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November 14, 2009 by RawmeatCowboy
Filed Under: Nintendo in general
You may not know David Wise by name, but you certainly know his music. He worked as one of the many talented composers at RARE, and helped to create amazing soundtracks such as those for Donkey Kong Country, Battletoads and Double Dragon, and many more. According to his Facebook page, Mr. Wise is no longer with RARE.
"I think the business of Rare has changed a great deal, and at the moment there is just not the opportunity to create the soundtracks that Rare were fortunately very famous for."
I really feel that a big part of RARE's charm is their music, and with a team gone, I think another massive chunk of the company is going to fade away. RARE just isn't the same since leaving Nintendo. Thanks to Rodriguez for the heads up!
Story Feedback
lol@yournickname.
Heh, as for Mr. Wise, leaving a sinking ship, etc etc
...
*People's Eyebrow*
.........anyways -
RARE isn't the same. I really feel that as a whole, the people that worked on games like Diddy Kong Racing and Banjo Kazooie and DKC should make a new development team and allow themselves to get scooped up by Nintendo.
The RARE on the 360 has become nothing more than a bunch of idealists who are almost too pretentious to do make the kind of games that their fans on Nintendo platforms used to love. I'm not saying BK:NB or Viva Pinata are bad games, but they're not RARE games.
RARE on the 360 has pretty much become Molyneux's lapdog for Project Natal.
*crosses fingers*
If that's the case, Nintendo should quickly hire him!
He's ONLY worked on the Nintendo handhelds since the buyout. Interestingly Rare mentioned that they halted DS development, that could be a reason for his leaving.
There's chatter at GAF about a rumor of Tim Stamper starting a Rare-revival. In fact he's been busy registering domains, even during this year.
Dave NEEDS to join Nintendo, or at the very least a Nintendo-focused company.
Kevin Bayless left apparently as well, and he's primarily known (I think) as the voice of the Kongs in the old days. Steve Malpass who voiced Fox is also rumored to be gone as well.
Yes he's good. But Uematsu and several other Japanese composers still take the cake IMHO.
Oh, wait... art is subjective. Nevermind.
Interesting that DKC2 is actually the best soundtrack of them all.
Although I prefer his old-school tunes, DKC especially for the great use of the sound technology to make it sound new.
As for Wise, I would like to see him join up with a good company. If Nintendo hires him then I think we've got good hope for future awesome Donkey Kong music. Of course I won't get my hopes up for that to happen, but hey it'd be cool if it did.
I guess I can't blame much of the older RARE staff for leaving. Of course we already know people like David Doak left after the company was sold to Microsoft by the Stamper Brothers, and other former Goldeneye and Perfect Dark members left to form Free Radical (now Crytek UK, though Doak left last year and formed Pumpkin Beach).
@Mave
The RARE on the 360 has become nothing more than a bunch of idealists who are almost too pretentious to do make the kind of games that their fans on Nintendo platforms used to love. I'm not saying BK:NB or Viva Pinata are bad games, but they're not RARE games.
sad to say, but yeah. they've been Microsoft's henchmen as of recently.
And yes, RARE is no longer a great developer. They used to be just awesome, creating almost nothing but gems. It started when M$ got their hands on them. And no I'm no Xbox fanboy, anyone with a brain can see where they started to suck.
Oh my god, Rare is really dead now for me.
Great job Microsoft, your app projects sacrificed a genius away. Not that they used a ton of him lately, but this is what happens with fads like avatars and the other tons of Netflix, Twitter, Facebook bullshit now. They do not have state of art.
True. You seem to be aware of their LJN and GameTek days as well. People often ignore those parts and focus too much on Battletoads and their DKC, Killer Instinct and Conker days. Truth is RARE has sucked BEFORE, it's just that they had their heads on straight during their Speccy and Nintendo days.
We can circlejerk for the glory days of N64-era RARE to come back until the cows come home but until 3D platformers become the "in-genre" once more and the market rewards creativity rather than pumping out casual games that sold millions once before (i.e. Guitar Hero and its clones or slapping Lego renditions of whatever) then I doubt that even if Rare DID still work for Nintendo we wouldn't see a repeat of their N64 magic people keep wanting so badly because the market (or shareholders) don't find it appropriate.
RARE's going down the crapper. In some cases so is every other videogame company we grew up loving when they don't bring out the games we want to see. Get with the times and move on already, RARE's as good as dead.
Too be honest I was referring to DKC, and Killer Instinct as well. Battletoads was good in the arcades, but the NES port was crap. I never played any of the other home versions of Battletoads so no comment there.
I am also aware of their pre-Nintendo days.
I will say I never played Conker, but I did play both Perfect Dark and Goldeneye and wasn't particularly huge on either. PC just had the better FPS games going on at the time, and I have never been a huge FPS guy anyways so the few I did play regularly were definitely PC ones.
That being said out of all the games they have made, Viva Pinata is up there with the arcade version of Battletoads for my favorite.
so is that a sign that rare is totally abandoning their adventure game roots (banjo ,donkey ,starfox adv,kameo).. well of course they do not have much choice , no arcade racing game (poor pgr) , no platformers 2d or 3d, no zeldalike ever sold decently on 360. It's only fps and tps(like it's that different) from now on... except of course already too many contenders.
That's probably mean back to copying nintendo, microsoft seems to think avatars were great so rare might be the natal studio...
back in the rare glory days , never thought their absence on nintendo would not be missed. Although by now we would probably have had a banjo cosmic adventure and liked it!
Without Rare the N64 (my joint favourite consoles) would have failed, in the west at least. With them the Gamecube would have easily beaten the Xbox.
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All of the composers working under Rare are proper legends, and Dave's work in Starfox Adventures was awe inspiring. Let us hope he finds a way back to home soil.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cok8Le6l ... vie_player
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spXq5N9S ... re=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28_hARiG ... re=related
*cries*
Where's the justice lads?
@SEGAsbest
The PC had nothing to match Goldeneye (in gameplay and dare I say overall quality), not until Deus Ex in 2000.
That's a real shame, but I hope David continues his music talent somewhere else and has more successful years to come!
Hopefully Mr. Wise can continue composing amazing music for another studio somewhere. He is my favorite composer ever.
I really hope he'll join another studio.
Meanwhile, let's listen to this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IImboMaW4u0&fmt=18
Hey, I found your comment about the rumors of Tim Stamper working a Rare revival very interesting. I hope they're not just rumors.
You mention that he's been registering domains, but I can't find anyting about it on google. Could you tell me more about it? What are the domains called?
yeah accept ya know, Blood, Doom, Doom II, Quake, and Quake II came out like a month after Goldeneye, then there was Wolfenstein, Duke Nukem, and you are wrong about Deus Ex as Half-Life slaughters anything Rare has ever done and came out about a year after Goldeneye.
I was never a fan of Goldeneye, it was like aiming with soap. However you are entitled to your opinion, as I am to mine and I still think Rare is extremely overrated for a developer who I feel has made only a few good games.
Personally I thought the DKC games were okay but when it came to the praise the fans gave it (i.e. pushing the SNES to its limit, best graphics on the SNES and all that garbage) they're nostalgic exaggerations at best and some are quite far from the truth.
No RARE game on the SNES has ever needed an accelerator chip like the Super FX/2 or the SA-1. If anything games that used those chips pushed the SNES' limits NOT RARE's games. Though they were a good measure of the system's color palette.
DKC 1 was okay, DKC 2 was BETTER and DKC 3? Boring as sh*t.
As for Killer Instinct the game served it's purpose, it was Nintendo's ticket to being cool with violence by juxtaposing Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat with that RARE flavor. I don't think there needs to be a new installment really.
If my dark desire to see RARE crash and burn is the reason why I check on this board then....
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