I miss Rare big time, and hearing that their games on the 360 are not that great and that important developers have left the studio makes me even more sad, because that means the great old Rareware studio is gone forever. But maybe Banjo-Kazooie 3 will be great, who knows.

Speaking about Donkey Kong Country. This is the franchise that got me into gaming, and I still love it a lot. I pray for a sequel, but I don't know who could deliver it. Donkey Kong Jungle Beat was a huge letdown for me. The idea behind the game was great, but EAD (!) was not able to get the feeling into the game which made the Rare games so unique. I'm talking about the humour, the level style and such things.

Of course, Nintendo owns the Donkey Kong franchise. But in my opinion, the Donkey Kong Country franchise (including 64, altough it was not as great as the SNES games) is something different. Rare invented all the characters and the world, and I feel that only they knew how to handle it. I expect a true Donkey Kong platformer for the Wii since the franchise is a huge money machine, but I wonder if a studio at Nintendo is able to deliver what I'm asking for.

I get tired of it too. I mean people talk about Rare like they knew the developers personally and knew who was responsible for what. People leave companies everyday to start their own, but it seems in the gaming industry it's different. If some developers leave and the games still sell well then the shitty devs left. If they leave and the games sell less or get lower reviews then the good devs left. What isn't taken into account is that the same devs that were regarded for all their greatness could feel the same gameplay is fine years later. Look at Madden for example. The devs that started Visual Concepts left Tiburon and started to make the 2K football games. Since Madden kept selling well everyone overlooked those devs leaving. By NFL2K5 however there were rumors that the best devs from Tiburon left to form VC and that's why Madden was the same and 2K5 was better.