Donkey Kong "Original Edition" if you download select upcoming games...

[A Black Falcon]

That brings me to my last point. How exactly was Rare able to get away with putting that port of DK Arcade in DK64 without getting Nintendo into trouble? Is it technically good because the game was actually rewritten and ported to the N64 hardware, or is it shady because it was actually the arcade game being emulated? I can't say because I don't know. In any case, one would think Nintendo could rewrite the code from scratch these days exactly matching the arcade original and go ahead and release THAT as the "original edition".

Are you sure that Nintendo doesn't have the rights to it? I read that article, but it sounded like the ending was a court decision that isn't public... maybe Nintendo got rights from that? Interesting stuff though.

One other thing to keep in mind is that the original arcade versions of DK and DK Jr. are vertical-monitor games. I know that you can just put them with borders, but maybe Nintendo hasn't wanted to do that (and at sub-HD resolutions that'd lead to a loss of detail, too!), so could that be a reason on top of potential rights issues for holding off on releasing the arcade DK and DK Jr. games?

Update: So it turns out the level layout of DK64's arcade edition is the Japanese layout. So, DK64 actually uses the Japanese version of the arcade game, and IS accurate to that one. Not sure which version's level layout is better, it's more a matter of preference.

I think I like the Japanese order more, 1234 1234 1234 makes so much more sense than that completely strange order the US arcade game uses...