orlouge82 Posted March 16, 2018 Share Posted March 16, 2018 I know David Wise is most well known for his work on the Donkey Kong Country series, but I've been listening to a lot of the original music from many NES games that I grew up with -- all composed by David Wise. Examples: Wizards & Warriors series Marble Madness R.C. Pro Am Double Dare ("Gorilla" is a song that I frequently listen to on repeat when I'm trying to get work done) Battletoads The list could honestly go on longer. And these are all his pre-DKC works! He isn't dead or dying or anything (to the best of my knowledge), I just have only relatively recently realized that so many of the NES music I loved growing up was composed by him. swansdown 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
swansdown Posted March 17, 2018 Share Posted March 17, 2018 DK Island Swing is a classic of his for sure. I thought he was still at Rare, but that's Robin Beanland. Some of his Battletoads work are amazing, especially the lesser known games. Battletoads Arcade: Stage 4 (can feel some DK vibes in there) and Stage 3 Battletoads Gameboy: Stage 2, Stage 4, Stage 7 HoboKa 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Meteo Xavier Posted March 17, 2018 Share Posted March 17, 2018 On 3/15/2018 at 10:09 PM, orlouge82 said: He isn't dead or dying or anything (to the best of my knowledge), He's in good health and spirits as we've gathered from social media, but I might actually suggest staying away from his social media stuff if you're a big fan like I am/was. When I was friends with him on Facebook, I kept seeing him pick apart Roland for their Cloud service pretty much every time they made a post for while (I counted like 6 times he did this), bordering on irate trolling, and he has a habit of making paranoid posts about technology spying on him that's kinda jarring to see. He once made a post questioning Facebook's algorithm for posts and ads targetting certain things about him, I tried to assure him it's not quite what he thinks it is (and gently, I swear), and he subsequently accused me on being on Facebook's payroll to dissuade his thoughts on it in a pretty rant-y way. Months after that, he posted some paranoia about Amazon's Alexa spying on him for marketing purposes and, again, I tried to assure him that that technology really isn't supposed to do that - and boy did he get angry. Needless to say, I'm not friends with him on Facebook anymore and lost quite a bit of respect for him to the point where I don't feel bad telling this story. Sorry to derail the thread from appreciation to this, but while I report he's in good physical health, I do suggest staying away from his social media if you want to retain appreciation for him. He seems to not be able to appreciate some of his own fans when they try to help make sure he's not having an episode of something. :S HoboKa 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thirdkoopa Posted March 17, 2018 Share Posted March 17, 2018 13 minutes ago, Meteo Xavier said: He's in good health and spirits as we've gathered from social media, but I might actually suggest staying away from his social media stuff if you're a big fan like I am/was. When I was friends with him on Facebook, I kept seeing him pick apart Roland for their Cloud service pretty much every time they made a post for while (I counted like 6 times he did this), bordering on irate trolling, and he has a habit of making paranoid posts about technology spying on him that's kinda jarring to see. He once made a post questioning Facebook's algorithm for posts and ads targetting certain things about him, I tried to assure him it's not quite what he thinks it is (and gently, I swear), and he subsequently accused me on being on Facebook's payroll to dissuade his thoughts on it in a pretty rant-y way. Months after that, he posted some paranoia about Amazon's Alexa spying on him for marketing purposes and, again, I tried to assure him that that technology really isn't supposed to do that - and boy did he get angry. Needless to say, I'm not friends with him on Facebook anymore and lost quite a bit of respect for him to the point where I don't feel bad telling this story. Sorry to derail the thread from appreciation to this, but while I report he's in good physical health, I do suggest staying away from his social media if you want to retain appreciation for him. He seems to not be able to appreciate some of his own fans when they try to help make sure he's not having an episode of something. :S what that was a ride from beginning to end. holy shit. HoboKa 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HoboKa Posted March 18, 2018 Share Posted March 18, 2018 Never meet your heroes as they say. Learned that lesson with B.Strader and a few other ppl *EDIT-sorry* in the Vidyagame remix scene...no HUGE names in the industry (yet). I think David Wise removed me from his friend list, so no loss there I guess haha. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
orlouge82 Posted March 19, 2018 Author Share Posted March 19, 2018 Yeah, I've learned to divorce an artist's work from their personality, so some of the crazy shit that it sounds like Wise has been up to doesn't really detract from my appreciation of his early NES compositions. People are people, I guess. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mazedude Posted March 19, 2018 Share Posted March 19, 2018 Huge nostalgia for me is Battletoads in Battlemaniacs. Have yet to finish a remix for it yet, but still... Couple years back I actually had a chance to meet and hang out with David Wise at MAGFest. And, it totally slipped my mind at the time that I'd remixed work of his from Slalom, Wizards & Warriors, DKC2, DKC3... ah well. The way he puts it, he doesn't really remember a lot of that really early work anyways, heh. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WillRock Posted March 22, 2018 Share Posted March 22, 2018 Lol at Meteo turning this from "David Wise appreciation thread" to "lets hate on David Wise as a person thread". orlouge82 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gario Posted March 22, 2018 Share Posted March 22, 2018 Don't know him in person, but I know his music is great enough to actually have performances of it in Japan (I think he was the first non-Japanese composer who had that honor, iirc). I personally think it's a well deserved honor. Great VGM composer, for sure. orlouge82 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eino Keskitalo Posted March 27, 2018 Share Posted March 27, 2018 Timely: The Retro Hour podcast has a worthy, worthy interview from the man in their episode #113. I find it fascinating that he didn't really come from gaming into game music composition, the story about how he got fired was pretty funny too. Worth a listen! He is also in episode 107's UK game composer panel from All Your Bass festival, alongside Rob Hubbard and Graeme Norgate. orlouge82 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WillRock Posted March 29, 2018 Share Posted March 29, 2018 On 3/27/2018 at 5:18 PM, evktalo said: Timely: The Retro Hour podcast has a worthy, worthy interview from the man in their episode #113. I find it fascinating that he didn't really come from gaming into game music composition, the story about how he got fired was pretty funny too. Worth a listen! He is also in episode 107's UK game composer panel from All Your Bass festival, alongside Rob Hubbard and Graeme Norgate. I strongly recommend the All Your Bass festival podcast, really interesting stuff that showed the different viewpoints and work processes of the different composers. Protodome and I were both there listening. Was a bit of a crazy line up they got in there. Really fucking badly marketed tho, there were only like 20 people watching the thing, including us. HoboKa and Eino Keskitalo 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.