Game Freak is technically a third-party that works with a franchise Nintendo owns by virtue of The Pokemon Company.

There is actually no such thing as "second party developer" at all.  Either a studio is owned by the platform holder (first party) or they're not (third party).  People love the term, though it can lead to a bit of confusion.

Yeah, technically there are no second-party developers at all. Many use that term (wrongly) for third-party developers that produce games for only one console manufacturer. I just used it because Ryan used it.

Nintendo needs to find another second party partner to shell out games like those...and make sure they don't freaking lose them this time.

Well Retro is amazing

Nintendo does have high quality 2nd party devs, in Retro, in Monolith Soft, in (for now effectively) Next Level, HAL Laboratories, Intelligent Systems, Game Freak, etc. etc.

However, in each of those cases, almost all of those studios only are equipped to make one game at a time. There have been rumors for some time now that Retro has been hiring up people, and are in a position to be working on at least two games at once now, which is very likely happening as we speak.

But the fact remains, Rare kind of ballooned during the N64 era, to the point that they were able to make, at least, three games at once. None of Nintendo's other current studios have that capacity.

And besides that, while MOST of Rare's N64 output was great, not ALL of it was. Jet Force Gemini, for example, was okay, but that's about it. And Banjo Tooie, at least to this guy, was one of the worst, most disappointing sequels to a great game I've ever played. It wasn't outright BAD. But it was incredibly underwhelming, and not what a Banjo 2 should have been.

Nobody is going to make games that quickly anymore. HD games require a huge amount of man power, time, and money. N64 games required way less to make.

Because it cost vastly less time and resources to make games in the 5th gen compared to today.

No developer will ever match their quantity these days. Making a game is so much different now. There is only one way it could be done. A developer would have to only make 2D platformers (like DKC), or they would have to only make games that looked like they could run on the N64.

And what would happen then? Most people would say, "They suck. Look at those shitty graphics."

Rare existed in the perfect time and place. We will never see that again.

Hal is better imo
Mother 1-3
Kirby Series
Super Smash Bros 64-Brawl
Pokemon Stadium 1 &2

and SimCity 64