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Playtonic Games: Andy Wilson and Gary Richards join the company

In just a few months, Yooka-Laylee will finally be available after months of intense development… but that will be just the beginning of the journey for Playtonic Games, who hired two more former RARE employees to kick off 2017.

The two employees theyed pick up are:

  • Andy Wilson (who joins as producer), who was tester on Diddy Kong Racing and lead tester on Banjo-Kazooie, before joining the design team on Donkey Kong 64. He’s worked on 20 titles (including Banjo-Tooie, Conker’s Bad Fur Day, Jetpac Refuelled, and Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts), on 10 platforms;
  • Gary Richards (who joins the design team), who was tester on various NES, SNES, Game Boy and Nintendo 64 games, before going to work on Donkey Kong Land 3. He used to be Head of Handheld department at Rare, and therefore Lead Designer on all their portable titles (including Conker’s Pocket Tales, Sabre Wulf, Banjo Pilot, and Viva Piñata: Pocket Paradise).

Here’s what Gary Richards said about his new job at Playtonic Games:

Having spent over two decades working with most of the guys at Rare, I already know what a talented and awesome team I have joined. I can sense great things ahead.

And here’s what Andy Wilson had to say:

A couple of years ago, I thought it was time to grow up and jumped into the world of commercial software. Then Playtonic came knocking and that itch to get back into game development became too hard to resist. It’s great to be back with a small team in control of their own destiny.

If that update is not quite what you were expecting, no need to worry: Playtonic Games will have another update later this month. In that update, they will have information on how Kickstarter backers will be able to change platforms and upgrade to physical versions (among other things).

Yooka-Laylee (Switch) will be released later this year.

Source: Playtonic Games

Lite_Agent

Founder and main writer for Perfectly Nintendo. Tried really hard to find something funny and witty to put here, but had to admit defeat.

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