By the way, did anyone ever manage to get all those bonus coins or whatever in DKC2? The ones you needed to unlock those secret world levels. I remember missing two of them and going through every level of the game and I couldn't find them.

Well they are porting the bongo game to the Wii.

The only good Dk games in the past few years is the Jungle Climber games on GBA and DS and Jungle Beat which they are re-releasing under a "play on Wii" branding.

Otherwise the most recent one (Barrel Blast) sucked hard.

@ Dragonslayer

Maybe it's me thinking more about the Gameboy version but I thought even in the SNES one, you got an exclamation point at the end of the level name if you completed it, and a Hero Coin symbol if you got the Hero Coin in that level.  That way you only need to look at the stage name to see if you collected it or not.  It has been a while though, and I haven't bothered to download the Virtual Console release. (my SNES cart still works fine)

There were no indicators of whether you had completed all the bonuses in the level in the SNES version (there were in DKC3).

Dude, this is Nintendo we are talking about. I really doubt they are going to stop Donkey Kong franchise unless any upcoming Donkey Kong games are replaced with twice the amount of Mario games.

Diddy Kong Racing DS is fucking terrible. We were talking about it on IRC a few days ago and pretty much all agreed on that point.

They've somehow managed to invent a game where you need to use the d-pad to move, the a/b buttons to drive and the stylus to use items and do the speed boost at the beginning. It sounds great on paper, but in reality WE DON'T HAVE THREE HANDS. The game is practically unplayable, and even when you somehow manage to pull it off (aka with your friend doing the a/b whilst you do the stylus/directions) it still somehow manages to be shit, even though DKR was excellent.

The way it's going I really won't be surprised if they eventually just cancel the entire franchise.

This is true, but for the most part you don't need the stylus. The super speed boost isn't really that necessary, and even then only the special races where you have to pop balloons and shit are hard.
Anyhow, I'm pretty sure the DS version is minutes above a port, I don't think they ever intended to make a franchise out of it, especially since rare took all of their characters with them.

I'm astonished there hasn't been an F-Zero or a Starfox game to utilize the wiimote yet.

Nintendo seems of late to be losing touch with their hardcore (if you really want to call it that) roots. Haven't heard anything exciting about Mario, Zelda, Donkey Kong, Metroid, FZero, or anything lately. There was of course Twilight Princess, MP3, and Mario Galaxy, and now there's this Donkey Kong Jenga... but what next? I have a feeling I'll be skipping any future Nintendo consoles as they continue to neglect the franchises - and consequently the base - that made them what they are today. Since the Wii has become such a success off of titles like Wii Fit and Wii Sports, I'm certain they will continue more in that direction.

A lot of their big franchises (and even not so big) have already gotten releases, both main entries and spinoffs considered.  They're even bringing sequels of some of the not as known franchises in the coming year or so such as Punch Out, Sin and Punishment and Another Code/Trace memory.  I think Harland has the right point that there just isn't enough decent between what Nintendo is putting out and the few third parties who are doing something decent by it.  2009 is bringing on quite a few games, but it seems most of them will be from Q2 and onward, save for a few earlier games.

Since the Wii has become such a success off of titles like Wii Fit and Wii Sports, I'm certain they will continue more in that direction.

That's not actually what they're doing. They're being rather lazy, yes, but they're waiting for all the newly generated 'casual' gamers to want to move on to more 'hardcore' games. They did it with the DS, where they started with Nintendogs and Brain Age and shit (and every other developer thought it was just another Virtual Boy or whatever), and moved up into 'actual games', and now they rode that wave they're doing it again with the Wii. Notice that they didn't make Nintendogs 2 or Wii Sports 2. They'll probably start making your kind of games again once the 'casual' gamers have caught up.

When the whole casual games fad dies and all the imitating developers go bankrupt, they'll probably make another console or handheld or VR hamsterball or whatever and start all over again. Nintendo's calling it a 'strategy of disruption', but nobody's listening and thinks the Nintendo strategy is just to make sickeningly-sweet retard-friendly games, and then third-party developers complain how every gamer's a Nintendo fanboy when nobody buys their crappy peggle knock-offs.

The reason the whole thing is going so slow for the Wii is probably because for it to work for Nintendo, it has to make quality games if it wants to snare the new gamers along into the hardcore, and to get back to whatever the topic was, this is why you'll have to wait a bit for your hardcore franchises.

I'm astonished there hasn't been an F-Zero or a Starfox game to utilize the wiimote yet.

Whats the point when in the end people are just going to want to use the conventional controls anyway.

I cannot think of one game where it's better to use the motion gimmick over the traditional setup. Maybe I'm forgetting something, though.