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It's official! Viva Piñata is 20 years old. Released on November 9th, 2006, in North America (Europe and Australia would have to wait a little while longer), Rare's colourful life sim saw players using a variety of garden tools to transform hunks of derelict land into a thriving ecosystem.
To do this, players would need to attract cute Piñata-style animals to their particular patch of land, which they would then be tasked with looking after, being able to breed them with a series of ridiculous "romance" dances to produce offspring to further populate their garden.
Originally blossoming from an idea that Rare founder Tim Stamper had for a handheld gardening game for the Pocket PC, aptly codenamed "Pocket", the unconventional project would eventually move target platforms twice during development, first to the Xbox and then to its successor, the Xbox 360.
The game was initially revealed to the press in March 2006, alongside an animated kids show, as part of a strategic partnership with 4Kids, a licensing and production company that notably handled the dubbing for various anime shows like Pokémon, and later became one of the most positively received titles from the early years of Rare's Microsoft era. 1Up called it a return to the company's "former glory", while Gamespot argued it "oozes charm and personality from its every papier-mâché-covered pore." Hear, hear!
As if all that wasn't enough, it also went on to earn several award nominations, took home the top award at the Parents' Choice Award, and kickstarted a series that included a sequel, Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise (2008), and two spin-offs: Viva Piñata: Party Animals (2007) and Viva Piñata: Pocket Paradise (2008).
To celebrate the milestone, Playtonic Games (which is currently home to various former Viva Piñata devs, including two of the series's original designers, Justin Cook and Gavin Price) put up a post wishing the game a "Happy anniversary" and calling it "one of our favourite games from the Xbox 360's glory days."
Meanwhile, Steve Burke, a former in-house musician at Rare who contributed music to multiple entries in the Viva Piñata series, has released a 20th-anniversary medley featuring "Used, unused, and early versions of the music", which you can listen to here.
What are your favourite memories of the Viva Piñata series? Let us know in the comments!