By “I don’t think they ever really liked DK 64 that much”
- by Jim Norman
If you cast your mind back to 2023 and the release of The Super Mario Bros. Movie, you may recall that composer extraordinaire Grant Kirkhope was rightfully bemused upon finding out that he didn’t get a credit at the end of the film, despite his ‘DK Rap’ playing a pretty prominent role in its contents. As it turns out, Nintendo did eventually provide an explanation for its exclusion, though it still doesn’t make a lot of sense.
In a recent interview with Eurogamer, the Donkey Kong 64 composer stated that he reached out to Nintendo for clarification on “why they didn’t just put my name on it” and was met by a policy with more than its fair share of caveats.
“[Nintendo] said we decided that any music that was quoted from the games that we owned, we wouldn’t credit the composers – apart from Koji Kondo,” Kirkhope states, “Then they decided anything with a vocal would get credited, so the DK Rap scores there. But then they decided if we also own it, we won’t credit the composers”. So, despite writing and performing the track (which, Kirkhope states, appears in the movie “straight out the game”), he wouldn’t be credited for either since the tune is owned by Nintendo. “That was the final nail in the coffin,” he admitted.
Kirkhope revealed to Eurogamer that he tried to plead his case further, claiming that everyone would have already left the cinema by the time his name would show up, “it’s only me and my wife and my two kids sat there going ‘look daddy’s name!'”. But the House of Mario wouldn’t budge.
The conversation then moved on to the iconic rap (and the entire DK 64 soundtrack, for that matter) still being missing from Nintendo Music. “They have put some of Dave’s [Wise] stuff on it. They do own it all so it’s up to them,” he told the outlet. “I don’t think they ever really liked DK 64 that much. That’s a rumour we got back through the cycle of whispers from Nintendo when we were at Rare. I don’t know if that’s true or not.” Yikes.
What do you make of Nintendo’s explanation? Let us know in the comments.
[source eurogamer.net]
Jim came to Nintendo Life in 2022 and, despite his insistence that The Minish Cap is the best Zelda game and his unwavering love for the Star Wars prequels (yes, really), he has continued to write news and features on the site ever since.