.
Hasta la vista,
The MundoRare Team.

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