The mine in SSB:M was originally supposed to be from Perfect Dark.  I guess Sakurai and co. go wind of possibly losing Rare (and the PD franchise) last minute, and had references to PD subtley changed.  I think they didn't get around to doing that for the Japanese version.

Nintendo owns every character that appeared in a Donkey Kong game, but they don't own any of the non-DK characters from Diddy Kong Racing, or Banjo Kazooie (or PD, incidentally).  I'm not sure who owns Killer Instinct or Battletoads.

I think Rare is really overrated. To me it was goldeneye and that's it. Banjo Kazooie was good but nothing amazing...

I liked SFA but tha time should have stayed as dinosaur planet. The game was good in almost every aspect ( graphics, enviroments, cool characters) but ths fighting system could have been improved. It was "A" button mashing all the time. Other bad thing is that they totally lack replayability. I tried to play it for a second time, and I couldn´t.

Anyway, I think that Rare may have a chance with MS during the next war, when MS will probably have a more kid friendly image. Meanwhile, Rare should focus in the DS. A Banjo, Viva Piñata or JFG would appeal to many of its users. I think they already have some games in dev for it. Probably even more because of DKR success. I still don´t get why they didn´t released it in Japan. The original sold really well, and it has the biggest number of DS sold.

Last I heard: 

Killer Instinct = Rare/Microsoft

Battletoads = Tradewest/Midway

Banjo Kazooie three will probably be a dissapointment like the xbox Konker games

Rare was top notch back in the day. And they havent done anything since the sell. Nintendos letting go of Rare was the best sell in the entire life of the industry IMO lol. They literally dumped them just before they started crapping out bad games.

(Ok ALMOST before they started, LOL @ SFA)

The Donkey Kong Country series of games are some of my favourite games EVER and that was made by Rare. Other than that I never really enjoyed Rare that much... Banjo Kazooie was fun during the collectathon days... DK64 was TERRIBLY boring.

Goldeneye was probably one of my most player games of all time and was fantastic.

Well rare just needs to make a few more great ips and then i'll be happy

 I thought Conker: Live and Reloaded was a really great game.

I think that things may be looking up for Rare since Microsoft wants more family friendly titles and Rare has done well with those kinds of games in the past. If Banjo Kazooie 3 is even close to being as good as Banjo Kazooie then it'll have a major hit on it's hands. If I was in charge of the Xbox 360 at Microsoft I'd have Rare working on a new Battletoads game as well as 2-3 other family friendly titles.