Rare Ltd, the Twycross, Warwickshire video games developer that has been creating games for Nintendo Co Ltd for 10 years now, is to expand its workforce to 250 from the present 84 over the next two years following a multi-million dollar investment from Nintendo, which gets a 25% stake in the company, the first time Nintendo has invested in a foreign video games development company. Rare created the world’s top-selling video game, Donkey Kong Country – 7.4m copies so far, and Nintendo rates it the best video game developer in the world. Rare’s team of designers, artists and programmers develop their games at a 300-year-old farmhouse in Twycross. Under the investment agreement, Rare will develop a series of 16-bit and 64-bit home video games for Nintendo and new games for the Game Boy and Virtual Boy systems. It will also publish games for the Nintendo line of players under the Rareware label.
