Rare... weren't very good developers.

[Poetic Nova]

Meh.

Only thing noteworthy they did in my eyes were the Donkey Kong games.
Blame nostalgia I suppose, but Donkey Kong Land is one of my most treasured games. And the GBC port of Country isn't too shabby either, if suffering from bad hit detection.

 

[Shoggoth2588]

When I was a kid I loved Donkey Kong Country 1 and 2 but when it came to the Nintendo 64, I think the only game by them I actually played was Donkey Kong 64. I didn't have any interest in Banjo-Kazooie and I didn't know Conker was a thing that existed. I remember not caring about Diddy Kong Racing either...When I finally DID play Conker, it was the Live and Reloaded version and I thought it was pretty awesome! In fact I recently dug it out of storage not too long ago and I'm ecstatic that I'm able to play it on my 360.

In the past three years, I've picked up and tried playing some other Rare games. I own Grabbed by the Ghoulies but I haven't played it. I did try Banjo-Kazooie and Banjo-Tooie as well but I just couldn't get into them. Then there's Donkey Kong 64. I stopped playing that as a kid because I needed the Nintendo coin to continue the story and the only way to get it was to beat Donkey Kong Classic which, for kid-me, was impossible. As 20-something me though it was pretty simple! Unfortunately, 20-something me now had a problem with other aspects of the game such as the fact that I hate it when a game requires (REQUIRES) me to basically get 100% of everything if I want to continue the game, let alone beat it. I hated the water levels and the mini-games seemed oddly buggy...I recall a slide and I now taste blood...

I just really never cared for 3D Platformers from the Nintendo 64 era in general. Back then I mostly liked to play Tony Hawk, Duke Nukem 3D and, Final Fantasy. Today I like 2D platformers a lot more than 3D ones anyway and still can't get into "classics" like Super Mario 64. 3D World and Galaxy were really good though but those didn't feel like Nintendo 64 3D Platformers.

 

[kurokotetsu]

They basically invented the over the should third person shooter camera with Conker. They invented the objective-based FPS game with GoldenEye.

Neither of these statements are true. What Goldeneye did more-or-less pioneer, however, was the idea that a console FPS could be successful - a legacy that remains to this day.

Can you name a third person shooter with an over the shoulder camera that predates Conker?

Jet FOrce GEmini, form Rare is basically a TPS with over the shoulder camera and from the same developer. It is also almost two years aearlier.

 

[Ambient_Malice]

They basically invented the over the should third person shooter camera with Conker. They invented the objective-based FPS game with GoldenEye.

Neither of these statements are true. What Goldeneye did more-or-less pioneer, however, was the idea that a console FPS could be successful - a legacy that remains to this day.

Can you name a third person shooter with an over the shoulder camera that predates Conker?

Jet FOrce GEmini, form Rare is basically a TPS with over the shoulder camera and from the same developer. It is also almost two years aearlier.

Jet Force Gemini doesn't have an over the shoulder camera in the TPS sense. The camera is located directly behind the character. Conker introduced shifting the camera to peer over the character's shoulder when aiming, just like basically every modern TPS game and I've yet to find a game predating it that does this.

 

[JaKandDaxter]

Your criticism seems to be limited to a few N64 games. When Rare made more N64 and SNES games too outside of Donkey Kong Country across a variery of genres. And your OP post is inconsiderate that practically every game has its flaws. To knock down a developer for a few flaws in their games is unfair. And DK64 is universally seen as less of a good DK game than the SNES games. Probably the reason why Nintendo went back to 2D with the Country Returns games. Asides from the fact it was the first 3D DK game, so it wasn't guranteed to be a great game.

Other than that, as someone said. 3D was new and its very unfair to compare early 3D games to something more recent. Just because Nintendo did a good/decent job at some of Mario 64 mechanics, doesn't mean others who didn't perfect the jump formula are any less of a developer. Heck even Media Molecule first LBP game, was criticized for some of the jump issues you mentioned. Rare for its golden age, was probably the one developer that every console gamer played at least one of their many games. And at their peak, were far better than many modern developers such as Bethesda. Their games were also largely finished products that didn't need big patches either.

 

[EbonBehelit]

Can you name a third person shooter with an over the shoulder camera that predates Conker?

Fade to Black - released in 1995 - gets staggeringly close. The game actually looks a lot like a really early version of Resident Evil (4 especially). Kinda amusing really, since it was Resident Evil 4 that popularised the 'Over-the-Shoulder' camera in the first place.

I need to look into this a bit more, methinks.

EDIT: Mission Impossible (1997) does it. Giants: Citizen Kabuto (2000) does something similar when playing Delphi, as does Max Payne (2001). Splinter Cell (2002) has the full-on shoulder cam while aiming, but doesn't predate Conker obviously.