The Ultimate-Rare story: 40 years of brilliant British games, from Jetpac and GoldenEye to Sea of Thieves
www.theguardian.com
Forty years since the release of its first game, British developer Rare – formerly known as Ultimate – has cemented its place in gaming history. We look back at its origins on the ZX Spectrum and NES
  • AutoTL;DRBEnglish
    1•11 months ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:

    “We chose [this] company’s name because we felt it was representative of our products: the ultimate games,” Tim Stamper declared in an August issue of Home Computing Weekly.

    Having begun their games-development careers creating arcade games in a minimal UK market, the brothers turned their talents towards this home computer.

    Tim and Chris spent several months learning all about what would soon become the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), while simultaneously working on a game that would redefine the ZX Spectrum and create a new genre.

    Presented in trademarked “Filmation”, the isometric graphics – a thing of cartoon beauty on such limited technology – predictably wowed reviewers, gamers and programmers alike.

    It was the biggest switch in UK gaming history: the country’s most critically and commercially successful programmers (at least on the ZX Spectrum – things weren’t quite so rosy for Ultimate on the Commodore 64 and Amstrad CPC) had suddenly left behind the computer that had made them.

    The family atmosphere of the 90s, when Chris and Tim sat in on interviews and left their talented developers to work unhindered, offering occasional golden nuggets of advice, was long gone.

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