Game title: Donkey Kong 64
System: Nintendo 64
Developer: Rare

Why it's so cool: This game was Rare's final hurrah for the Donkey Kong series. Donkey, Diddy, and a bunch of other Kongs heavily reminiscent of their DKC Trilogy relatives explore gigantic worlds in search of the elusive Golden Bananas and lay a gorilla-sized smackdown on K.Rool and his Kremling crew. Often called the king of collectathons, the game's levels had literally hundreds of things to find and keep tabs on, while old Cranky Kong would gradually upgrade your abilities to gain access to new areas and challenges. Much of the traditional barrel hurling was taken out to make room for first-person weaponry and puzzles revolving around the Kongs' individual strengths and magical powers. Like Super Mario 64, levels could only be accessed once a certain amount of Golden Bananas had been obtained, and each Kong could access different places in each level. They each had their own set of color-coded bananas and items to find, and their individual weapons could activate different switches, requiring you to hop into a Tag Barrel to swap your character frequently.

The whole game was overflowing with kooky, cartoony humor, and every Kong, enemy, boss character or otherwise interactive creature in the game had their own personality and flair.

DK64 had a slightly different flavor to the platforming games that preceded it, but this game was gigantic, tough as nails, crammed with secrets and was a blast to play. With the Wii's enhanced rendering of N64 software such as Super Mario 64 and Ocarina of Time, DK64 would definitely benefit from the crisper, cleaner polygon edges.

So why isn't it out already? Now that Rare has moved on to... other avenues in the gaming industry, there may have been some question of who holds the license for this game. This is likely not the case, as when Rare left, Nintendo took on board all series developments and characters that Rare had done and even included the Kong Family and Kremlings in a few of their own first party titles since then. Rare themselves have also stated on their Scribes site that they have no issues with the game being re-released by Nintendo, much like the SNES Donkey Kong games that are already available on the system.

Another reason may be that the game includes the arcade versions of the original Donkey Kong and Rare's own Jetpac (which Nintendo doesn't hold the rights to), both of which must be completed in order to access the final boss. With the NES version of DK already out on Wii's Virtual Console and a fully playable free version packed in here, it may be considered counterproductive to business. I say just charge an extra 100 Wii Points, I'm sure gamers would be happy with that.

Game title: Pocky & Rocky 1 and 2
System: SNES
Developer: Natsume

Why they're so cool: This adorable and addictive shooter series was a remake/sequel to Taito's old top-down arcade classic KiKi KaiKai (Mysterious Ghost World) and featured a young shrine maiden and her tanuki friend questing across the land of Edo-period Japan to defeat hordes of evil yokai demons. Players had to navigate huge, folklore-inspired levels teeming with vicious monsters and hostile wildlife, obliterating everything in their path by throwing demon-warding seals and magic leaves in some of the best arcade shoot 'em up action on the SNES. Add to this a catchy soundtrack, gorgeous, colorful landscapes and quirky, charming character animation (as well as hilarious mistranslations of the exchanges between the heroes and the boss monsters) and you have a recipe for a great adventure. It's even better in multiplayer with a crazy sliding team-attack that sends you both ricocheting around the levels like pinballs! The second game on the SNES had swappable characters that could open new paths in each labyrinthine level and a ramped-up difficulty. You can't have one without the other, so this is my vote to see both make a Virtual Console comeback!

So why aren't they out already? At the launch of the GBA, Natsume created a third game in the series, Pocky & Rocky with Becky. While promising, the full capabilities of the GBA were not taken into consideration and ultimately we were left with a lackluster game. There was also a sequel being made known as KiKi Kai World in recent years, which changed developers several times, had the original license taken away, and ultimately became a spiritual sequel called Heavenly Guardian (Legend of Sayuki in Europe). While attempting to capture the feel and style of the original games, something was lost amongst all the red tape, and the game turned out to be a major disappointment. These collective drawbacks may have made Natsume wary to re-release their classic entries into the series for the new generation. I can only hope the series has not been soured permanently, as these are games that need to be played.