Phil Spencer teases brand new Rare game
A Tweet from Phil Spencer today teased a brand new game from developer Rare. Speaking on the social media platform, the head of Xbox revealed he had been to the studio to play the new game and announced that it was a “uniquely Rare game, as it should be.” This will give hope to fans of the UK based company that they may be working on a title from one of their classic series. Recently Rare has only released Kinect based titled for the Xbox consoles but Phil Spencer has previously told IGN that: “I don’t want Rare to just become the Kinect Sports team.”
Got to play the new @RareLtd game today. Rare building a uniquely Rare game, as it should be. Great visit to the studio.
— Phil Spencer (@XboxP3) November 11, 2014
The news follows recent speculation that Microsoft are working on a Battletoads game. Last week a NeoGAF user found a trademark application that was filed by a Microsoft agent for game software called Battletoads. The trademark for the series was originally registered in 1990 by Rare but that mark was cancelled in 2002 after the developer had not released any further games in the series. In fact, the last game in the series was an arcade title known as Super Battletoads that released in 1994. Last year Phil Spencer confirmed that he would like to see a Battletoads game on the Xbox One in response to a question from a fan on Twitter.
Battletoads is just one of a number of classic Rare games that the company could be working on. While they no longer have the rights to game likes GoldenEye 007, Donkey Kong Country and Star Fox they still retain the rights to franchises such as Conker and Banjo-Kazooie. Although they have since worked on some Nintendo owned series over the past few years for handheld devices such as the GameBoy Advance and Nintendo DS. Many of the original staff who had worked at Rare are no longer at the company with the founds of the developer Tim and Chris Stamper leaving in 2007.