agreed, it don't get any better than Super Mario World

Naughty Dog

Uncharted - 89.67

Uncharted 2 - 96.38

uncharted 3 - 91.78

Retro Studios

Metroid Prime - 96.35

Metroid Prime 2: Echoes - 92.05

Metroid Prime 3: Corruption - 90

Donkey Kong Country Returns - 87.87

Scores look rather even accross the board buddy!

Only thing is that Retro hasn't released anything in a while, whereas Nuaghty dog have the last of us coming out very soon. 

Donkey Kong country returns is a must buy for me when I buy a Wii U.

I'm the first one to admit that DKCR had one serious flaw for me personally, which was having to shake the remote to roll.  Terrible design choice IMO, but that's all it amounted to:  A design choice that I didn't agree with.  Nobody (well, almost nobody) can take away from the devs for the beauty and polish that went into the game from a technical aspect.  For example, the fact that you attribute DKCR's graphical presentation to a "NSMB coat of graphics" is truly astonishing; NSMB Wii can't hold a candle to DKCR visually.

Did not get into the Metroid Prime saga but absolutely loved DKCR.

Naughty Dog games are impressive, but they are 8 hours long including cinematics.

That's a big problem in general with Sony games, they are ultra short.

He's saying conceptually: take an old side-scrolling game, give it modern-rendered graphics but keep it side-scrolling.

I was the only one who did not mind shake-to-roll, it seemed. The only thing about DKCR that i really hated was the rocket-barrels.

 I debated Rol on this very topic and, while I love SM3, I too stand by the opinion that SMW is the better game.

I would credit SM3 as being greater than DKCR though.

 I think that retro is one of the best developers out there right now, their games always have a high degree of polish. You might think I'm always in my books or practicing spells, but I actually very much enjoy their games. The last game I played by them was DKCR and, though I have to say I'm very nostalgic about DKC, I still thought it was a very polished game. The visuals were clean and the fluidity of DK and the environment was really seemless.

And I know that it's a bit strange for me to admit this as a girl, but I really enjoyed the bit of Uncharted I played. Ron was always telling me how great the game was so I had to try it. I think that Naughty Dog as a developer was always strong, I remember the old Crash Bandicoot. But nowadays they are really shining with Uncharted. The visuals are great and the content is interesting, the humor, the action.

It's a very well thought out franchise I'd say and I think that both ND and Retro are very important parts of the strategies of Nintendo and Sony, they'll work together to make their fans happy of their games, and that's always good when companies use the strengths of each other to improve their game.

And Soleron, I understand that you didn't like the games, but don't you think it would be nice to put the wet towel down just for a day? *hugs*

I don't think anyone here will argue that DKCR was widlly innovative, but what Retro did do (with the exception of the final level rocket part which was just trial and error) was bring back an old franchise with some incredibly high quality level design and some incredible artistic work. People frequently underestimate just how difficult it can be to create a platformer level that's fun while still being challenging, but not so difficult that people get frustrated trying to play that. DKCR continued the high level of level design quality that the SNES had, and that's something that they deserve a lot of credit for. The NSMB series should be evidence enough that this kind of level design is not easy to pull off.

As for Metroid Prime 3, it's a game that I personally loved for several different reasons. Again, it's not insanely innovative, but it does enough to change up the pace while continuing the same high level of gameplay as Prime and Echoes. While I think that gameplay stagnation is a major problem for some franchises today, to a degree, the philosophy of "if it isn't broken, don't fix it," applies here. Metroid Prime 3 continued the standard Metroid style while throwing in its own new rinkles, such as moving between planets, Hypermode, and adding an easier to follow mission structure like Fusion had. 

The amount of deviations that Retro has made in its game structure are comparable to or more than just about any other gaming company out there. If Retro's games are too stagnant for you, are there any sequels that you enjoy at all?

Also DKCR is IMO a far superior game to SMB3 IMO. The silly "shake to roll" thing is one of the few problems I have with DKCR at all.

Apparently there is enough difference to net DKCR six more points than Yoshi's Island DS on Metacritic.