Try as Nintendo might to ignore it, the treetops of Donkey Kong Country haven't felt joyful in over a decade, when Nintendo split from the British developer Rare Ltd. Before its purchase by Microsoft in 2002, the studio brought Donkey Kong’s arcade dominance into the console era with 1994’s pivotal Donkey Kong Country: a pioneering platformer in its time, packing state-of-the-art graphics, inclusive gameplay, and unparalleled opportunities for exploration into a plastic cartridge not much larger than a table coaster. For many players, though, the magic was in the music, a riveting, disarmingly diverse score from Rare’s in-house composer, David Wise. Deceptively massive, considering the SNES’ 16-bit stereo output, Wise’s score gestured towards house and hip-hop, rock and downtempo, never once grandstanding or attempting to one-up the on-screen antics. All this is a bit ironic, of course, since his early-game track “Jungle Groove” instantly leaps into people’s heads at the first mention of the big brown ape.
Imagine fans’ shock when, twelve years after Rare and Nintendo parted ways (and twenty after the release of the original Donkey Kong Country), Wise returned to lend his talents to Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze, Retro Studio’s latest installment in their franchise reboot. With the upgraded pulse-code modulation capabilities of the Wii U’s stereo output, Wise could supply the Donkey Kong Country sound with the HD grandeur it deserved, subbing in live instrumentation for effects and weaving together dynamic scores to match the rapidly-unfolding events onscreen. The end result is a masterclass in game music design, and by extension, kinetic soundscapes in general.
