Ever since the days of the original Nintendo Entertainment System(NES) the game company, Rare, has put out some of the best and most iconic games to ever come out. They are responsible for games like “Battletoads,” “RC Pro-am,” “Banjo Kazooie,” “Donkey Kong Country” and their most memorable game, “Goldeneye,” on the N64. In 2002 Rare was purchased by Microsoft and since then haven’t put out anything that impressive except for some fun Kinect sports games. They haven’t had the opportunity to put anything special out until now.

“Rare Replay” is a huge collection of all of their most iconic games on one disk with updated visuals for the Xbox One. “Rare Replay” was introduced at this year’s E3 and it garnered a lot of excitement and praise especially because of the value, the “Rare Replay” collection is 30 of the best Rare games for only $30.

“Rare Replay” isn’t every game the company has put out but they have curated a list of the best ones, minus “Goldeneye” and “Donkey Kong Country” because they are associated with Nintendo. I am super excited to replay some of the game I haven’t played since I was kid and even more psyched to try the classic games I never got to play. I had the chance to play many games over my couple of decades of gaming, but because of time and money, I can’t play everything.

I know that is unfortunate, but true. I missed some games like “Perfect Dark,” “Jet Force Gemini” and a bunch of others in this set.

Some of my favorite things about “Rare Replay” is not just getting so many games for a low price, many of these games got some great updates to the graphics and sound. Some of the games have aged better than others but overall they are pretty good. They aren’t just updated graphically, they now have earned achievements, new challenge modes, and even new cheats. These added features really breathe some new life into these great old games, especially achievement points, which didn’t exist when they first came out. By playing each game you earn stamps you can use to unlock all sorts of bonus content like art, documentaries, and even more games.

Some of the new features make playing the games easier than they used to be. You can restart a game at any time and even rewind gameplay to fix mistakes, which makes things like the speeder bike levels in “Battletoads” more bearable. If you played some of these games on the Xbox 360 and you have already earned achievements, they automatically unlock and you don’t have to do them again which is a nice feature. Rare has remixed some of the levels of some of the older games, adding new challenges and gameplay which can give you a reason to play these old games another time.

Overall I love “Rare Replay” it is one of the best collections of older games I have played and is very hard not to recommend to everyone. If you missed some of these games you owe it to yourself to try these classics and you especially need to pick it up to replay some of the older classic with new gameplay. “Rare Replay” has an incredible amount of fan service and is a loving tribute to 30 years of gaming, and cannot be missed.

System: PS4, Xbox One,PC

Rated: E 10+ : Fantasy Violence, Mild Language

Publisher: SEGA

Developer: Game Freak

Robbie Vanderveken is the digital operations specialist at The Times Leader. E-mail him at rvanderveken@timesleader.com.

By Robbie Vanderveken

For Weekender

“Rare Replay” bundles 30 games into one package.
http://www.theweekender.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/web1_review.jpg.optimal.jpg“Rare Replay” bundles 30 games into one package.

“Rare Replay” bundles 30 games into one package.
http://www.theweekender.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/web1_review2.jpg.optimal.jpg“Rare Replay” bundles 30 games into one package.

“Rare Replay” bundles 30 games into one package.
http://www.theweekender.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/web1_review3.jpg.optimal.jpg“Rare Replay” bundles 30 games into one package.