Alright, so over the past few months. A former Rare Employee had uploaded some Goldeneye development videos to his Youtube channel.
They were quickly removed shortly after this was discovered, but the interesting thing to note is that they explicitly meant for Rare Replay. With this text appearing at the beginning of the raw gameplay footage.
(Name edited out to protect the original uploader's privacy.)
Rare has noted they recorded quite a bit of spare footage that would later get publicly released on their Youtube channel.
Consider the timing here, Activision's deal for the Bond license (inked in 2006) was meant to last until 2014. While pre-production work on the Rare Replay compilation started in September of that year.
These articles do mention them tossing out any titles that could cause licensing issues.
On that note, the alleged reason why said 360 remaster was originally cancelled was because Nintendo stopped it's release. But by the time Rare Replay had begun development, it's clear that the seeds of Microsoft & Nintendo's current partnership were starting to get planted. As on April 2015. Donkey Kong 64 got a surprise release on the Wii U Virtual Console.
Nintendo had previously re-released the DKC trilogy all the way back in 2006 on the original Wii Virtual Console. But this marked the first time DK64 was re-released, this was a pretty big deal. Considering that the game contained Jetpac, which was fully owned by Rare, and in turn, acquired by Microsoft when they bought Rare.
On top of that, there was some legal issues with the previous re-releases of the Donkey Kong Country trilogy that were resolved around the same time. They were all delisted in December 2012. Before suddenly returning by Febuary 2015. While they don't straight up include an entire Microsoft owned game in them, there's still a few references that Microsoft could have possibly objected to. Most notably the fact that Cranky's Museum in DKC2 includes a giant poster of Chief Thunder from Killer Instinct, as shown by awkwardly comparing it with his official promo art.
Note: Microsoft had attempted to renew the trademark for Killer Instinct on September 2012, for what would eventually become the 2013 reboot.
There's also evidence that these re-releases weren't meant to be Rare's sole contribution to the Wii U Virtual Console, as the config files for the N64 emulator list such titles as Banjo-Kazooie, Perfect Dark, and get this. Goldeneye 007.
So what happened here? Work on the Goldeneye videos intended for Rare Replay had continued into 2017. As the last video, the "5 facts" one. named that date in the description.
Any licensing issues that could have killed Goldeneye's inclusion in the collection should have also stopped them from making videos about it post-release, and the fact that the uploader suddenly removed them (Possibly because Microsoft contacted him about it?) is also odd, as said uploader still has other videos relating to his work at Rare on the channel.
Rumours that Goldeneye was finally getting a re-release have been floating around by reputable sources in the years since Rare Replay's release.
Note: This was the guy that leaked an exact description of the Sonic Movie trailer. Note that the post predates the reveal of Banjo in Smash as well.
So could this finally be the time?
TL;DR: Former Rare employee uploaded multiple videos intended for Rare Replay about Goldeneye to his personal Youtube channel, at least one of which was worked on after the Compilation launched. Videos were quickly taken down after they were discovered, which alongside the evidence that they were seriously working on re-releasing it during this period. Implies that whatever plans they were doing might still be in the pipeline.
They were quickly removed shortly after this was discovered, but the interesting thing to note is that they explicitly meant for Rare Replay. With this text appearing at the beginning of the raw gameplay footage.
The fact that it was recorded in 2015, in the middle of it's development, is highly curious. The former description of the Making Of video also mentions it was made in 2015. Which is highly unusual considering the game didn't include any making of videos for released titles not featured in the collection.In 2015 whilst at Rare Ltd I captured the 2008 GoldenEye Xbox 360 remake for potential use in Rare Replay. This is the HD footage to show the switching of visuals feature.
(Name edited out to protect the original uploader's privacy.)
Rare has noted they recorded quite a bit of spare footage that would later get publicly released on their Youtube channel.
But the only released game involved in said uploads that wasn't included in the collection was "It's Mr. Pants".As the unlockable videos were so well received, and we were determined to mine this mountain of footage that people had so graciously let us into their homes (or revisited Rare HQ) to record, the Rare Revealed series found a second life on YouTube. Our Community team and video pros worked together on a plan for specific game-based theme weeks across all Rare's social channels, with new video acting as a keystone for those weeks. Continuing the main Rare Replay subseries also allowed some videos dropped from the disc due to space or filming clashes to see the light of day after all, such as Dale's pet project, The Making of Perfect Dark.
Consider the timing here, Activision's deal for the Bond license (inked in 2006) was meant to last until 2014. While pre-production work on the Rare Replay compilation started in September of that year.
In September 2014, two relevant things happened independently of one another here in the sun-dappled rural hallways of Rare HQ. Studio head Craig Duncan mulled over the idea of publicly spotlighting game designer Gregg Mayles' impressive 25 years at the company, while in an unrelated website design meeting, conversation turned to Rare's own fast-approaching 30th anniversary and the agreement that it couldn't be allowed to pass without a major celebration.
These two things came together naturally, coalescing into an ambitious project codenamed Pearl after the traditional theme of 30th anniversary gifts. But at this point it was still more of an intent than a fixed design.
These articles do mention them tossing out any titles that could cause licensing issues.
But the full list wouldn't be finalized until February 2015, and work on rounding up the devs for interviews had started the month prior.Once all the games that didn't qualify for licensing reasons had been politely escorted to a separate seating area from where they could watch us argue over everything else, we were still left with a skyscraping stack of titles from which roughly one of every three would make the cut.
There's also a note about them considering making unreleased prototypes playable in the collection, which would be a good possible location to include the unreleased remaster.Even after the first big meeting in January to nail down exactly what video content we needed, it was an ambitious plan. Making Of features for the biggest games. Showcases of unfinished prototypes. Concept art collections and soundtrack videos. We had a lot to get done, so we immediately started hunting people down to see if they were up for being interviewed about the games they'd worked on during their time at Rare, or could send us any unseen artwork or design docs that they were happy for us to share – there were many contributors behind the scenes as well as those in front of the camera
We had mightily grand plans as always, but in December, still only two months into the development process, an important scoping meeting was held to determine which aspects of what we had in mind could actually happen in the time available. It was here that wild ideas such as playable prototypes were reluctantly shelved. Practicality be damned, we'd seriously considered adding incomplete sections of games such as Black Widow, Kameo 2, Tailwind and the unreleased final handheld game in the Battletoads series to Rare Replay in playable form.
On that note, the alleged reason why said 360 remaster was originally cancelled was because Nintendo stopped it's release. But by the time Rare Replay had begun development, it's clear that the seeds of Microsoft & Nintendo's current partnership were starting to get planted. As on April 2015. Donkey Kong 64 got a surprise release on the Wii U Virtual Console.
Nintendo had previously re-released the DKC trilogy all the way back in 2006 on the original Wii Virtual Console. But this marked the first time DK64 was re-released, this was a pretty big deal. Considering that the game contained Jetpac, which was fully owned by Rare, and in turn, acquired by Microsoft when they bought Rare.
On top of that, there was some legal issues with the previous re-releases of the Donkey Kong Country trilogy that were resolved around the same time. They were all delisted in December 2012. Before suddenly returning by Febuary 2015. While they don't straight up include an entire Microsoft owned game in them, there's still a few references that Microsoft could have possibly objected to. Most notably the fact that Cranky's Museum in DKC2 includes a giant poster of Chief Thunder from Killer Instinct, as shown by awkwardly comparing it with his official promo art.
Note: Microsoft had attempted to renew the trademark for Killer Instinct on September 2012, for what would eventually become the 2013 reboot.
There's also evidence that these re-releases weren't meant to be Rare's sole contribution to the Wii U Virtual Console, as the config files for the N64 emulator list such titles as Banjo-Kazooie, Perfect Dark, and get this. Goldeneye 007.
| Filename | Product code | Revision probably? | Name | Actual name | Region |
|--------------------|--------------|--------------------|------------------|---------------------------------------------------------------|---------|
| Unbkj0.292.ini | NBKJ | 0 | Banjo2 JP | Banjo-Kazooie | JPN |
| Undoe0.556.ini | NDOE | 0 | DonkeyKong E | Donkey Kong 64 | USA |
| Undoj0.609.ini | NDOJ | 0 | DonkeyKong J | Donkey Kong 64 | JPN |
| Undop0.599.ini | NDOP | 0 | DonkeyKong P | Donkey Kong 64 | EUR |
| UNGEJ0.064.ini | NGEJ | 0 | GoldenEye JP | 007: Goldeneye | JPN |
| UNPDJ0.744.ini | NPDJ | 0 | Perfect Dark JP | Perfect Dark | JPN |
So what happened here? Work on the Goldeneye videos intended for Rare Replay had continued into 2017. As the last video, the "5 facts" one. named that date in the description.
Any licensing issues that could have killed Goldeneye's inclusion in the collection should have also stopped them from making videos about it post-release, and the fact that the uploader suddenly removed them (Possibly because Microsoft contacted him about it?) is also odd, as said uploader still has other videos relating to his work at Rare on the channel.
Rumours that Goldeneye was finally getting a re-release have been floating around by reputable sources in the years since Rare Replay's release.
Note: This was the guy that leaked an exact description of the Sonic Movie trailer. Note that the post predates the reveal of Banjo in Smash as well.
So could this finally be the time?
TL;DR: Former Rare employee uploaded multiple videos intended for Rare Replay about Goldeneye to his personal Youtube channel, at least one of which was worked on after the Compilation launched. Videos were quickly taken down after they were discovered, which alongside the evidence that they were seriously working on re-releasing it during this period. Implies that whatever plans they were doing might still be in the pipeline.