Rare Archives - The Greatest Game Music

A Nightmare on Elm Street Soundtrack (NES)

A Nightmare on Elm Street (NES), David Wise, 1989

Before developer Rare became one of gaming’s powerhouses in the late 1990s and early 2000s, it toiled away for several years as one of the many companies churning out NES titles for various distributors. One of those distributors was LNJ – infamous for the usually low quality of the products that the company peddled. More than a few of their games were developed by Rare – almost all of them justifiably forgotten.

One of the stronger results of the collaboration between LNJ and Rare was A Nightmare on Elm Street – based of course on one of the most popular horror franchises of the 1980s. “Stronger” doesn’t mean that the game was an unqualified success – according to critics, it was merely better than most other LNJ titles and all in all made for a passable platformer. The game arguably would have been more distinctive had Rare stuck with the original concept where gamers controlled Freddie to hunt down teenagers. It’s not hard to see why this initial draft of the game was scrapped, particularly on a Nintendo console.

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Battletoads & Double Dragon Soundtrack (SNES)

Battletoads & Double Dragon Soundtrack (SNES), David Wise, 1993

In 1993, the Battletoads franchise was in a slightly curious spot. The 1991 NES original had been successful enough to spawn several ports. There was also Battletoads in Battlemaniacs, a SNES (and later Sega Master System) game that ultimately felt like a remix of the 1991 NES title. So where to next for the burgeoning, but not quite yet established franchise? Publisher Tradewest had released Battletoads on several platforms and held the home license for the venerable Double Dragon franchise. Why not combine two forces of nature in one amazing game? The match seemed to be an entirely natural one, given that Kevin Bayliss, co-designer of Battletoads, was a big Double Dragon fan.

However, things didn’t quite pan out as expected. For starters, with Rare developing the game, Battletoads & Double Dragon felt like it was shoehorning the world of Billy and Jimmy Lee into the more comic-like antics of a Battletoads game. It didn’t help that Double Dragon characters made appearances under the wrong names. Ultimately, Battletoads & Double Dragon garnered respectable but rarely enthusiastic reviews at the time of its release. That impression seems to continue with more recent assessments of the game: a decent enough brawler that doesn’t live up to the potential of the franchise crossover.

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Battletoads in Battlemaniacs Soundtrack (Sega Master System)

Battletoads in Battlemaniacs Soundtrack (Sega Master System), Matt Furniss / David Wise, 1994

There aren’t a lot of Sega Master System ports of SNES games. There are even fewer ports where the Master System soundtrack improves on the SNES original. And if that score emerges from what was an unfinished release, we might be dealing with a minor miracle. Or maybe such a lucky outcome wasn’t entirely unpredictable. After all, it was Matt Furniss (working with Shaun Hollingworth under the Krisalis moniker) who ported the Battletoads in Battlemaniacs SNES score.

The Master System port of Battletoads in Battlemaniacs has a chequered history. The game – ported by Syrox Developments – was scheduled for a European release in 1994 through Virgin Interactive. The game had progressed far enough that at least two reviews of it were published in UK gaming magazines. However, Virgin Interactive cancelled the release for unknown reasons. At a later stage, the game saw the light of day in Master System-loving Brazil through Tec Toy. However, it’s not clear whether that release took place in 1994 or 1996.

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Battletoads Soundtrack (Arcade)

Battletoads Soundtrack (Arcade), David Wise, 1994

The final entry in the Battletoads franchise also happens to be one of its less well-known ones. Electronic Arts made a rare attempt at releasing an arcade game, publishing Battletoads as a coin-op, three-player beat’em up. It’s hard to say how successful or not the game was, but no console ports ever saw the light of day. And so, three years after the release of the original NES Battletoads game, the franchise was laid to rest – at least until E3 2018.

The fact that the arcade Battletoads didn’t seem to have made any waves is a bit of a shame. According to both reviewers of the arcade title and the 2015 Rare Replay re-release, this Battletoads game might well have been the strongest entry in the franchise. In a departure from previous Battletoads titles, this game skipped any genre-hopping (no more platforming and speed biking) and only focused on the brawling elements. This made for a less adventurous, but more focused game. Battletoads was also enhanced by great graphics that ramped up the cartoonish violence that had always been part of the franchise – but usually in fairly tame fashion. This time however, Rare was clearly happy to work outside of the limits set by Nintendo’s content policy. The result played like a test run for Conker’s Bad Fur Day, with plenty of blood, swearing and crude jokes.

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Battletoads Soundtrack (NES)

Battletoads Soundtrack (NES), David Wise, 1991

The Battletoads soundtrack might be David Wise’s best and most creative NES score. That’s certainly no small feat – after all, Wise scored a whopping 46 NES games during his prolific career. Of course, a soundtrack release was all but impossible in 1991. It took until 2015 – when enterprising game music label iam8bit released a raft of Rare scores on vinyl – that the Battletoads soundtrack received its belated, but very much deserved album release.

Mind you, it wasn’t quite the deluxe product you would hope to see from a commemorative release like this. iam8bit’s album was missing the DMC samples Wise used, for example the drums on “Title Theme”. It does make you wonder what materials the album producers were working with. Thankfully, this can’t distract from the eccentric brilliance of Wise’s work. A comparison with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles NES games and their music is not only apt, but also proves insightful. The Konami titles took the new jack swing genre popular around the late 1980s and early 1990s and harnessed its fusion of hip-hop, dance pop and R&B to generate the kind of hard-swinging urban cool that would fire up gamers. Battletoads, on the other hand, has something very different in mind.

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Battletoads Soundtrack (Sega Genesis)

Battletoads Soundtrack (Sega Genesis), Hikoshi Hashimoto / David Wise, 1993

Yes, it might have been a blatant attempt to ride the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’ coattails. Still, Rare’s 1991 NES Battletoads game was successful enough to see it ported to a plethora of other platforms. Probably the highest-profile port was the Battletoads version released for the Sega Genesis in 1993. Reviews of the game were somewhat divided. More than a few critics pointed out that the developers could have done more to improve the game in the two years that had passed since the NES release, instead of releasing what was mostly a simple conversion that arguably didn’t push the Genesis graphics chip much. In fact, where the Genesis port of Battletoads probably shines the brightest is with its score.

Let’s start with a few disclaimers. Available information on who developed the Genesis port is conflicting. Some sources point to Rare, others list Japanese studio Arc System Works. Arc System Works did develop the Battletoads Game Gear port, so it’s reasonably likely they handled the Genesis conversion too. The Game Gear soundtrack was ported by Hikoshi Hashimoto, not original composer David Wise himself and since it was practically unheard of in the mid-90s for a Western composer to work on a Japanese game, it is reasonably safe to assume Hashimoto handled the Genesis port as well. That theory is supported by the fact that the Genesis version of Battletoads uses the SMPS Z80 sound driver, commonly used by Japanese composers. This would also account for the fact that this version of Battletoads sounds quite different from Wise’s Genesis port of Battletoads & Double Dragon.

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Blast Corps Soundtrack

Blast Corps Soundtrack, Graeme Norgate, 1997

Developer Rare arguably rose to fame and world-wide success with its Donkey Kong Country trilogy. However, it’s usually the Nintendo 64 era that is considered Rare’s golden age – no surprise, as the company seemed incapable of not churning out classic after classic for a while. That winning streak began with Blast Corps, released just in time for the console’s launch in Europe. The title was based on an idea by Rare founder Chris Stamper, who for years had wanted to make a game about destroying building – simple as that. Beginning production in 1996, a team of just four developers (sometimes expanded to seven) fitted a gameplay concept around this idea: a nuclear missile carrier was out of control and steamrolling ahead on autopilot. The player controls an array of sometimes bizarre vehicles (including a giant one-armed robot with a rolling attack) to clear the way.

The result was met with almost universal acclaim. Blast Corps was a beautifully idiosyncratic game, combining puzzle, racing and all-out-action elements into a wholly original package. Sales – around one million copies – ended up lower than the development team had expected. However, Blast Corps remains one of the most fondly remembered N64 games, thanks to its flawless level design and tough-as-nails yet always fair difficulty curve.

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Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy’s Kong Quest Soundtrack (SNES)

Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy’s Kong Quest Soundtrack (SNES), David Wise, 1995

While Donkey Kong Country remains the most historically important (and best-selling) entry in the franchise, it is Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy’s Kong Quest that is usually most fondly remembered among gamers. Polished and bursting at the seams with ideas, Diddy’s Kong Quest remains one of the best 2d platformers ever created.

The one component of Donkey Kong Country that has arguably aged best is its soundtrack. Collaborating with Eveline Fischer, David Wise created a haunting, minimalist opus that underscored the lavish graphics with understated grace. For the Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy’s Kong Quest soundtrack, Wise returned and wrote the entire score on his own. In short, this might well be his career-defining masterpiece. It’s a stunning example of musical world building that pushes the ageing SNES sound hardware to its very limits.

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Donkey Kong Country Soundtrack (SNES)

Donkey Kong Country Soundtrack (SNES), Robin Beanland / Eveline Fischer / David Wise, 1994

It’s probably safe to say that Donkey Kong Country was always destined to be a blockbuster. What set the game on course for domination of the 1994 Christmas season were its ground-breaking graphics. More than nine million sold copies later, Donkey Kong Country had become a milestone in gaming history.

While it was the game’s quasi-3D graphics that made waves back in 1994, what has arguably aged better is the Donkey Kong Country soundtrack. For the first time in Rare’s history, David Wise was joined by co-composers: Eveline Fischer (now Novakovic) and Robin Beanland. The latter’s contribution only extended to one track (“Funky’s Fugue”) that Wise converted to run on the SNES. Fischer – recently graduated from college – on the other hand contributed seven compositions. The soundtrack was one of the very first Western game scores to receive a commercial release – on both sides of the Pacific.

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Donkey Kong Land 2 Soundtrack

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

When Donkey Kong Country was released on the SNES in 1994, it was hailed as 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.

One year later, Rare released Donkey Kong Land 2 – the Game Boy port of Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy’s Kong Quest. This time, the developers had figured out how to keep the visuals less cluttered and the game more playable. True, reviewers pointed out the lack of original content – DKL2 was more or less a straight port of DKC2. However, the SNES original’s outstanding gameplay qualities made the Game Boy version one of the system’s best platformers.

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