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[DeaconKnowledge]

Anyway, the best part of this thread is Rare. They are in a much better position now than they were under Nintendo. They might not have the volume of sales, but they have nice offices, and I'm sure they get treated better all round.

That's nice. Microsoft probably tucks them in at night and reads them bedtime stories too.

 

[BGBW]

That's nice. Microsoft probably tucks them in at night and reads them bedtime stories too.

I wonder what Microsoft says to Rare when they are naughty. "You know what the bottom of an avatar's shoe looks like?"

 

[Cartman86]

N-space had made quite a few games before they did Geist with Nintendo.

 

[Shiggy]

Anyway, the best part of this thread is Rare. They are in a much better position now than they were under Nintendo. They might not have the volume of sales, but they have nice offices, and I'm sure they get treated better all round.

:lol :lol :lol
Do I have to say anything else? It's pretty telling when even the Stampers aren't very happy in spite of receiving a high amount of money; Rare was their life-time project.

 

[Starwolf_UK]

Next Level Games should not be on there; they were never exclusive to Nintendo. Their first game was multi-console, then two Nintendo exclusives, and then another multi-console, and then an XBL game. After Punch-Out!!, they began work on three more non-Nintendo affiliated projects.

We can say the same about Argonaut games. Doing PC games (other SNES games) before and after working with Nintendo.

 

[fenners]

Wow, Dogbert. There's a name I've not come across in a long time, good to see you're still around mate.

UKR FTW

 

[[Nintex]]

:lol :lol :lol
Do I have to say anything else? It's pretty telling when even the Stampers aren't very happy in spite of receiving a high amount of money; Rare was their life-time project.

At this point they could hire almost all the old Rare guys again, put them in the former HQ, cut Christmas wages and party like it's 2001.

 

[AniHawk]

That really doesn't mesh with the scuttlebutt about lots of cancelled projects, being turned into a Kinect dev, replacement of management etc. If anything, from the outside looking in it seems that they are in a worse position than they were under Nintendo.

Their offices are really nice though.

 

[Oblivion]

You know, several years ago, I used to think that there was this aura of preeminence around Nintendo's 2nd party developers, but looking back, honestly the only thing that made them special was their relationship with Nintendo. Factor 5 were tech gods, but their games were pretty average. Left Field Studios, N-Space, Paon, Genius Minority and Noise were all poor to mediocre. Hal Labs, Camelot and Rare were really the only ones that seemed worthy of any real praise, and yet I'd think that even Rare was probably overrated in certain aspects (and I say that as a pretty big ex-Rare fanboy).

Anyway, the best part of this thread is Rare. They are in a much better position now than they were under Nintendo. They might not have the volume of sales, but they have nice offices, and I'm sure they get treated better all round.

Not that I have any proof, but I'd be somewhat surprised if this was true. When Rare was with Nintendo, they still had a great deal of autonomy (or so I've read). I'd imagine it would be more difficult when you have a company that just completely takes over and forces you to work on a specific set of projects.

 

[Mt Heart Attack]

Uh? I thought Next Level Games was doing just fine? Their games developed for Nintendo did quite well at retail as far as I know and yes, they might be developing a buch of shovelware games right now but their relationship with Nintendo still seems to be pretty tight. I mean, at some point Nintendo will have to outsource another Mario Strikers game, and all indications are that Next Level will be the devoloper in charge of it, the same with Punch-Out.

Is there something I'm not aware of here? There were layoffs or something by NLG?

 

[Nintendo Ate My Children]

but they have nice offices...

Didn't they build swanky new offices in the English countryside with all the Donkey Kong Country/Goldeneye Nintendo money? What did they do, build even swankier offices with the money from the Microsoft buyout?

 

[Earl Cazone]

You know, several years ago, I used to think that there was this aura of preeminence around Nintendo's 2nd party developers, but looking back, honestly the only thing that made them special was their relationship with Nintendo. Factor 5 were tech gods, but their games were pretty average. Left Field Studios, N-Space, Paon, Genius Minority and Noise were all poor to mediocre. Hal Labs, Camelot and Rare were really the only ones that seemed worthy of any real praise, and yet I'd think that even Rare was probably overrated in certain aspects (and I say that as a pretty big ex-Rare fanboy).



Not that I have any proof, but I'd be somewhat surprised if this was true. When Rare was with Nintendo, they still had a great deal of autonomy (or so I've read). I'd imagine it would be more difficult when you have a company that just completely takes over and forces you to work on a specific set of projects.

 

[Oblivion]

Yeah, yeah. But that's one of a few instances compared with doing EVERYTHING your new bosses tell you.

 

[Shikamaru Ninja]

His team was having some trouble with the kit and called Nintendo for help, and Miyamoto was personally doing the rounds on developer assistance at the time, so when Miyamoto himself showed up on their door, they were afraid that he was going to freak out on them, but he just looked at their test work and started helping them without batting an eye, and while chatting said that he was too busy making console Zeldas to work on handheld Zeldas, and asked if they could give him a hand with them.

I remember reading an interview on NOM, and i think Yoichi Yamada and Yusuke Nakano were the more hands on EAD guys working with Capcom and Flagship on those games.

For the GBA, they made a Zelda 3 port (which actually got released this time) and paired it with their own game, Four Swords. Then they also made the Minish Cap.

Zelda 3 for the GBA was done by EAD. The staff credits are right in the game. Capcom only contributed the 4 player mini-game that was added as a bonus.

Flagsihp were part of Capcom (and were culled shortly after Clover were, though in a way a lot of people left in 2003 and I think the founder dying in 2005 lead to more) but I wonder, how did they get into a special relationship with Zelda (something I can only assume other developers have tried, only to fail...well except Philips :lol ).

Flagship was a coordination company though. Every game they were involved with, the actual development was done by hired hands. Flagship basically took care of the initial planning, and development coordination (finding the developers who would work on different aspects of the game for CHEAP).

(in reverse order) Argonaut assisted Nintendo with Stunt Race FX, programmed Star Fox 1 (I think Nintenod did graphics and story), designed the Super-FX chip and made X on the Game Boy (IIRC Argonaut imported a Game Boy and reverse engineered it then went to Nintendo with their technical demo).

Technically. Nintendo and Argonaut collaborated on creating the FX hardware/software technology. It was Jez San's FX team and EAD's tool-library team. Those technology teams were actually separate from the teams that created the actual games. Jez Sans FX team wasn't in Japan. Nintendo and Argonaut worked out sometype of deal where Nintendo subcontracted Dylan Cuthbert to work inside of EAD to help exploit the FX technology. Then Nintendo added Giles Goddard and Colin Reed. None of those 3 members ever returned to Argonaut upon their internship at EAD.

Meanwhile, Nintendo and Argonaut created a subsidiary called A/N Software. It's details are rather secretive and the company was liquidated years later.

In a way you could say Q-Games are an extension of Argonaut but in a sense that is due to their founder, Dylan Cuthbert also working for Argonaut (also some of the Star Fox 2 ideas being used in Star Fox Command, X-Scrape/3D Space Tank being successor to X goes without saying) but Q-games are not a Nintendo exclusive developer (though neither were Argonaut games).

Dylan Cuthbert i think has his own identity separate from Jez San and Argonaut. I wouldn't necessary link them.

You know, several years ago, I used to think that there was this aura of preeminence around Nintendo's 2nd party developers, but looking back, honestly the only thing that made them special was their relationship with Nintendo. Factor 5 were tech gods, but their games were pretty average. Left Field Studios, N-Space, Paon, Genius Minority and Noise were all poor to mediocre. Hal Labs, Camelot and Rare were really the only ones that seemed worthy of any real praise, and yet I'd think that even Rare was probably overrated in certain aspects (and I say that as a pretty big ex-Rare fanboy)..

I think Left Field Productions was a great developer. I think Excitebike 64 is to this day one of the best racing games ever made. Shame the GameCube sequel never surfaced. I'm still a Silicon Knights fan. Not sure what pedestal Noise was ever put on, to even face any type of commercial scrutiny. They were always a niche developer, one that only actually developed 1-2 of the actual Custom Robos.