People come, people go. For lots of reasons we don’t want to talk about. But should we lose track of them? After all, they are, in many cases, unmissable in what made the game we love…the games we love. In the ‘Rare Offspring Series’ we try to keep track of all those beloved devs. What they have done, what they are doing now and what’s coming up.
At the start of 2011 Will and Ed left Rare to work with Nosy Crow full time and their first two children’s apps have met with great success …
Games: Cinderella Story, Three Little Pigs
Platform: iPad
Mission: Focusing on designing and creating the games they love and have passion for.
Website: http://nosycrow.com/
Twitter: @Edmundree
Ed Bryan (Ex-Rare)
Joined Rare in summer 1995. Worked on Dream on SNES which became Banjo-Kazooie on N64. Banjo-Tooie was next with a little time spent helping make characters for DK64. After that came Grabbed by The Ghoulies and after that Viva Piñata and Trouble in Paradise. Next working on a few protypes and helping with the Sky Sports/Canal + stuff we did for the dash. Ed’s last project at Rare was Kinect Sports.
Expertise: Art Director
Games: Banjo-Kazooie, Banjo-Tooie, Donkey Kong 64, Grabbed by the Ghoulies, Viva Pinata, Viva Pinata:Trouble in Paradise, Kinect Sports
Will Bryan (Ex-Rare)
Will joined Rare in 1998 and worked on Banjo-Tooie, Grabbed by The Ghoulies and then headed up the VP team. Will was the driving force of the team and game. He also developed the Piñate Vision tech in his own time! After Trouble in Paradise Will worked on a number of prototypes.
Expertise: Software engineer / Software Director
Games: Viva Pinata: Trouble in Paradise, Viva Pinata, Grabbed by the Ghoulies, Banjo-Tooie
Robin Beanland (Rare)
Will and Ed asked BAFTA winning Robin Beanland if he would like to write the music for both apps (Cinderella and TTLP) and do all the sound effects. Thankfully he said yes!
Andy Hall (Ex-Rare)
They also had help with the animation for Cinderella from an old Rare pal, Andy Hall, who had left the previous year to go work on the third Narnia film in London. Andy had worked on both VP games and Kinect Sports.
Succes? Hell yeah!
- iPad app of the week in Germany with The Three Little Pigs
- Cinderella named in Guardians ‘Top 50 iPad apps’
- Cinderella featured on Wired.com
- The Three Little Pigs on USAToday.com
- Top children’s books for iPad’ from The New York Times
- Nosy Crow nominated for ‘iOS developer of the year‘ in iLounge.com’s Readers-choice-awards!
