Banjo Kazooie sequel chances “better than zero but not much”, says composer Grant Kirkhope

Earlier this year, Banjo Kazooie composer Grant Kirkhope posted on social media to say he had “zero hope” of a new sequel – something which prompted a strong response from fans of the iconic N64 platformer still hoping for more.

Now, a few months later, I had the chance to speak with Kirkhope directly on exactly why he thinks a follow-up is “unlikely” – and there are a few reasons.

Firstly, Kirkhope says he’s unsure if developer Rare still has an appetite for the series. Secondly, despite the positive response from fans to his social media post, Kirkhope doesn’t believe a new sequel would sell enough copies. Thirdly, he believes Rare would likely hand development to another studio – but which studio could understand the game’s distinct British humour?

Lastly, Kirkhope says he’s also unsure whether he’d be asked to compose new music for a potential sequel. Would he return if asked? “In a heartbeat,” he says. “Whether I’ve still got any more Banjo left in me I don’t know, but I’d have a good go.”

Of course, Banjo Kazooie was just one of the many games Kirkhope composed the score for during his time at Rare. His first project was GoldenEye 007, whose iconic watch menu theme is still memed online today. Later he followed in the footsteps of Donkey Kong Country composer David Wise by scoring Donkey Kong 64 and its hilarious DK Rap, which has stayed in the public consciousness and reappeared in Nintendo’s hit Super Mario Bros. Movie. Upon release, it was noted that the movie did not credit Kirkhope – something else we discuss below, with the composer saying this had been Nintendo’s decision.

More recently, Kirkhope composed the score for the Yooka-Laylee games, which aim to recapture the magic of those N64 platformers, and returned to the Mario universe with the score for Ubisoft’s Mario + Rabbids games, working alongside this year’s BAFTA Fellowship recipient Yoko Shimomura.

Below is the full interview, where the self-deprecating Kirkhope discusses his thoughts on the future of Banjo Kazooie, Nintendo’s new Donkey Kong game on Switch 2, and how his music represents nostalgia. Oh, and also whether Banjo Kazooie’s score included fart sounds.

GoldenEye’s watch theme remains iconic years later. How long did it take you to compose that? Did you expect it to catch on like it did?

Honestly it took me 15 minutes, if that. When you write pause music for games, you don’t think anybody’s going to listen to it. You think people are going to pause the game, go to the bathroom, have a cup of coffee, get a pizza, and not listen. I just thought, stick the Bond melody in there. And at the time hip-hop was huge and this was my first game I ever worked on, I had no idea what to do. I put a hip hop beat with it – it was an 808 kick – and that was it. I forgot about it.

All of a sudden, that bloke did that video on TikTok and it just seemed to go crazy. You never know what’s going to take off, right? Things you put a lot of effort into no one cares about, and then the things that take you five minutes everyone thinks are great. So maybe that’s a warning to composers: don’t overthink it!

Babyface Ray, the rapper from Detroit, asked to use the watch music. He asked me if he could use it and I said you’ll have to ask Rare to get the licence. And I know Rare say no to everything – and they did. But if I recreate it, then we own the masters. So because I know all the original samples and synth patches that I used, I can make it sound exactly like it was. So I just did that, he took it, and it ended up on a track. Who knows what’s next? The DK Rap?!

Earlier this year, you said you have “zero hope” for another Banjo Kazooie game. Your post had quite a reaction, would you like to revise that statement?

I just think it’s unlikely. I don’t know many people left at Rare, I do know a few, and I feel like Rare don’t have the appetite to get involved. Microsoft would stand back and say ‘you sort it out’ and Rare would have to do all the heavy lifting, so that’s one factor. Another factor is it’s got to be down to money. That will be the overriding factor. If you think I’ve got a hundred and something thousand followers on my Twitter, and that’s the Banjo bubble, if that’s all it is then that’s not going to make any money. You need millions of people to buy the game, and you’ve got to sell it to a whole new generation of kids.

Also, Rare would never do it, so they’d have to find another studio that could do it, that get the humour. I feel the humour of Banjo is really essential and it’s got that Brit flavour to it and that’s not easy to get for people who aren’t British sometimes. You’d have to find the team that’s got the passion for it and the humour. I just think they’d have to present Rare with a really good idea as to why it could work again, what could they make different about it, how could the story continue. Taking all that into account, I think it’s unlikely. Obviously you’ve got Toys for Bob saying they’d love to do it and Moon Studios’ director mentioned they think there’s still life in the IP. They’re two pretty big studios, they know what they’re doing. Whether Microsoft would give the ok, I don’t know. Would they involve me? I don’t know, probably not. Zero is probably a bit of a heavy estimate, it’s probably better than zero but not much.

Would you return to the series?

In a heartbeat. But sometimes people want to relaunch a game and they don’t want the old guys to get involved. So they might want another composer. I’d certainly love to do it. Whether I’ve still got any more Banjo left in me I don’t know, but I’d have a good go.

You still work a lot with [Donkey Kong Country composer] David Wise. Is he aware that Aquatic Ambience has become the sound of nostalgia on TikTok?

I think he does. I spend time with Dave quite a bit these days, because we’ve started to do conventions: we go along, do the odd personal appearance and sign autographs, and me and Dave play as well – he plays sax and I play guitar. We play a bit of Banjo, a bit of DK, a bit of this and that, it’s a good laugh. And we do Aquatic Ambience, of course, so Dave is fully aware – like I am about the GoldenEye watch music or the DK Rap – that people really like it. Like me, he’s super gratified and heartwarmed that anybody remembers stuff from back in the day. He knows he did a tremendous job on that piece of music. I don’t think anybody cannot say it’s fantastic, because it is. Dave was at that point when he completely mastered the SNES, he could screw it for every last bit of processing power to get any sounds out of it. It’s just a phenomenal piece of music. He said to me something like it’s based on Careless Whisper by George Michael, I don’t know if it’s true. I’m not convinced.

Nintendo has announced Donkey Kong Bananza for Switch 2, which is the first 3D Donkey Kong game since DK64. What do you make of the game and DK’s new design? Musically it’s a very different style to DK64.

I think it’s pretty fantastic. Nintendo are just fantastic. They just go their own path and that’s what I like about them; they just go ‘we’re going to do this’ and that’s what it’s going to be. I’ve only really heard the trailer so I don’t know whether that music’s from the game – but if it is, I thought it sounded great. It’s going to be great – it’s them, right? It’s their thing. When Rare split from Nintendo, they handed back Donkey Kong and kept everything else [for] Microsoft. So DK is [Nintendo’s]. I can’t imagine it will be anything less than fantastic. I wish I had something to do with it, of course. But alas, I didn’t. I think the DK Rap has run its course. It can’t possibly come back again.

The DK Rap was used in the Mario movie but you weren’t credited. Did Illumination ever contact you about that or apologise?

It wasn’t really their decision. It was Nintendo’s. I did have some communication with Nintendo, as I wanted to find out why they didn’t put my name on it. They said we decided that any music that was quoted from the games that we owned, we wouldn’t credit the composers – apart from Koji Kondo. Then they decided anything with a vocal would get credited, so the DK Rap scores there. But then they decided if we also own it, we won’t credit the composers. And that was the final nail in the coffin. I said I appreciate you’ve got your policies and all the rest of it, but by the time the credits roll in the movie to show the songs, the theatre’s completely empty, everyone’s gone, it’s only me and my wife and my two kids sat there going ‘look daddy’s name!’. I said ‘for the sake of a couple of lines of text…’, but that was that. They own it, and that’s up to them. So me and Bowser’s Fury didn’t get credited because they own the two songs.

I wondered if I was going to get a credit, because I knew people that had been to test screenings of the movie quite a bit prior to when it came out. And a lot of temp music was all over it before the score got written, by Brian Tyler in this case. And I know people were told every bit of music in the movie’s coming out, nothing is staying. So everyone assumed the DK Rap was coming out. The story was Seth Rogen thought it was cheesy, we should keep it, I don’t know. It’s bizarre how they just sampled it straight from the game. They just plugged in the N64 and sampled it and looped it. There’s no re-recording done, straight out the game. So it’s me playing guitar on it. It’s the lads from Rare doing the [sings] ‘D-K’ thing. They’re all the performers on the track. So they’re all in the movie uncredited

Can we expect the DK64 soundtrack on the Nintendo Music App?

I wonder. They have put some of Dave [Wise]’s stuff on it. They do own it all so it’s up to them. I don’t think they ever really liked DK 64 that much. That’s a rumour we got back through the cycle of whispers from Nintendo when we were at Rare. I don’t know if that’s true or not.

Yooka-Replaylee is due out later this year – it’s an old school style of game, but how has composing music for games evolved over the years?

The process isn’t any different really. I’m not a very intellectual composer, I just tend to mess around with something that I like. I’ll load up a sample and find some chords or a tune that I like. The way I write music hasn’t changed at all. It’s just the quality’s got better – I mean sonically, not particularly me!

I do think that being a media composer, like we have to call ourselves these days, you’re expected to do more. You’ve got to write it, mix it, master it, everything. You do the whole thing by yourself, unless you’ve got a giant team – I can’t afford that, so I do it myself. And with the advent of having a live orchestra now, a lot of people use real players. So for Yooka-Replaylee we’ve gone back and re-recorded all the level tunes with the live orchestra, that’s the difference for the music in the upcoming release. That’s fantastic. There’s no better thing for a composer to sit in a room with real human beings playing your music. That’s the top of the whole job. Human beings just do things that it might take hours to programme into a computer. Half the time, when you write orchestral music using samples, you’re trying to make it sound human, because otherwise it sounds perfect.

How would you define your musical style and your method of composing?

I think the word that pops into my head is amateur! But this is my 30th year composing for a living, I started in 1995 in October, and this is my 30th year. My wife says to me, ‘you’re eternally thinking you’re going to go broke and never get another job again and here you are, 30 years later, still going strong – don’t you think it’s time to accept that you are a bonafide composer for a living?’ I guess we all get that imposter syndrome all the time, and that never leaves me from one second to the next. People often say to me I’ve got a Kirkhopian sound. And it’s not by design. I’m a metal fan: when I hear Brian May or Eddie Van Halen play guitar I can spot it a mile off just because of the vibrato, the way they phrase, it just comes out of them that way. I feel I’m no different to that.

I just started doing [conventions] this year and I was a bit dubious, but the amount of people that come up [with personal stories]. I just think, for me to be the tiniest part of something like that, what an honour that is. It’s never lost on me. People ask ‘are you sick of doing it?’ and I’m not. I feel like it’s an absolute privilege to get that chance to be a part of anybody’s anything.

You’re probably best known for your work on more cartoon-style games (DK, Banjo, Viva Pinata), though you’ve done more epic score with Kingdoms of Amalur too. Why are you drawn to those cartoony sorts of games?

I just do what I get asked to do, honestly, I don’t pick. It’s a double-edged sword. If you catch something that’s successful early on in your career, you just get tarred with that brush forever more. Some people go ‘oh I’m a one tricky pony, I want to break out of that’. I feel the opposite way. How lucky are you to get remembered for anything? I don’t care if I get known for a fart sample that I used in Banjo Kazooie, I don’t really give a shit. I’m happy that at least I’m remembered for something. I’ve done all sorts of bits and pieces all over the place. It doesn’t bother me at all about any kind of ‘well, he just does the platform games’. Great! Send them all to me, I’ll do all of them. I’m super grateful that anybody wants to hire me for anything.

Wait, are there fart noises in Banjo Kazooie’s score?!

You know what, I don’t think there is, but there are quite a few burps, aren’t there? The bull in the first level, Mumbo’s Mountain, we did have a bit where we had them all lined up and gas coming out of their asses, lots of farts were playing. It was just a thing meant for our own amusement. British people like farts, right? So they’re all grazing and you put the camera at the back and you see a puff of smoke and [fart noise] comes out. We laughed about it for years, but it never went into the game of course.

You worked with Yoko Shimomura on Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope, who just won the BAFTA Fellowship. What was it like to work with her?

I had no contact whatsoever, I’m afraid. It was all stuck together by Romain Brillaud, who’s the audio director in Paris. He did all the ‘you write that, you write that, you write that’. The only contact I had with [Shimomura] was when we came to record it in Japan – I couldn’t go because of Covid, so I had a brief chat with her on the computer then and that was about it. I had no contact with her musically at all during the game.

The soundtrack certainly sounds consistent between multiple composers!

Romain was the hub of it all. I did use some of her stuff – I used some of her tunes in cinematics, because she would do the level tunes and I would incorporate it in the cinematic that preceded the level. I feel like she’s got a very distinct style that you can pick out from the SNES days that we can really hear. That’s why she gets the big awards and I don’t! I’m still waiting.

This interview has been edited for clarity.