Rare Replay

Rare Replay is a compilation of 30 games developed by Rare and its predecessor, Ultimate Play the Game, over their 30-year history across platforms from the ZX Spectrum to the Xbox 360 (1983–2008), up until Rare's Kinect Sports series. The 30 games span multiple genres, including fighting, first-person shooter, simulation, platforming, racing, and skiing. The compilation opens with a musical number featuring Rare characters. Each game has a landing page with a variation on its theme music.

While the core gameplay remains unedited, Rare added extra features to the older releases. The player can toggle the visual appearance of scanlines and "rewind" up to ten seconds of gameplay in pre-Nintendo 64 games. The older games can be saved at will and autosave progress upon the player's exit. Rare also added an infinite lives cheat setting for some older games and fixed a game-breaking bug in Battletoads.

Rare began work on Rare Replay in October 2014 as a 30th anniversary celebration under the codename "Pearl", named after the traditional theme of 30th anniversary gifts. The company wanted to do something unique for what they considered a rare milestone in the video game industry and also to celebrate creative director Gregg Mayles's 25th year working at the company. Rare was also influenced by community requests to bring their catalogue to Xbox One, and by the Microsoft backward-compatibility team's progress on the feature. The compilation was one of several celebration ideas, but once it was chosen, the "30 years" theme led to the 30 game limit and US$30 price point.

In the early planning stages, the studio initially settled on the tentative title Rare: Ultimate Collection, a nod to their predecessor, Ultimate Play the Game. As reflective of the company's character and celebratory theme, Rare chose a papercraft art style and theatrical stage setting for the compilation. The chosen art style and use of 2D artwork also allowed the development team to more quickly create and implement new assets within the limited development time frame. Rare Replay became part of Rare's plan to simultaneously celebrate its past and introduce its future with a logo redesign, new website, and announcement of their upcoming game, Sea of Thieves.

Rare Replay received "generally favorable" reviews, according to review aggregator website Metacritic. Fellow review aggregator OpenCritic assessed that the compilation received "mighty" approval, being recommended by 96% of critics. It reached the top of the United Kingdom all-format games sales charts—the first Xbox One exclusive to do so and Rare's first since Banjo-Kazooie in 1998. Rare Replay was also the first top-ranked budget game since Wii Fit Plus (2009) before it fell to sixth place the next week.

Rare Replay was the sixth best selling game in North America for August 2015. com's most preordered game of the 2015 Electronic Entertainment Expo. Reviewers liked its value proposition and low price. Many of the compilation's games already had long-established legacies, such that gamers who experienced the originals in their heyday—the target audience—were unlikely to be swayed by critical reviews of the selections.