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VideoGamer.com: You mentioned Conker. What's the future for Conker? Another IP that anybody that plays games knows about.
NB: We'd be stupid if we didn't, like we have done with Banjo, if we didn't have Conker back at some point. But to continually do sequel after sequel after sequel for something is hard on the team because they get locked into a sequel mentality, so they don't do new things necessarily. And that can be bad for your staff in general, that can be bad just for morale - oh Christ! I'm doing Viva Piñata 12! I did six, seven, eight, nine, 10 and 11 I thought I'd be able to do something else afterwards! So it's better to let things have a hiatus for a while.
VideoGamer.com: Like Banjo has enjoyed?
NB: Yeah. It made sense with Viva Piñata to do a sequel straight off, without a doubt. Sometimes it does. And then other times the time has passed. Like with Kameo. This is just me personally, I was very big for the second we got Kameo out, for hitting the deck running and going right we're doing Kameo 2, we're going to take 12 to 18 months to do it, bang, it's done. But for one reason or another we didn't do that in the time frame where you could hit that sweet spot. So she's got to take a hiatus.
VideoGamer.com: How long of a hiatus?
NB: That is the unknown. It could be short, it could be long. It depends on the team, it depends on the market, it depends on the portfolio from other studios. There's so many factors that get involved in making that decision that it's impossible to say at any one time. I could say to you now, no, 18 months at least. In reality, everything might come into alignment at the end of next week and suddenly it's like, yeah go and start doing that. And it might be out of our control. It might be because suddenly there's a massive gap in the portfolio where there's no games like that at all coming down the pipe in two years' time. And then if the resources were there, let's say Banjo's finished but they decide they want to do something different, and then there's this opening for Kameo, what I'm saying now could be completely wrong in three months, four months time. But it's not something that one studio can just go, yes we are going to do this now, because if you do that that's when you might time it wrong.
With any of the IP we own there's a good chance of seeing any of it again. You might see Killer Instinct, you might see Battletoads. Or as I said the other month Killer Instinct meets Battletoads in the GoldenEye universe!
VideoGamer.com: That would be something else.
NB: Yeah I can't even begin to think about the design but it would!
VideoGamer.com: Killer Instinct is another one everyone wants to know about. What was the deal with that Christmas card - that had to be Killer Instinct, right?
NB: Of course it was!
VideoGamer.com: So what was the deal?
NB: You'll probably have to rephrase this, we're just fu!$ing with you! Have you not noticed a theme in our Christmas cards? We do it every year! It's just sometimes people don't notice it because it's that subtle.
Ryan (Stevenson, senior concept artist), when he was doing it said, oh I'm putting Killer Instinct in that, I am. The conversation was, put Battletoads in as well! Or Snake Rattle and Roll, come on do it! We have a reputation for teasing. Sometimes we do it for good reasons and other times it upsets people. We're English, we're allowed to!
VideoGamer.com: So it's not an indication that you guys are working on Killer Instinct 3?
NB: Again, let's be ambivalent this time... (makes weird, funny noises).
VideoGamer.com: I guess with Street Fighter 4, MK VS DCU, I'm thinking back to when I was playing these games, it was Killer Instinct as well. So, to make us feel more like we're in a 90s arcade, Killer Instinct would be great right now...
NB: Yeah, if we could find a KI machine right now...
VideoGamer.com: When you think about Rare's back catalogue I can't think of another studio with so many fondly held titles.
NB: If you look at the IP that we still own all the rights to, unless you were going to go for one of the big ones, but then you go, oh well what about that... if we did that then there's this! But then everybody else is going, yeah but we won't have a bigger back catalogue if we don't do something newer!
For arguments sake let's take a real old one, Captain Skyhawk on the NES. Brendan Gunn, that's the first game he did, he's still a programmer with us now. He celebrated his 20th anniversary with us the other week. That's incredible. Absolute great guy - he's doing stuff on Banjo at the moment. Skyhawk was a vertical scrolling shoot-em-up, had a plane in it... do something like Ace Combat with it! Would it be in a garden? I don't know. That's the thing now, the technical limitations are such that it could be anything. For me games are still escapist. Let's face it we're all off escaping into some alternate reality, and realities have just got better and better and better. I reckon you could pick anything in our back catalogue and then turn it into something new.
VideoGamer.com: That's brilliant Nick, thank you so much for your time.
That's it! Our exclusive, mammoth five-part week long interview with Rare's Nick Burton is over. We're emotionally drained. All this talk of GoldenEye, Perfect Dark, Killer Instinct, Banjo, Star Fox and Conker has got us crying tears of nostalgia for 90s gaming. If you missed any of it, fear not - you'll find part one here, part two here, part three here and part four here. Now - where did we leave our N64?
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