Rare Replay was made to commemorate 30 years since the company’s founding. Enough time has passed now that all of the games discussed in this post, save one, are at least 30 years old, too. Game design and complexity evolved pretty seriously over this period, but the fact remains: These are some dang old games. This first grouping includes 16 titles, more than half of the collection. It’s a high number because they’re short experiences. In one session of play, I was usually able to knock out two or three of these games at a time. This is thanks to the rewind and cheats features making achievement hunting infinitely easier. If you want detailed impressions on each of these, consult my ranked list. Here, I will give more of a general approach.

The first seven games were created under Ultimate Play the Game, Rare’s precursor. Jet Man the astronaut is the subject of the first two titles, Jetpac and Lunar Jetman. They are both simple arcade-style romps. Jetpac is a single-screen shoot ‘em up where you move your guy around to build and fuel a rocket ship. This type of simple gameplay ages the best in my opinion. The follow-up, Lunar Jetman, adds scrolling, vehicles, and complex objectives that were a lot harder for me to wrap my head around. In Rare’s first sequel, they’re already making things needlessly complicated! Still, the number of moving parts is rather small, so persistence wins the day.

From this point on, though, Ultimate would become synonymous with one of my most despised tropes from old games: mazes. Atic Atac, Sabre Wulf, Underwurlde, Knight Lore, and Gunfright all focus on wandering around identical rooms hoping you run into what you need. This is the case whether the view is top-down, side-on, or isometric. I am the type of player who gets very paranoid about this kind of design. With such limited graphics and colors, there’s no differentiation between areas most of the time. I always worry that I got mixed up somehow and disconnected from the guide’s path. Oh yeah, following a guide by the nose is essential to getting through these titles. The placement of key items is randomized, so you will have to be systematic – or lucky – to make it out.

I can’t say I thought any of Ultimate’s games were fantastic. They were all released in a three-year window, and not even in the order in which they were finished. My favorite was Jetpac for its simplicity. Of the maze games, Atic Atac is my preferred poison. It’s the only one that approximates the charm Rare would come to be known for. Your little guy is cute, and the haunted mansion theming is strong with such limited graphics. You also move fast, and despite some pains with inventory juggling, you’re generally able to keep up with what the game throws you. The absolute worst game of the entire lot is Underwurlde. Horrible 2D platforming control is just the beginning. The game world is the largest by far, and to reiterate, all the rooms look identical. One achievement asks you to reach the very bottom, a whole stratum of the maze that would otherwise be totally useless. It’s a bad enough time using the cheats that disables enemies entirely. Things spiral out of control when they are present, each hit sending Sabre Man flying out of control like a pith-helmeted pinball. This game sucks. All of Sabre Man's games suck. If you want some rawer emotions about these titles, check out the bottom chunk of the ranking list.

Moving on, we can transition eras to the founding of Rare proper and the mind-blowingly popular Nintendo Entertainment System. The next seven titles belong to that console. Most of these are still quick and simple. In Slalom, for example, you’re just skiing along with very little to talk about. However, we did start to see some more complex adventures to tackle. I’d like to focus on two of these: Snake Rattle n’ Roll and Battletoads.

Don’t let the zany graphics and catchy David Wise music fool you: Snake Rattle n’ Roll has a cold heart. As a snake, you must lick up dots to extend your body and navigate an isometric world. Even in early areas, I couldn’t get a handle on the controls. Your snake is twitchy and bouncy. Plus, the boundaries of what is safe and what acts as a pit are visually unclear. All this makes the later levels with unforgiving platforming a painful time. With rewind, of course, it’s not insurmountable, but having to rewind every three seconds kind of kills the mood. There is one image that has overridden everything in my brain relating to Snake Rattle n’ Roll, though. Per my past self:

Your snake must lick constantly lick a hopping foot, whose health is restored if you let up for even a moment. That sentence could have been A.I.-generated, but yes, the final boss of the game is LICKING A FOOT. Without infinite lives and time, the game would be in the dumpster for sure.

The sad part is this may not be the most frustrating final boss in the collection.

Moving on, there is only one game from this era that successfully broke out into a franchise, and that is Battletoads. In the internet age, it’s mostly known for brutal difficulty. Modern games have shown the way to retain a high challenge while still respecting the player and communicating good design. Battletoads is decidedly more antagonistic. It puts the ‘Toads in a mess of different scenarios so that skills from one part of the game don’t translate to the next. An intended full playthrough requires as much memorization as skill. It’s not a design ethos I enjoy. And abusing the rewind somehow got me into a soft-lock scenario, forcing a restart. That’s what I get for cheating. Anyone who’s seen the end of Battletoads knows that the infamous Turbo Tunnel is hardly the worst part of it. It’s just the point where everyone gave up. The Tunnel’s reputation didn’t go unnoticed for Rare Replay, though. One snapshot challenges you to last as long as possible in a looping version of the Tunnel. Easy enough, but then I saw an additional achievement hidden away. You have to survive for an entire loop, which is over a minute of perfect play. Even the regular Turbo Tunnel has checkpoints, so this is a new level of crazy. After hours of attempts, I was able to memorize the stage pretty well until the ending. The only way I could match the insane reaction time needed for the last walls was pause buffering like a madman. Even then, it didn’t work most of the time. Of course, I eventually made it through. While it was satisfying, it’s the limit of my willingness to meet Battletoads at its level. More power to you if you’ve been playing it for 30 years, but it’s just not my speed. At least the arcade version is a little better.

Well, the first half of Rare Replay’s titles didn’t quite yield amazing results for me. But batting averages were lower for everyone back then. Maybe next time, we’ll find something to latch onto. We’re effectively skipping the entire 16-bit generation and landing at Rare’s arguable peak: The Nintendo 64.

PART 2: Get N or Get Out