Remakes. The video game market is saturated with them. Slight graphical enhancements and resolution bumps have apparently deemed these types of releases reasonable, even for games that were only just released during the last generation of console gaming, and often times priced at or near full retail as if it was a brand new game. While some gamers like to replay their favorite games again on their new high-powered consoles, the improvements to most of these sorts of remastered editions are not monetarily worth it unless the previous iteration was never experienced in the first place. But compilations of classics for fair price are a different story. Rare Replay just came out on Microsoft's Xbox One, and at a price point of half the industry standard for new releases, this trip through nostalgia is well worth shelling out thirty dollars.

Rare was founded in 1985, and before their partnership with Nintendo in 1994, they were best known for the infamous cult classic Battletoads. Ask any teenager what their favorite prank phone call to GameStop consists of, and they will likely tell you that it revolves around asking if they have Battletoads in stock. As a former manager at a GameStop for a few years, I can tell you that I received that phone call so many times that I eventually started to play along with the prank.

Their partnership with Nintendo brought them to the mainstream and their logo is likely ingrained in many gamers heads from the colossal platforming hit, Donkey Kong Country. They went on to create the innovative fighting game and custom built software for Killer Instinct. After contributing to both the platforming and fighting genres, Rare delivered the influential GoldenEye 007, and every modern first person shooter including Call of Duty and Halo are indebted to and could not have existed without it. These titles along with ones like Banjo-Kazooie, Donkey Kong 64, Jet Force Gemini, Perfect Dark, Banjo-Tooie and Conker's Bad Fur Day established Rare as one of the most creatively brilliant game studios in the nineties.

Sadly, like a lot of popular video game companies of the nineties, Rare has struggled to remain a huge player in the industry due to various circumstances, most notably Microsoft's 2002 acquisition of the company, cementing them to only release games on Microsoft platforms from then on. The sequel to Perfect Dark launched with the Xbox 360 to ceremonious disappointment, and after that the only good games released by Rare were the surprising Viva Piata, Kameo, and Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts. Microsoft reportedly only allowed Rare to create family oriented games for their lackluster Kinect motion peripheral for the most part, a decision that turned one of the most innovative gaming companies into another bland commercial factory of repetitiveness and tedium.

So Rare Replay comes off as somewhat of an apology from Microsoft, but also a reminder of just how great of a company Rare was in its heyday. The thirty titles included in this compilation span twenty-five years from 1983 to 2008, and with a thirty dollar price tag, they are essentially a buck a pop. The noticeable omissions are Donkey Kong but since that franchise is a Nintendo staple, they retain the intellectual property rights, and GoldenEye (which has aged less than favorably anyways).

Even so, all three previously mentioned Banjo titles are included as well as Perfect Dark, Jet Force Gemini, Kameo, Viva Piata and Conker. And yes, if you call GameStop asking for Battletoads, they will not hang up on you anymore. These nine or so classics alone are well worth the price of admission. View some of the games as throw-ins as not all of them have aged appropriately. It represents the timeline of one game company, and playing the games in chronologically is a romping journey through the evolvement of modern video games. Rare Replay should not be missed by any Xbox One owner. This compilation has something for everyone and allows adult gamers to relive their childhoods while simultaneously introducing a whole new generation to the classics that inspired a slew of modern day favorites.