There's been a lot of classic Reare-related material materialising in the interwebs of late. We've seen screens of what Perfect Dark Zero was looking like on the original Xbox, Martin Hollis' GoldenEye retrospective at the GDC was released for open consumption, and a full hour of gameplay footage from Dinosaur Planet (which became Starfox Adventures at the bequest of Nintendo) has been doing the YouTube rounds.

Now, however, we're getting fresh, relative news. Modern, this generation news. News half of the aforementioned interwebs wish they could have made up themselves. News of a potential revival that's been on the tip of anxious Rare fans, and at the itchy fingertips of arcade fighting game fans, for years. Killer Instinct could be on its way back.

Microsoft Game Studios has filed to renew or refile a trademark for Rare's Killer Instinct IP, and this information comes directly from the horse's mouth (thanks The Verge).

"With all due respect to our friends in the media who like to frequent trademark sites, we thought we’d break this one ourselves," came a post over at PlayXBLA.

"Our legal eagles have authorised us to say: "We have either renewed or refiled a trademark application in various jurisdictions”."

So there you have it, now the question is will this just be a HD makeover of one of the classic Killer Instinct entries on XBLA, or will we see something more modern and substantial? Chime in...