The '90s were very good to Rare, as that is when they were effectively at their peak, creating such classics as Donkey Kong Country, Killer Instinct, Banjo-Kazooie, Goldeneye, and God help us all, even Battletoads. All said, it's little wonder that Rare's most ardent fans wish that the company could return to those days of glory... some way, somehow.

Well, Goldeneye is denied, but Banjo is on the comeback trail, thanks to a new Xbox 360 title and a re-release of the original games on Xbox Live Arcade. But might we see a return to his original stomping grounds, the Nintendo 64 portion of Wii's Virtual Console?

"No immediate plans to put Kazooie or Tooie on Virtual Console, as you might expect now that they're both due out on Xbox Live Arcade." -- Scribes, at Rareware.net

Such is to be expected, perhaps.

However, a more positive light has been cast on another favorite Rare franchise in Killer Instinct, as an interesting interview reveals:

I did Killer Instinct as well -- we worked closely on that with Ken Lobb on the original coin-op, and if we could think of a way that we thought would really drive the genre forward, sure, we'd be interested in working on that. But we didn't just want to do something for the sake of it being called Killer Instinct or Blast Corps or whatever else.

...It's something that we've been looking at. It's all about building a platform where we can do that stuff without impacting the newer things here. It would be great if we could get Killer Instinct coin-op on there. We get e-mails all the time saying, "Can we just get that? You're not doing anything at lunch! Get it done." [Laughs]

...If we did Killer Instinct, it would look like and play like Killer Instinct coin-op. If there were a new Killer Instict, it would be completely new. You'd expect the characters to be there, but it would be completely new. We wouldn't use the old one as a starting base to move forward, other than conceptually. It wouldn't have the code or anything like that in there. Same with Blast Corps. -- Rare's Mark Betteridge, to 1up

In addition, Mark reveals that if he had to make a choice between an XBLA port of Killer Instinct or Blast Corps, it would be "Killer Instinct Arcade. Because it would keep Ken Lobb quiet for at least, what, an hour?"

So, at least they're well aware of the interest... it just seems they're waiting for the right hook, at least where a sequel is concerned.