Grant Kirkhope Archives - The Greatest Game Music

Donkey Kong Land 2 Soundtrack

Donkey Kong Land 2 Soundtrack, Grant Kirkhope / David Wise, 1996

When developer Rare released Donkey Kong Country on the SNES in 1994, reviewers hailed it a technical marvel that very few people would have expected to see on the ageing hardware. When Rare released a Game Boy port called Donkey Kong Land a year later, jaws hit the floor again. How could those Silicon Graphics workstations-rendered 3D sprites possibly translate to the monochrome Game Boy display? Turns out it was possible to bring those pre-rendered graphics to the 4-bit platform – although the result was visually overly busy and impacted gameplay.

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GoldenEye 007 Soundtrack (Nintendo 64)

GoldenEye 007 Soundtrack (Nintendo 64), Grant Kirkhope / Graeme Norgate, 1997

It’s no exaggeration to say that GoldenEye 007 was a game-changer. By the mid-1990s, games based on movies had (justly) developed a disastrous reputation, and the fact that GoldenEye 007 was released a full 18 months after the film didn’t help matters. And of course, this was a first-person shooter designed for a console, rather than for a PC – back then, the natural home for FPS titles. But in the end, none of this mattered. GoldenEye 007 went on to sell more than eight million copies, becoming one of the most successful games of its console generation. Its reception among reviewers was just as enthusiastic, and there’s no doubt GoldenEye 007 has left a lasting legacy – who could forget its legendary multiplayer mode? Not bad for a title developed by an inexperienced team that spent a full three years completing the game.

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Perfect Dark Soundtrack (Nintendo 64)

Perfect Dark Soundtrack (Nintendo 64), David Clynick / Grant Kirkhope / Graeme Norgate, 2000

If you want to kick off a debate amongst seasoned console gamers, try “Is Perfect Dark better than GoldenEye 007?” According to reviewers, the answer is usually ‘yes’. After all, this game allowed Rare to finetune their approach to developing a first-person shooter after creating a genre classic with GoldenEye 007. Arguably pushing the Nintendo 64 to its limits, Perfect Dark provided such a wealth of content and degree of polish that it was hard to see how a console shooter in 2000 could be any better. Then again, GoldenEye 007 had arguably been the more groundbreaking title, popularising console FPS games. Consequently, Perfect Dark didn’t have quite the same impact, as it was ultimately an immense refinement rather than another quantum leap.

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Viva Piñata Soundtrack

Viva Piñata Soundtrack, Grant Kirkhope, 2006

There was a time when Viva Piñata was touted as one of the fledgling Xbox 360’s most important franchises, even accompanied by a tie-in television show. Ultimately, Viva Piñata didn’t go down in game history as anything close to a gamechanger or a classic like some of developer Rare’s previous titles. Still, the game’s colourful graphics and relatively novel nature as a first-person life and gardening simulation left a positive enough impression with reviewers and gamers. In fact, the feedback was strong enough for Rare to release a sequel titled Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise, allowing the developers to implement features they had to leave out of the first game due to time pressures.

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