Nikoderiko: The Magical Worldis a retro-style platforming game set on a mysterious, magical island. Inspired by platformers likeNintendo’s iconicDonkey Kong Countryseries,Nikoderiko: The Magical Worldfollows the adventures of its mongoose protagonists, Niko and Luna, who must save the island and its tribes from the villainous Grimbald, who has stolen an ancient relic. The pair must venture across seven unique worlds, battle bosses, and navigate levels that switch seamlessly between 2D and 3D to save the day.Nikoderiko: The Magical Worldalso includes the musical talents of composer David Wise; he is renowned in the industry for creating iconic video game soundtracks, including music in theDonkey Kong Country seriesand beyond.
Game Rant recently had the exciting opportunity to sit down with Wise to learn more about how he created the music forNikoderiko: The Magical World. Wise talked about his inspirations for the game’s eclectic music and spoke in depth about his techniques, such as using modern technology like virtual sounds. Wise also reflected on his legacy as a composer and musician, discussed future projects, and much more.The following transcript has been edited for clarity and brevity.
David Wise’s Legacy As A Video Game Musician And Composer
Q: Looking back, how does it feel to have worked in games for around the past 37 years and created some of the 90s platformers’ most iconic tracks?
A: Oh no, stop[laughs].
Shocking. Yeah, it feels good. Obviously, it’s good to have a legacy, and it’s better than not having a legacy, isn’t it? Yeah, I feel very honored, and I’m very pleased to have contributed my musical voice to video games. Just sort of saying 37 years - it brings it home, doesn’t it? I’ve been very fortunate to have a strange and unusual career that’s lasted for 37 years so far and counting. It’s quite a legacy.
Q: Definitely. I believe you’ve previously mentioned your favorite track from the Donkey Kong series that you worked on was ‘Aquatic Ambience’?
A: I think, as far as a favorite track, it’s more a track that changed everything for me. It’s a track I really like, but it just went from beingvideo game musicthat I was doing before. That was the pivot really, where it changed from what was happening before and set up what came after it. It was a combination of technical and musical things going on that enabled that, so I remember it because it changed my career.
Q: When you first started working onNikoderiko, what first attracted you to that project, and what has it been like working with the team at VEA Games?
A: A lot of my work doesn’t exist outsidethe Nintendo world. To have something, I suppose, reminiscent—not similar—but reminiscent of previous games I’ve worked on other systems, such as Sony or other projects like that, it was too much of a good opportunity to miss out on. That was my attraction to it - the fact that there will be a multi-format version of it.
To be honest, most of the time it’s been online and virtual, buta gentleman I worked with, his feedback is extraordinarily good. When most people give you feedback, it can be hard to interpret. The feedback from the team has been excellent, and it’s just sped up the whole process of iterations: “Right, I’m doing more versions, I’m doing an updated version.” It’s just made it a lot quicker.
Q: You’ve obviously arranged all the music for the game. When faced with the task of making the music for an entire game, where do you typically begin, and where did you start withNikoderiko?
A: I first started, I think, in 2019, but that was quite a few years ago now. It’s been off and on gently in the background, so I can’t quite remember. It was so long ago when I was first introduced to it, but I think the main thing is to try and get some kind of theme going because it’s different from other titles that I’ve done. It’s a bit of all the titles I’ve done: it’s a bit 2D, a bit 3D. It’s reminiscent of other titles I’ve done and a bit like other familiar titles, so it’s trying to find an emphasis on fun because I think the humor is there throughoutThe Magical World. It wasn’t really until the last two years that you actually saw that come out. It was nice to have some serious aspects and some of the funny ones too.
David Wise’s Inspirations For Nikoderiko: The Magical World’s Music
Q: You mentioned the theme. Where do you get your inspiration from?
A: I think for this type of thing, it’s definitely superheroes. We tried to find thissuperhero theme. There are plenty of references to superheroes throughout time, whether it’s somebody like Robin Hood, whether it’s a John Williams type of game,Indiana Jones, all that kind of stuff. There are lots of cues out there. It was trying to find something that was superhero-ish but fun at the same time, so it wasn’t too serious - it wasn’t going to take itself too seriously. Just trying to find a line that fits both of those was what I was aiming at. Whether I succeeded or not - I’m sure I did - but we’ll see what people’s reactions to it are.
Q: To what extent are you inspired by previous projects that you’ve worked on?
A: I think there’s obviously that legacy there of the previous works. All the stuff I do has my style on it because that’s just the way I work. If you had, say, John Williams for instance, it would sound like John Williams. If you had another video game composer or classical composer, then they work within the realms that they are used to, so obviously it’s inspired by that. But I think the setting is different from previous games, so I was trying to find a voice or something unique that suitedNikoderiko.
Q: How important were the characters, Luna and Niko?
A: Yeah, the characters have developed since 2019-2020. As I say, it got a lot more humorous as it developed, and that influences how you’re going to write a piece of music. It was really interesting to see them evolve and develop, and obviously, I think the music would hopefully reflect that. I really like the two main characters. I think they work really well together. They’re really fun, and especially now, you can really see how much they bring to the actual game as a whole.
Music Styles and Instruments in Nikoderiko: The Magical World
Q: Can you tell us a bit more about some of the instruments or styles you used? It seems quite eclectic from the trailers.
A: It’s quite eclectic, and that’s probably because I’ve had so long to work on it. It depends on what mood I was in on any particular day when I was writing music, and we’re always influenced by external things. It might be a situation, it might be a film we’ve watched, music that we’ve listened to, or a TV series. Depending on what was going on, what I was fascinated about at that particular time, if it suited theNikoderikoworld that I was working within, I probably borrowed ideas from those sorts of things. That’s why there’s quite a broad range of instrumentation and different ideas there.
Q: Could you give us some examples of some of the instruments you used for composing?
A: Specifically, that would be quite hard. For instance, I’ve got my rigbehind me here, and I use all the virtual instruments. I do use some real instruments as well. You can see my saxophone, my keyboards, and key guitars on the wall. I always get those out at the first opportunity I can, but most of it’s within the box and I’m always trying to find something that’s slightly different. If you use the same instruments you’ve used before, you’ll probably come up with similar results. And quite often, you’ll have people who make these virtual instruments, and they’ll bring out different sounds, and that means you’re going to compose and use the sounds differently from how you’ve done it before. I’m always searching for each piece I do to try and find something unique to bring to the table, just so I’ve got a different starting angle, a different palette of sounds and characters to work with.
Q: Have you got a favorite track inNikoderiko?
A: Not yet, no. I mean, on previous projects I’ve worked on, it’s normally several years before I decide which was my favorite track. I think one of the things I’ve really enjoyed developing the most wascutscenes. Again, it goes back to that humor - the way the two characters interact with each other and trying to bring that humor outside composing cutscenes has probably been the most enjoyable part of it for me. I mean, I enjoy all aspects of it, but they were the standout bits for me.
How David Wise Used Music to Emphasize Humor and Fun in Nikoderiko: The Magical World
Q: How did you try and bring out the humor between the two characters with the music? Could you kind of expand on that a bit?
A: Emphasizing - it’s almost like clowning around. It’s like a circus act. While I don’t specifically do it, when you watch cartoons, there are all these kinds of traditional instruments like whistles and stuff that they might use, things falling over. I haven’t been that obvious, but I’ve used the same techniques of highlighting the humor, so people’s attention is drawn to the fact that they are clowning around or something’s gone wrong. Or they’ve got something right, the fact that you know when they’re doing it because it’s not quite obvious. It wasn’t obvious to me when I first saw the cutscenes what the humor was, but then the more you’re working on it, “Ah, that’s what it is.” Then I can then highlight what I’m trying to bring out, just to emphasize it so it makes it obvious to people who are watching the cut scene what we’re trying to do.
Q: How would you describe the humor, or how did you understand it?
A: It’s quite slapstick. You’ve got these two main characters, almostTom and Jerry-ish, in some ways, or Laurel and Hardy. Just the way they interact in what they’re doing. The female is almost as exasperated by the main character who’s doing some of the stupid things. And I think she helps support him because she can actually see the fact that she’s almost quite disappointed with the things that he gets wrong.
Virtual SoundsaAnd Modern Technology In Nikoderiko: The Magical World’s Music
Q: Looking at the process, what was it like making the music forNikoderikoas a retro-style platformer but using today’s technology versus making platformers back in the day?
A: Back in the day, in the 90s, it was very hard - very limited resources. I was always trying to get the best out of them. Whereas we come to today, we’ve got every resource available known to mankind that we can throw at it. You’ve got to be quite disciplined with the amount of resources that you use for the type of sound you use. It brings out another challenge as well. To make it sound good requires just as much work, even though, as a starting point, the instrument sounds so much better. I think it’s one of those balancing acts. Trying to choose the right instruments that can work with each other to tell the story that you’re trying to tell to support the video game. It just gives a different set of challenges to work with, which is always fun. I like a challenge.
And you mentioned virtual sounds as well.
Yeah, so I’ve got a whole palette. I mean, on this thing here I’ve probably about 16 terabytes of virtual instruments, which is a lot. So pretty much every sound you can think of or more. I’ve got instruments now that use virtual modeling. You can put inputs in and create completely new types of sounds, which if I had another lifetime to explore, I could get the most out of it. But it’s nice having that technology there to experiment with. It comes back to that thing that we’re always trying to find new sounds to create inspiration or bring into the actual soundtrack.
Q: Could you maybe explain how that works with virtual sounds for people who might not be as familiar with that?
A: A lot of sounds come as sample packs, and there are probably two ways of doing this. There are sample-based instruments where people have - perhaps taking a piano - recorded samples played really loudly, medium, quietly, with the pedals on or soft pedal on, and they’ve tried to sample every variation to a big instrument, which is normally several gigabytes of input played back and it sounds very realistic.
The other side of that is a bit like a video game where they’ve coded it to sound like proper synthesizers. That is just as hard as doing a video game, really. By tweaking the parameters on the screen, it sounds very synthetic, but then it’s going to be better than the old stuff. Not only does it have to sound like the old stuff and be convincing, but then you have all the choices, that we have more notes that we can play at any given time, and we have a lot of effects so we can make it sound better. You’ve got these two things where you’re trying to get the core sound to be as realistic as possible, but then we can enhance it with all these things that make it sound pretty and wonderful.
Q: Thinking about the techniques you’ve learned over the years, are there things that you have typically applied toNikoderikofrom that perspective?
A: Yeah, I think we can’t help but learn. I always want to learn or get something in return for writing a piece of music. So if I can learn something, either just before I start writing a piece of music or whilst I’m writing a piece of music, it’s very rewarding. You fill your toolbox with musical tools all the time, and people are always bringing out new tools for music production. It’s just good to learn things. Some of them are useless, but some of them really help. I like that continual education or learning new things all the time, and that’s one of the great things about writing music with a computer. Also YouTube because, if somebody’s brought out one of these virtual instruments, it means there’s probably somebody who’s demonstrating how it could be used. And it’s a lot quicker than learning yourself because you can see somebody demonstrating what it could do if you’re good enough to use it.
David Wise On Future and Legacy
Q: Looking back at your career and your legacy, is there anything that you hope to inspire other people, whether budding musicians or composers or otherwise?
A: Yeah, I think, fortunately, I’ve had a very long career[laughs].
But just going back several years, just after the 90s, there was this thing online called OC Remix. It was a group of composers and remixes, some of whom have gone on to have really good careers within the games industry, writing music on their own. But that’s when I first realized that people like my music really because they were copying it and they were doing recreations of it or making versions of it that were remixed literally. That was quite, I suppose, humbling and exciting as well.
Some people send me stuff every day saying “I’ve done this version" and it’s really quite rewarding. Or somebody’s done a piano version. They’ve done a whole suite of soundtracks that you’ve created before. That’s just completely unbelievable because that touches you emotionally in a way that it’s hard to describe. The fact that people like the music so much that they want to do their own version of it. That really is quite something. From what I’ve done, if people want to learn the techniques or the composition behind it, again, if I’ve inspired somebody to go out and do it on their own, I think that’s a real win.
Overall, if somebody has been inspired enough to want to go do something and learn from it, that really is quite something.
Q: What kinds of projects might you maybe hope to work on in the future?
A: So, with all of these projects, we obviously have a non-disclosure agreement, an NDA, so if I told you, I’d have to shoot you[laughs].
But there are some exciting projects I’m already working on. I think it’s been announced, but the next thing I’m going to be working on is a project calledLucid.That’s kind of interesting because it’s not a mainstream game. It’s anindependent game, but some of the graphics in there and some of the ideas behind it are just wonderful. And it’s innovative as well.
Some of the problems with the industry at the moment is too many people doing games that are very, very similar to each other and just trying to be slightly better. At some point, that had to break because you can’t keep throwing lots of money trying to do something that’s slightly better than the next company. The good thing about that, asit’s broken apart, people have been given the freedom to go out and do very creative things. I think, over the next few years, not just from this particular project, but on lots of projects and lots of people within the games industry will be coming up with some really innovative and fun products. I can’t wait to see how it will pass out, and then the whole process can start getting bigger and more involved again.
Q: Is there anything else that you would like to add?
A: Obviously I’m looking forward to seeing howNikoderikodoes because it’s kind of got its own life now. Although it’s heavily based on previous games that I’ve worked on and other games that have done very well, it’s morphed into its own kind of thing. I’m very interested to see how that does. I’m sure it will do very well. I can see that there’s a lot of excitement around the world for it, so I’m looking forward to new opportunities that might come up from innovative products that we were talking about. A lot is coming up. It’s an exciting time to be a composer doing video games and media.
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