Not sure about every Rare game being solid gold up until Conker, did they have a ton of great games? Yes, most definately. But personally I didn't care for Blast Corps because of the controls, DK64 was one of the most boring collectathons around, and Jet Force Gemini had a ton of flaws as well. Besides those though, they definately created some great games. DKC is a well designed platformer as well, unlike so many 2D platformers its challenge was not derived from cheap deaths, or learning "glitches" in order to get further along. Usually when you died in DKC you knew it was usually your fault, not the games.