Greatest Video Game Composers: David Wise - Article
by Taneli Palola , posted on 28 January 2016 / 11,195 Views
One of the most difficult things to do in the video game industry is to somehow stay relevant while the medium itself constantly evolves. This holds true for composers just as much as anyone else working in the industry. Many don't last for more than a few years before giving up and moving onto other mediums. Still, there are always those who manage to carve a place of their own in some corner of the video game world and not get lost in the shuffle as everything around them keeps changing. One of these people is the focus of today's article - David Wise.
David Wise has been working as a composer in the video game industry for 30 years and is best known for his work with the British developer Rare from 1985 until 2009. Up until 1994 Wise single handedly composed the music for every single game made by Rare. The first game he composed the music for was 1987's Slalom, which coincidentally was also the first game Rare ever developed. This was quickly followed by Wizards & Warriors that very same year. In 1988 Wise would go on to compose the scores to four more games, most notably R.C. Pro-Am. Both Wizards & Warriors and R.C. Pro-Am would spawn multiple sequels over the next few years and each would contain music crafted by David Wise.
Following Rare's early success, Wise found himself composing music for an increasing number of games. During the next two years he composed the music for over 30 different titles on the NES and Game Boy. These games included some of Rare's earliest classics, such as Marble Madness and Snake Rattle 'n' Roll, among others. However, the game most people associate with Rare's early years would come out in 1991, very quickly gaining both critical acclaim and notoriety. The game in question was, of course, Battletoads. Naturally, as with every other Rare game up to that point, the music was composed by David Wise, and it was some of his best work yet.
As one of the best and most prolific western composers working in the industry at the time, and as a new console generation was beginning to take off, both Rare and Wise found themselves strongly benefitting from the improved capabilities of the new hardware. While Wise's compositions on the NES had already been acclaimed for their time, it wasn't really until the SNES and Genesis era that he truly began to make his mark on the video game industry. It was also during this time that Wise began to dial down on the quantity of his compositions, going from 16 soundtracks in 1990 to just three in 1994. The upside was that this allowed Wise to craft even more polished scores.
The first of these new generation games he worked on was Championship Pro-Am in 1992, after which he composed music for several new Battletoads games and a port of Snake Rattle 'n' Roll on the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive. These games and their music were something of a prelude to what would soon make both Rare and David Wise industry legends. Every element of his music would greatly benefit from the jump to new, more powerful hardware, as demonstrated in the below track from Battletoads in Battlemaniacs. The percussions are much more pronounced and the melodies have significantly greater depth to them:
It was at this time that Rare began experimenting on a new type of graphical workstation for a new game. At one point several members of Nintendo's senior staff visited the studio and were so impressed with the studio's work that they advised Nintendo's then-president Hiroshi Yamauchi to create an exclusivity deal with Rare. Nintendo soon acquired 49% of the company, making Rare a second-party developer for Nintendo. Following this deal Nintendo offered Rare the option of making a game with some of its own licensed characters, and as you all probably know, Rare chose Donkey Kong.
David Wise was once again chosen to compose the music for what became Donkey Kong Country, but for the first time in his career he would not be composing the soundtrack for a game on his own. Eveline Fischer and Robin Beanland split the composing duties for the game with Wise, although he still created a majority of the songs on the soundtrack. Donkey Kong Country would become one of the platform's biggest successes, and its soundtrack is now considered one of the all-time greats.
Naturally, following the success of the first game, Rare began work on a follow-up, and this time David Wise would be the game's sole composer. Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest was released less than a year after the first game, but despite the short development time it was another critical and commercial success for Rare. Wise's score featured his trademark style of atmospheric music combined with environmental sounds, prominent melodies, and strong percussions:
Following the release of DKC2, and with the console generation coming to a close, Wise gradually composed less and less music. The 1996 game Donkey Kong Country 3: Dixie Kong's Double Trouble was the last Super Nintendo game he worked on, and most of the game's soundtrack was composed by Eveline Fischer, with Wise only contributing 9 out of the game's 38 tracks. Afterwards, Wise began working on composing the music for Diddy Kong Racing, which came out in 1997 and would turn out to be the last new soundtrack Wise would compose for any game in almost five years. It had a much more upbeat feel to it than a lot of his previous soundtracks, befitting the game's lighthearted tone:
Once Diddy Kong Racing was released, Wise had no more work lined up, even though Rare was still developing numerous games each year. The next game that would feature Wise's music in any capacity was the Game Boy Color version of Donkey Kong Country (released in 2000), but for all intents and purposes we didn't get any new music from him until 2002. This meant that the man responsible for some of the most memorable pieces of music of the 16-bit era nearly skipped an entire generation of consoles as far as composing music was concerned.
Finally, Wise would return to the fray for Nintendo's next home console, the Gamecube, with Star Fox Adventures. With it he proved he had not lost a step despite the lengthy break between compositions. The soundtrack once again showcased Wise's talent as an excellent composer and featured some amazing melodic pieces that even rivalled many of his best works:
It was clear at this point that the days of creating several new soundtracks each year had long since passed. Following Star Fox Adventures, Wise's next notable solo composition that wasn't a remake of an older game was for Viva Piñata: Pocket Paradise on DS, which came out in 2008, nearly six years after Star Fox Adventures.
This would also turn out to be the last soundtrack Wise would compose for Rare before he resigned in 2009 and became a freelancer. In many ways his departure from Rare marked an end of an era for the developer. After Wise left the company, Rare would shift its focus from creating unique new titles in favour of making games for Microsoft's new Kinect motion controller. This would also signal the start of another long period during which Wise would not compose music for a single new video game.
It would take the return of a certain classic franchise to bring David Wise back to the world of home console gaming. In 2013 it was announced that Wise would compose the majority of the music for Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze, marking his return to the franchise that in many ways defined his career. This meant that, for the first time in over a decade, Wise would actually create music for a major console release.
Although he would once again split composing duties with several other people, Wise was the primary composer and was responsible for most of the game's music. The soundtrack would ultimately turn out to be one his best works ever, giving the game a unique identity that it may have otherwise lacked.
Very much like his earlier work in the series, the music in Tropical Freeze has an amazing amount of variety to it and many of its tracks harken back to the music of the first two games in the series. Everything that you've come to expect from both Wise and the music of the Donkey Kong Country series can be found in this game. He definitely gave this game his best, and it shows.
Wise now seems to be much more active than he has been in a long time. Fans of his music, as well as those of Rare's classic games, can also rejoice as he has signed up to compose the music to Yooka-Laylee, the crowdfunded spiritual successor to Rare's Banjo-Kazooie. What makes this even better is the fact that he is collaborating with two other former Rare composers - Grant Kirkhope and Steve Burke. Although we haven't yet heard much of the game's music, what little we have sounds excellent:
David Wise may not be as famous as some of the other composers I will be covering in this series of articles, but as far as talent, quantity, and quality of music is concerned he can certainly rival almost anyone who has ever created music for video games.
As always, thanks for reading. I hope you enjoyed this look at the career of David Wise. Feel free to share your favourite Wise soundtracks or songs in the comments section.
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I never knew one man was responsible for so many classic video game soundtracks! He definitely deserves to be recognized for the incredible work he's done. I especially love the music from the DKC series. Listening to it brings back so many great memories. Anyway thanks for the enlightening article!
Thanks for the nice comment. It's always nice to know people enjoy reading the stuff I write.
Never knew he was the composer for all Rare games up until 1994. The soundtrack to Donkey Kong Country 2 remains his best work to date.
That was also one of the new things I discovered about him when I did research for this article. I'm a bit partial towards the first DKC, but I can't argue with that.
He was the composer of the best videogame ever: Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest and it happens to have the best soundtrack ever. David Wise is a genious!
akira yamaoka marty o'donnel and jeremy soule.
and hes back! with Yooka Laylee.
He's a good choice. My personal favorites are Koji Kondo, Marty O'Donnell and Nobuo Uematsu.
You forgot Grant Kirkhope! That dude is amasing too.
