Scribes – February 11th 1999
Dear Scribes,
How dare you not post my latest Tiptup message. You obviously have sided with the anti-Tiptup party. Why? Are you afraid of a hostile take-over? We Tiptup believers believe in violence, but for the good of mankind, not senseless. It would’ve made my Christmas to see my letter of support posted, instead I’ve been kicked out into the cold by you. I know your secret, you’re really the Grinch in disguise. It just has to be. Anyways, Tiptup is the best character in DKR. I’ll beat any of you TMNT-comparing-arse-shiners with my mini-camcorder remote control. Tiptup 009? Sounds good to me even if it comes from a Tiptup hater. Tiptup is the inner-hyperkinetic-bunnyloving-titanicwatching- antoniobanderaslike-romeo in all of us. He needs this publicity so he can get a better woman instead of Pipsy (who I’m not dogging, she’s not his type, or species for that matter). Please give him a game, or at least make him a selectable mutiplayer character in Perfect Dark. BTW I looked up arse in the dictionary and got:
ass* see buttocks
Looks like you Brits are getting dissed by making someone turn even more pages to get the desired definition. And this was a HUGE Webster’s dictionary. Anyways, I’ve rambled long enough, let’s get Tiptup in a game, get my letter posted, get more followers, and beat the living-arse out of all those who would dare to stand in front of our dream. Yes, our dream. You know you want to turn to the light side. Change your ways and follow me. There is good in you, I have felt it. And please call the game Tiptup 64, I wish I had a nickel for every female companion that asked me why it’s called Zelda 64 if the main character’s name is Link…
Will Gordy – Public Relations, Brotherhood of Shell
What, you don’t want any money at all? Very spiritual of you. Anyway, look, that’s enough about Tiptup. I’m not siding with anyone, it’s just natural scepticism tainting my view of those who willingly champion the most bizarre causes. And where did the assumption that Tiptup and Pipsy are a couple spring from? I don’t even want to entertain the idea.
By the way, I hope you realise that by calling me the Grinch you’re indirectly comparing me to Jim Carrey – and that’s inexcusable. Why, I oughtta… (swings fists comically).
Yo Rareguys,
I’ve been on several websites that refer to your highly acclaimed Banjo-Kazooie and your upcoming Banjo-_? What I was wondering was: how the @#%^#&$& do you spell Banjo’s sister’s name? Tooty? Tootie? Tooie? (like Kazooie?) Booty? Scooty? Snooty? What bugs me is that I have yet to see you Raredudes refer to the little bear or her little game by name. Pleas answer this one.
Unlocker
Gnuh. I really should have given Tusk this one. Listen: the sequel to Banjo-Kazooie is called Banjo-Tooie. Banjo’s sister is called Tooty. Tooty and Tooie are separate names and concepts. Tooty may appear in Tooie, granted, but it’s certainly not named after her. It’s Banjo-Kazooie 2, hence Banjo-Tooie. Do you see?
Hello Scribes,
How’s it going at Twycross? I was wondering what kind of a working environment do you guys have? Arse, I mean are you guys just sitting in front of High Powered Silicon Graphics Workstations all day and making polygon models of disgustingly cute mice, turtles, bears etc… or do you have like a schedule like:
8:00 AM: Sketch animals for Banjo-Tooie
8:01 AM: Pray to the Great god of arse
9:00 AM: Design Gruntilda final level for Banjo-Tooie
10:00 AM: Have daily discussion about arses
11:00 AM: Make fun of Nintendo’s “Big Warm Arse”
12:00 PM: Read the inane rambling of people like me. Etc…
Could you please tell us? Also how big is the “Rare Headquarters”?
Please put this on Scribes (you’ve put on worse). (Can’t argue with that. – Ed)
Curtis Anderson
P.S. I hope I said arse enough for you. Have a nice day.
You did say arse enough, but unfortunately it’s bloody freezing today. There’s a very good reason why we don’t use the phrase “have a nice day” in this country.
The Rare daily schedule is different for everyone, depending on job, project, current task etc. Unfortunately I’m the only one who has to deal with inane ramblings – well, the ones sent in through the web site, anyway. And our HQ isn’t big enough for the number of people we’ve got working here, which is why we’re moving to an even bigger one in the very near future. The unthinkable – an update to Rare Today – will be along when it happens.
Dear Scribes,
Is arse more similiar to the American ass or butt? Ass is a somewhat vulgar term for the American posterior which is deemed “inappropriate for young children”. Butt however, is just a slang term which almost no one finds offensive. Or perhaps Arse fills a niche of its own? So what’s the verdict?
Anakin6
I really don’t know. I’m not even sure an exact comparison would work. I suppose ‘bum’ is our unfortunate equivalent of the American ‘butt’, in that people who don’t like the word ‘arse’ or want to sound slightly more polite use that one instead. However, I don’t think anyone’s really all that offended by ‘arse’, and besides, I have no wish to sound polite. Arse.
Dear Scribes,
The Rarewhere site is one of my favourite sites on the web and the Scribes page is without doubt my favourite page on the site. It’s the combination of the complete bullsh*t people write to you and your dry and sarcastic comments that I find absolutely irresistible. I spend a lot of time reading the Scribes page when I should be doing something serious (like working).
There’s one little criticism I would like to make, though. Not to you but to the people who write the letters: some of them are just too long. Idiocy in small portions can be highly entertaining, but in large amounts it tends to become a bit boring. So if you read this and have any plans to write a letter: Please. Keep it short.
And now for the BS/Useless information part: If you “select” the text from a letter on the Scribes page with your mouse (I use Netscape communicator / Windows95), you’ll see that
- Lines that contain words in italic letters are actually underlined, except for the words that are “printed” in italic;
- Lines that contain words in bold letters are underlined, except for the “bold words”, which are..ehm..overlined. Interesting, isn’t it?
Kind regards,
Caspar van der Heiden
Rare Says: I’d like to agree with you, but even after spending half an hour messing about with fonts to get your examples looking right, I still can’t shake the suspicion that no, it’s not actually very interesting at all. Sorry.
Letter length: “idiocy in small portions” is exactly what Snippets was set up for, but long-winded rants and other slices of intelligent debate (he said with hopeless optimism) are equally welcome. And – good jolly gosh heavens above! Here’s one now…
Dear Scribes,
I wrote this letter sort of as an editorial, but you didn’t have a reader editorial section so I figured I would send it here.
I hate the stereotype that kids suck at video games, and are uninformed. If kids suck at video games, then when does a person become “not a kid.” I remember when I was in 6th grade, I didn’t suck at video games. I wasn’t uninformed. I was reading ign64.com about a year before it was ign64.com! At that time it was n64.com. I remember reading some of the letters and thinking, “what a dumb arse,” and laughing. I remember that I understood every joke in the Q&A section. I bet some of those people that didn’t understand those sarcastic jokes were older than eleven years old. I got all 120 stars in Super Mario 64 about a month after the system came out. I actually wrote a competent letter that was printed in the letter section! Now, how could I do all this when I was only a “kid.” Well, along with a handful of video game playing “kids,” I didn’t fit the stereotype that “all kids suck at video games, don’t know what they are talking about, and are attracted to bright colors and cute games.”
I am not sure about you but when I was in 6th grade and now that I am in 8th grade, I wanted and want to look, feel, and sound older. I listened to opinions and made my own opinion. I didn’t always go for the Banjo-Kazooie type game on the shelf. Even before that, I almost got Final Fantasy 2 for SNES when it came out. I know that I couldn’t get far in the game, (only a little past the Antlion) but I know I got as much enjoyment out of playing that part over and over as some people did playing the whole game.
Now, I’ll tell you about my gaming background, just because I’m sure that some other “kids” like me grew up like this. My dad got Nintendo for my older sister and partly for himself in around 1988. I I remember watching him play Super Mario Brothers, (the original) but was too scared to actually play. This was when I was around 4 years old. When I was about 5, I started playing the games. I remember I had a little trouble on the early hard stages and the super jumps, (some of those are just soooooooo hard, like doing three super jumps in a row, from pole to pole. the first one would be pretty long, second would be a little shorter, and the third one would be the longest.) but I had fun running around jumping on the koopas and the duck-shell things, and would get up to about 3-1, and then it got too hard or I gave up. When SNES came out, I got it for Hannukah that year. My friends and I would go over to each others houses and play Super Mario World together. That’s when I think I started to get Nintendo Power, and I would read it every month. I never completed all of the levels, (I think I had two more of those Mondo levels and a few outside ones to go) but I completed most of it. I think that was quite a task for a 1st grader. When I was in 5th grade, Nintendo Power started to telling people to check out their website at www.nintendo.com, and I had America Online, so I went there to get my news fix. Yes, I’m from the United States, which should show you that some Americans can write a competent letter. That basically leads into the whole thing in 6th grade, so I’ll cut off the history part here.
What I am basically doing is showing those people that think that kids that are 12 suck at video games are wrong. I may be in the minority of “kids,” or I may have just been mature as a video game player for may age, but I’m sure there are some 5th and 6th graders reading this and saying “Cool, so I’m not weird for playing video games.” I bet those people that say that kids suck at video games actually didn’t play video games when they were a kid, and has not actually played a kid that plays video games in Mario Kart 64 or other multiplayer games. The only thing I will give to those rubbish people who believe in the stereotype is that kids’ opinions can be more easily “swayed.” If ign64.com says that BK is just too cute, then they will think that too. If ign64.com says that Goldeneye is awesome, then kids will think that too. That does not cover all of the kids, because I’m sure there are kids that are not like this.
I am hoping people will listen to the voice of the people under 12 years old that know what they are talking about. I am hoping that because I am 13, people will listen to me when I say that some kids under 12 are just as good, informed, and opinionated as you.
JWhit13@aol.com
A heartfelt and worthwhile argument. As much as this may sound like a PR exercise, we realised at an early stage just how easy it would be to underestimate the gamesplaying ability of your age group, and as a result we’ve always tried to make our games more family-orientated than kiddy-orientated: i.e. including levels of challenge suitable for beginners, casual players and veterans alike. We know that you don’t have to be in your twenties or thirties to be any good at games – some players get more experience under their belts by the age of twelve than others manage in their entire lives. And now I’m sorely tempted to turn this response into a top joke by rounding it all off with “Run along and play, small child”, but the thing is, you really do have a point worth making. Damn.
Dear Scribes,
What’s the deal with you and Peer of IGN64.COM? There seems to be some sort of homeoerotic internet cybersex videogame scandal going on. I mean, ok, friendly jabs about the condition of each others’ “marbles”, is one thing, but did you have to send him a picture of your rear-end? Are you getting lonely at Rare? You do realise Peer is married don’t you…
While you ponder this revelation of your subconcious sexual pinings, I have more serious questions for you. What happened to Banjo-Tooie? It seems to have disappeared from the ’99 schedule. Does this make Banjo-Kazooie the videogame alternative to “The History of the World: Part 1”? Or is Banjo-Tooie simply on the back-burner?
Alex
Rare Says: I’m prepared to return the favour, as it were: a packet of the nicest crisps that Rare’s vending machine can offer will be sent to the first person who sends in a picture of Peer Schneider’s arse. Not including his wife.
As for Banjo-Tooie, I don’t know whose release schedule it’s disappeared from, but it’s still on ours – and very much on one of the front burners of our dubious Rare release list/cooker analogy, too. The entire B-K team is slaving away at it as we speak.
Dear Scribes,
Ok, I’ve got it. Mumbo Jumbo is a sexy young lady. Why else would Grunty cover its face with a mask? One fine afternoon, long before Banjo and Tootie came to those parts, Grunty was staring into her magic cauldron and discovered she was not the hottest hunny in the land. Grunty threw a fit, flew down, snatched Mumbette Jumbette, and without a bear/bird duo to intervene, a horrible mask/purple-scaly-bodysuit curse was placed upon the shapely lass. Without her stunning looks, Mumbette Jumbette was forced to take on a life of voodoo witchcraft. After years without a good man in her life, she let her voice deepen and stopped shaving her underarms. I honestly believed that when I completed Banjo-Kazooie, Mumbo-Jumbo would unzip and step out as a hot babe. C’mon, Banjo needs a lady. There’s only so much you can do with your sister legally. Oh, and Matt and Peer want a picture of your arse.
Thanks,
Scott Cameron
The arse situation has entered a new phase, as seen above. And I notice that your analysis of Mumbo neatly sidesteps the issue of his infatuation with the young lady in the Banjo-Kazooie end sequence…
Dear Mr. Rare,
Having played Turok 2 I can wholeheartedly say that the US are the kings of Computer games. I read a message by a certain Matthew Sullivan, detailing the bad points of the masterpiece Turok 2 and I can only assume that he is blissfully unaware of of its target audience (ie. us Yanks) and the various clever programming techniques applied to make for a total gaming experience – a full-on assault on all the senses.
To help him, and other unfortunates like him, I have taken the liberty of preparing a brief outline of the game’s merits:
1) Extraneous graphical detail – Aside from looking cool (dude) this means that the framerate is lowered to a point where we can comfortably keep up with the action. You should know that fast games cause hyperactivity. Some of us still haven’t recovered from Outrun. And what’s more – we LIKE slideshows.
2) Sluggish controls – This should be fairly obvious. Many Americans, myself included, haven’t quite got the knack of computer games yet. So what better way to ensure a level playing field than to implement latency in the control system so that no matter what you do, you’re still gonna end up staring at the ceiling whilst someone fires a rocket up your ass. Like er… Bodacious, man.
3) Big Monsters/Bigger guns – See above. Big Monsters fill the screen, meaning we don’t have to bother with things like aiming. With weapons that obliterate everything on the screen in one shot, we don’t have to concern ourselves with such dull minutae as “oh, did I install the modem?” or “Did I meet Sean Bean by the statue?”. Just KILL, KILL, KILL. Sorry, I’ve just eaten another 8 pounds of raw meat.
4) Non-linear, hub-based gameplay – Well, this is like er, obvious dude. What we enjoy more than anything (aside from gratuitous reptile slaughter) is after spending eight hours getting off a level, discovering that we have to go back and do it all again ‘cos we missed a pickup of some kind. Now that’s fun.
And finally:
5) Fog. Whilst some less knowledgeable gamesters believe that fogging is a crude device used to mask screen redraw, this is in fact a fallacy. Recent polls in US games magazines reveal that what US players really want in a game is fog. Yep, that’s right, fog. It takes us back to Dick Van Dyke-ian images of a Cockney London, inhabited by the chirpy chimney sweeps we miss so dearly in our own country.
I hope that has cleared up a few matters and has given you guys some new ideas for Perfect Dark. Glad you got rid of Bond – now lose the chick, beef up the weapons and throw in some lizards. Oh yeah, and make it FOGGY! Cool, bodacious, woooaaahh! Gee, um, shucks and other Americanisms.
Benjemino
P.S. Who said Americans had no sense of irony? Oh yeah, everybody.
Rare Says: It’s lucky you sent this mail in when you did, before the PD team went ahead and released something that ignored every last one of your handy guidelines. Radical! Boss! We’ll see if we can get hold of the OutRun licence and slow it all down a bit for you. Tubular!
Dear Scribes,
Run this through your ARSE. (Automated Response Selection Equipment you sick monkeys!) The ESRB ratings committee wants to make it very clear that they will not tolerate the public scrubbing of Jinjos in a game rated ‘E’. Furthermore, if the decision is made to include any scrubbing of said Jinjos on the box of Banjo-Tooie, then an army of lawyers in blue suits will charge your pleasant farmhouse armed with large clubs made from futtock. (There you go with your sick minds.) Also, Timothy Dalton is suing you for thinking of putting him in Goldeneye. Please be sure to bother… er… consult several programmers/artists/motivational speakers before responding to this letter.
EpitomeP@aol.com
I’m tempted to say that we didn’t even think of putting him in it, but he’d probably sue us for that as well. And I couldn’t find any of the people you mentioned (at least not without leaving the room), so I asked a passing cleaner to comment. She said: “Uh?”
By the time your lawyers get here we’ll have moved to our new HQ, so we may as well go ahead and assault the moral core of the nation with a recklessly explicit Jinjo-scrubbing poster campaign. What do you think of that then, eh?
Dear Scribes,
I am infatuated with one of your characters. No, not Tip Tup. No, not the nude gorilla named Donkey Kong… I am infatuated with none other than Mumbo Jumbo of BK fame! So much, I wrote a little poem..
How I love Mumbo Jumbo..
It’s really hard to explain..
His face is hidden, behind a facade.
But his eyes are true, and not typical blue.
They’re dark and mysterious, captivating eyes.
That’s just one of the reasons I love Mumbo Jumbo.
Now you see him, now you don’t
Think he’ll show, well he won’t
For he is that one special fish of a million in the sea
And the ones you love
Never swim back to thee
I see him, and I am awed
But that is where my heart is flawed
For I love a mysterious man
And the chances of seeing his face are slim
My stunning, enthralling, entrancer
He leaves me weak upon my knees
My friends all laugh, and tend to tease
For that one special fish of a million in the sea
That makes me sigh, with misty eye
And remains The Elusive.
Best to the lot of ya,
Alicia Foxworth
I think ‘disturbing’ is the word I’m groping for. Anyway, you want to be careful – we’ve just been tipped off that Mumbo is in fact “a sexy young lady”.
Alright, yes, come on then, I know you’re waiting for me to say it: Hey! Has anyone else got a great poem about a Rare character that they’d like to share with us? (Sigh.)
Dear Scribes,
What is rogering? Or is it rodgering?
Anyway, what does it mean? I asked my friend John what it was and he said that it would be easier to show me than to explain to me. What followed were the most painful twenty minutes of my life.
Thanks for setting me straight.
Matt the Violated
I’m not sure why someone waggling their eyebrows at you for twenty minutes should provide you with such physical discomfort. That’s what rogering is. Or perhaps your friend has a different understanding?
Please Scribes!
I was looking all over the ‘net for a small (or large, I’m desperate) picture of Wozza, for my B-K web page. It could be a pic of him stabbing Banjo with a large knife for all I care! Just a pic with the walrus! Closest I could find was a picture of Boggy.
Please help,
The third lollipop kid in The Wizard of Oz
Rare Says: Here you go. I don’t know, the time I spend ‘jacked into’ the Rare ‘matrix’ tracking down stuff for you lot… I could get, like, ‘mindwiped’ by ‘cyber pirates’ or something.
Dear Scribes,
Having just located Dr. Lemuel Glengulphus Trotter’s Goldeneye apologia on the appropriate forum thread, I wish to retract my previous complaint on its omission and offer my apologies. I am also grateful to you for acceding to my request that you publish my letters under the noms de guerre that I occasionally lovingly create for my missives. A bitter person might point out that by omitting my reference to this matter in my last letter, you removed the context for the very first nom de guerre you accepted from me. Luckily for you, I am not such a person and in fact have boundless love for all people, including yourself.
On another topic, I love your saucy Welsh patois! Arse becomes a verb, crap becomes an adjective — it’s a multi-syntactic scatological smorgasbord. I’m not clear on cack — is it a preposition or a gerund? And is it something I possess or something I excrete?
Ben — plain, ordinary Ben
A small correction: arse is an abstract unbound by form or tense, slotting into any given gap in your average sentence with unprecedented grammatical fluidity. Cack, meanwhile… I vaguely remember what a preposition is, but you’ve completely lost me with gerunds. All I can tell you is that my personal experience of cack has been restricted to verb, adjective and noun form.
Dear Scribes,
In the Christmas edition of Scribes, Super Markio said,
“If Mario fought Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong became Cranky Kong, Cranky Kong lives with the new Donkey Kong, Donkey is buds with Diddy, Diddy races with Conker and Banjo, does this mean that Mario and Banjo come from the same world?”
Why, yes it does! But they don’t live in the same dimension anymore. Let me explain. If the original arcade DK was to go along with the newer series, there would be many story line flaws. What you fine folks at Rare did was make the new series separate from the old series, but you wrote in the old series as part of the new series, but from a different aspect, like you changed the old series in the new series, so the original old series that you didn’t write in couldn’t be part of it, but the way you rewrote it, it could. And the new era DK was in Mario Kart 64. But Mario now lives in the Mushroom World, another DIMENSION. When I say dimension, I don’t mean “another game universe”, I mean that he still exists in the DK universe, but the DK universe has more than one temporal time and space dimension in it. Any physics professor could tell you the possibility of alternate universes. In Mario Kart 64, there was a big collosion that threatened the destruction of our universe and the Mushroom World. When I say our universe I’m referring to DK’s universe, where in the DK game universe it is our universe. But they fixed the collosion and everything’s okay for now. So Banjo does exist with Mario in the same universe, just not in the same dimension. Of course Mario used to be in DK’s/Banjo’s universe, until he and Luigi fell into the astro vortex that sent them into the Mushroom Kingdom, but I’ve confused you enough already. C’mon, somebody must understand what I’m saying here!
SirSlush2@aol.com
I don’t. I don’t even understand what a ‘collosion’ is. You’re just out to baffle me with your made-up words today, Slushy. Still, I’m sure that in whatever obscure language you keep lapsing into, this is indeed the definitive explanation of the DK/Mario/Banjo simultaneous dimensional… existence… thing. And as such, any further elaborations on the matter would be all but redundant (my way of saying they’ll go straight in the bin).
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