so i've been wondering this for a while and would really love some insight...
in two different interviews i've heard prince tell the story of how when he wrote the song rave un2 the joy fantastic, kiss had just come out and he decided to shelve it because he felt they sounded too much alike....
does anyone here see any resemblance between these songs at all?
other than the linn drum that he used for basically his entire 80's catalogue?
i just don't hear it, please enlighten me.

Well, Kiss came out in 1986 and Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic was first recorded 2 years later in 1988, so there's no way 'kiss could just have come out'. So that sounds like a lot of bunkem from Prince if he really said that. Uptown's The Vault says "The rhythmic groove achieved by the drum machine beat and the electric piano recalls 'Kiss,' Which Prince attributed to the main reason why he kept the track in the vault for so long".
[Edited 4/5/07 2:30am]

If I recall correctly, Prince said this during his interview with Roger Willemsen in Germany when he was doing some promotion for Rave, and the similarities can also be found in the way he sings the lyrics, i.e his falsetto sounds a bit similar. Of course, as Metalorange pointed out,some of the instrumentation also sounds a bit similar.

No. The reason he thinks it is too similar to Kiss is because the same gated effect triggered by the high-hat is used for both songs' rhythm tracks.
In Kiss, the hat triggers the acoustic guitar part (many still think this is a synth sound) and in Rave Un2 the Joy Fantastic, the hat triggers an oscillating synth sound.

Excerpt from a 1999 Keyboard Magazine article:

One ear-catching sound design technique pops up in the hi-hat part on "Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic." The tone of the hi-hat seems quite unusual, but really effective in the song. A synth hook at the end of the phrase belies the fact that it and the hi-hat are coming from the same synth patch. "It's a gate effect," sayt eh Artist, "trigered by the hi-hat. When the hi-hat hits, the gate opens, and all you hear is the synth patch while the gate is open, but it sounds like a hi-hat.
[Edited 4/5/07 15:33pm]