@Nasty_Freak: Unfortunately, it is evident that EA wanted Thrill Kill silenced forever. When they bought out the game's publisher prior to release, the game's release was swiftly cancelled on the grounds that it was "bad for the company's image" (not that it's a very good image to begin with...look no further than the fact that they killed the NFL 2k series by grabbing the EXCLUSIVE NFL license). Not only that, but EA didn't even attempt to sell the rights to Thrill Kill. Good thing that game got leaked to stick it to them, though.
@bbblp: Nintendo already owns the rights to DKC. When Rare was bought out by Microsoft, they pretty much had no choice but to surrender the rights to DKC to Nintendo, seeing as how Nintendo owned the rights to the Donkey Kong character to begin with. If I'm not mistaken, Nintendo probably owns the rights to the Kremlings, too.
However, I should point out that NRS's sole link to KI was the fact that the developer's predecessor built the arcade hardware for KI and KI2 (seeing as how Midway had more expertise in the arcade market than Rare or Nintendo did at that particular time). Midway had no other hand in KI's development or release. In fact, Midway was not even involved in the console ports of KI.