Rare Founder Takes to Twitter to Show Off a Host of Lost Gaming Treasures

Long gone are the days of Rare-developed Nintendo exclusives, but founder Tim Stamper still has pieces of gaming history from the studio’s early years. In a few short video clips, Stamper revealed development footage from Project Dream, along with other snippets from N64 classics.

Stamper has taken to Twitter to showcase development cartridges from the past, posting footage from unseen N64 titles – kind of. The clips include canceled projects or games that would live on through other iterations, like Dream 64 and Twelve Tales: Conker 64.

In the series of posts, Stamper shared a photo tagged as Dream 64 and Banjo-Kazooie featuring Captain Blackeye, a pirate who would later show up in the Banjo games. The image includes a SNES and N64, with the latter holding a development cartridge labeled “Latest Version of Dream 64” dated November 21, 1996.

“So it’s true,” Stamper wrote. “Dream 64 does exist after all…!”

The Rare Founder also added a 15-second peak at Dream, which he noted “was probably for the Nintendo Shoshinkai show [in] 1996”. It again includes Captain Blackeye, whose voiced lines harken back to Stamper’s earlier tweet with “so it’s true then, the Nintendo 64 treasure does exist after all.” 

In 1997, Rare’s codename Dream game was officially revealed as Banjo-Kazooie at E3. Studio talent has spoken publicly about their time with Dream, and eventually Banjo-Kazooie, over the years. In 2015, the studio even documented the retooled Dream on YouTube, which featured a young boy named Edson in a more RPG-like adventure.

Stamper’s other footage includes an intro snippet of Twelve Tales: Conker 64, which debuted alongside Banjo at the same E3 in Atlanta. Twelve Tales would go down as another canceled project, and Rare’s fiery squirrel would see his first N64 release as Conker’s Bad Fur Day instead. Stamper’s clip shows off another development cartridge and a 48-second sequence of Conker and acorn-like enemies.

There’s a brief look at Battletoads character design documents, too. Another video from Stamper shows him thumbing through the “character design guide” for the beat’em series. 

While the Battletoads art and descriptions are a cool little tidbit, the stuff lurking in the background seems just as neat. When Stamper’s video begins, you can see a room filled with binders, presumably all related to his gaming projects. Tim, along with his brother Chris Stamper, remained with Rare until 2007, so there’s no telling what treasures have amassed in that archive.

Andrea Shearon is a freelance contributor for IGN covering games and entertainment. She’s worn several hats over her seven-year career in the games industry, with bylines over at Fanbyte, USA Today’s FTW, TheGamer, VG247, and RPG Site. Find her on Twitter (@Maajora) or the Materia Possessions podcast chatting about FFXIV, RPGs, and any series involving giant robots.