The emulated games span multiple genres and consoles—from the ZX Spectrum in 1983 to the Xbox 360 in 2008—and retain the features and errors of their original releases with minimal edits.

Inspired by fans, upcoming Xbox One backward compatibility features, and a desire to link Rare's past and future, the company sorted through 120 games to choose those that best represented its oeuvre.

Some outlets lamented the absence, due to licensing issues, of the Donkey Kong Country series and GoldenEye 007, while others thought the package was fine without them.

[8] The "Snapshots" feature presents small segments of the older games as challenges for the player, such as collecting a target number of points within a time limit in a set scenario, similar in function to the NES Remix series.

[4][11] Rare Replay retains the local and online multiplayer modes of the original games,[6] and includes all of their downloadable content add-ons.

[13] Some games also received minor edits to reflect Microsoft's ownership of Rare, such as the removal of Nintendo logos and omission of a music track from Blast Corps that originated in Donkey Kong Land.

[4] Current and former Rare employees, such as Grant Kirkhope, feature in the documentary clips, though studio founders Tim and Chris Stamper do not appear.

Rare also worked on The Fast and the Furriest, a spiritual successor to Diddy Kong Racing with vehicle customization and track alterations.

[1] As reflective of the company's character and celebratory theme, Rare chose a papercraft art style and theatrical stage setting for the compilation.

They rated each for fitness and prioritized those that featured characters and environments original to the company, choosing to exclude those based on licensed intellectual properties.

Rare decided to include the updated Xbox 360 re-releases of Banjo-Kazooie, Banjo-Tooie, and Perfect Dark instead of the Nintendo 64 originals, as the developers realized the various quality-of-life improvements in these remasters were too valuable even to the purists on their staff.

[19] The developers briefly considered including playable prototypes of unreleased Rare games such as Black Widow and Kameo 2 as part of the collection, but the work required to do so made this infeasible given the limited development time frame, leading them to produce "Rare Revealed" videos about the unfinished games instead.

Several interview segments and "Rare Revealed" videos were omitted from the game due to time and disc space constraints; these were later released via the company's official YouTube channel.

[4][7][28][36] Many of the compilation's games already had long-established legacies,[36] such that gamers who experienced the originals in their heyday—the target audience—were unlikely to be swayed by critical reviews of the selections.

[28][34][15] Jaz Rignall (USgamer) was impressed by the compilation's presentation and balance between frills and efficiency,[7] and Dan Whitehead (Eurogamer) felt that the theatrical theme fit Rare's character.

[33] Reviewers considered Rare Replay a high-water mark for video game compilations[28][15]—Kotaku called it the best since Valve's The Orange Box.

[5] On the other hand, Jeremy Parish (USgamer) found the contemporaneous Mega Man Legacy Collection's Criterion Collection-style presentation to be a more authentic appreciation of its original material.

[41] Chris Plante (The Verge) saw Rare Replay's slight hardware improvements and added touches as a viable model for putting retrogames back on the market and slowing the tide of unlicensed downloads.

[34][15] Also omitted were Rare's Kinect Sports series, Nintendo franchise releases,[5] Super Nintendo-era games, and "Mario Kart clones".

[4] These timeline gaps precluded, for instance, the player from understanding Conker as an edgy response to the "cutesy" characters of preceding Nintendo games.

[5] Despite these absences, Ars Technica's critic was impressed by Microsoft's ability to license from publishers including Tradewest, Nintendo, Milton Bradley, and Electronic Arts.

[4] Eurogamer's reviewer was surprised by Rare's consistent style across the selections, and compared the company's legacy to that of Cosgrove Hall Films.

[4][5][16][33][35] Sam Machkovech (Ars Technica) found himself stuck not even halfway through the stamp card progress after finishing the easiest achievements.

[7] Reviewers praised the feature by which players could "rewind" time and reattempt difficult sections of ZX Spectrum and Nintendo Entertainment System games, which were known for their difficulty, especially in the notoriously challenging Battletoads.

[4] Critics liked the Snapshot challenges[4][7][34] and Polygon reported that they were crucial for learning basic game mechanics,[9] though less accessible than those of NES Remix.

[4][9] The Ars Technica reviewer thought that the compilation did a poor job of explaining each game's controls, and wondered why Rare did not include introductory or how-to videos.

[5] Ars Technica's reviewer commended Rare's choice of the Nintendo 64 version of Conker's Bad Fur Day over its updated but censored Xbox re-release.