• Hey everyone, staff have documented a list of banned content and subject matter that we feel are not consistent with site values, and don't make sense to host discussion of on Famiboards. This list (and the relevant reasoning per item) is viewable here.
  • Do you have audio editing experience and want to help out with the Famiboards Discussion Club Podcast? If so, we're looking for help and would love to have you on the team! Just let us know in the Podcast Thread if you are interested!

Discussion Grant Kirkhope was not credited in the Mario movie despite using the "DK Rap"

Maybe he didn't want his name associated with a movie that reviewed lower than Balan Wonderworld on Metacritic.
 
damn that’s gotta hurt like a coconut gun that fires in bursts

no seriously, between the Prime Remaster and this Nintendo really sucks about these things
 
That really sucks :(

No matter what anyone's opinion on the song is Grant should be credited as he composed it!
 
The weird thing about this is that crediting music pieces is just standard film-making practice.

If you ever sit through a film's credits, there is always a section where they list out all the songs used in the film, who wrote them, who recorded them and who performed them. Ordinarily you can't license out a piece of music for a film without giving proper accreditation.

Nintendo owns the copyright on the song, so technically are just licensing it to themselves, but it's weird they and Illumination didn't think to just include Kirkhope in the credits.
 
The weird thing about this is that crediting music pieces is just standard film-making practice.

If you ever sit through a film's credits, there is always a section where they list out all the songs used in the film, who wrote them, who recorded them and who performed them. Ordinarily you can't license out a piece of music for a film without giving proper accreditation.

Nintendo owns the copyright on the song, so technically are just licensing it to themselves, but it's weird they and Illumination didn't think to just include Kirkhope in the credits.
I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't include him for royalty reasons.
 
I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't include him for royalty reasons.

If the copyright of the song is owned by Nintendo, they likely wouldn't have had to pay him royalties even if they included him in the credits.

With that said, this feels like something that might actually get fixed for the home release at least.
 
This is more Illumination's fault than Nintendo's. They're responsible for the movie's production and would've just licensed the song from Nintendo (who own the DK Rap). It's their fault for not doing their due diligence.

They probably didn't even know who wrote the song originally, and didn't even care.

I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't include him for royalty reasons.

They wouldn't have had to pay Grant Kirkhope royalties in any case. Nintendo owns the DK Rap 100%, Kirkhope doesn't earn any royalties on any of his music, as is standard for music composers within the video game industry.
 
Curious if we'll see some adjustments for the home release or not. Doubt it, but it'd be nice...
 
0
Nintendo fully owns the song and Illumination licensed it. Blame Illumination for not crediting him in their movie.

Also what the fuck at the weird xenophobic commentary.
I don't agree with what they said but what about it was "xenophobic"? It sounded more like he was accusing Nintendo themselves of xenophobia.
 
I don't agree with what they said but what about it was "xenophobic"? It sounded more like he was accusing Nintendo themselves of xenophobia.
I mean that's kind of it. Accusing Nintendo of having a weird axe to grind against western creatives based on nothing.
 
DKVine's sources say that the director of the Donkey Kong movie asked for dibs on bringing Grant Kirkhope back to the franchise, and demanded his name removed from the credits so that his film can stand as the true return.
 
Nintendo fully owns the song and Illumination licensed it. Blame Illumination for not crediting him in their movie.

Also what the fuck at the weird xenophobic commentary.
According to Western people on the internet, Nintendo is problematic because they are too much japanese...sorry, I meant "conservative", because they desperately need western devloppers, and because they don't respect western people in general. There is no doubt that it is Nintendo that is being xenophobic here, I guess.
 
Quoted by: Leo
1
Nintendo fully owns the song and Illumination licensed it. Blame Illumination for not crediting him in their movie.

Also what the fuck at the weird xenophobic commentary.

What the fuck is what I say to you, what did I say that was xenophobic?

I said they don't respect the western creators because that has been a trend for them, a lot of former employees at MercurySteam, which is a western studio, weren't credited in Metroid Dread. Then a lot of people who worked on the original Metroid Prime on Retro, which is a western studio, weren't credited in the remaster. And now, Nintendo sees no reason to credit Grant Kirkhope and is comfortable putting "from Donkey Kong 64" in the credits because they own the song and apparently don't think Kirkhope is worthy enough to be recognized by them. I'm not aware of the same thing happening with their own in house devs (like, Koji Kondo is credited in the same movie), that's why I referred to the western partners because that's who it keeps happening to. You somehow have spun that into me saying western creators deserve respect because they're superior or something? Everyone deserves respect, but most especially people who worked on shit you're making money from.

You wanna discuss what I said just say it, but hold your freaking horses before calling someone a xenophobe for nothing.

About Illumination, so you think they deliberately decided not to credit Kirkhope even thought they had to go through Nintendo to check the credits for every piece of original work they used in the movie, and they most likely used the information Nintendo sent them because obviously they would? Why would Illumination have a specific bias against Kirkhope, who they probably don't even know who he his, and decide to keep his name out of the credits if Nintendo had sent them the full credits for the song? That doesn't make any sense.
 
Last edited:
According to Western people on the internet, Nintendo is problematic because they are too much japanese...sorry, I meant "conservative", because they desperately need western devloppers, and because they don't respect western people in general. There is no doubt that it is Nintendo that is being xenophobic here, I guess.

You just typed a bunch of stupid things I never said and somehow you seem to be attributing that to me.
 
I specifically took care of referring to people on the internet in general. It sucks a lot not to credit an artist for their work and it should not happen. Period. It has nothing to do whih who is western and who is not. And yes, this ethocentrism is something we can find a lot , in my western guy opinion.
 
0
What the fuck is what I say to you, what did I say that was xenophobic?

I said they don't respect the western creators because that has been a trend for them, a lot of former employees at MercurySteam, which is a western studio, weren't credited in Metroid Dread. Then a lot of people who worked on the original Metroid Prime on Retro, which is a western studio, weren't credited in the remaster. And now, Nintendo sees no reason to credit Grant Kirkhope and is comfortable putting "from Donkey Kong 64" in the credits because they own the song and apparently don't think Kirkhope is worthy enough to be recognized by them. I'm not aware of the same thing happening with their own in house devs (like, Koji Kondo is credited in the same movie), that's why I referred to the western partners because that's who it keeps happening to. You somehow have spun that into me saying western creators deserve respected because they're superior or something? Everyone deserves respect, but most especially people who worked on shit you're making money from.

You wanna discuss what I said just say it, but hold your freaking horses before calling someone a xenophobe for nothing.

About Illumination, so you think they deliberately decided not to credit Kirkhope even thought they had to go through Nintendo to check the credits for every piece of original work they used in the movie, and they most likely used the information Nintendo sent them because obviously they would? Why would Illumination have a specific bias against Kirkhope, who they probably don't even know who he his, and decide to keep his name out of the credits if Nintendo had sent them the full credits for the song? That doesn't make any sense.
You are attributing a lot of common industry practice crediting behavior as being specifically "Nintendo versus western talents". It's not specifically a Nintendo thing. It's not specifically a Japan thing or a Japan versus the west thing. Your commentary was shortsighted and ignorant, seemingly coming from the perspective of "Oh, Nintendo hates western talents" which is batshit nonsense.

It's not specifically up to Nintendo how specific music credits are handled in a theatrical film made by another party. Disappointing? Yes, absolutely. But your argument came off as entirely asinine.
 
The “not crediting the original staff” thing isn’t something that Nintendo’s done exclusively to western developers—the issue got a lot of attention with Metroid Prime specifically, for whatever reason, but it’s been a thing with multiple releases of past games ported to Switch for years now, including games developed by EPD in Japan, and well before the Metroid stuff too. I don’t think there’s much more to it than they didn’t want the credits sequence in the games to be too long (like what Sonic Colors: Ultimate did…lol) or have to be changed too much to accommodate both the new and old staff, so they just credit the new staff (since the original staff were already credited on the original release and that information doesn’t just disappear). That’s not to say that I’m defending that practice or that I think it’s the best way to go about it (they could easily just put the original credits in a menu or something); I’m just pointing out that it’s definitely not something that Nintendo is doing specifically to western developers.

It is weird that they didn’t credit Grant Kirkhope in the movie when they did provide proper credits for other Nintendo songs, though.
 
What the fuck is what I say to you, what did I say that was xenophobic?

I said they don't respect the western creators because that has been a trend for them, a lot of former employees at MercurySteam, which is a western studio, weren't credited in Metroid Dread. Then a lot of people who worked on the original Metroid Prime on Retro, which is a western studio, weren't credited in the remaster. And now, Nintendo sees no reason to credit Grant Kirkhope and is comfortable putting "from Donkey Kong 64" in the credits because they own the song and apparently don't think Kirkhope is worthy enough to be recognized by them. I'm not aware of the same thing happening with their own in house devs (like, Koji Kondo is credited in the same movie), that's why I referred to the western partners because that's who it keeps happening to. You somehow have spun that into me saying western creators deserve respect because they're superior or something? Everyone deserves respect, but most especially people who worked on shit you're making money from.

You wanna discuss what I said just say it, but hold your freaking horses before calling someone a xenophobe for nothing.

About Illumination, so you think they deliberately decided not to credit Kirkhope even thought they had to go through Nintendo to check the credits for every piece of original work they used in the movie, and they most likely used the information Nintendo sent them because obviously they would? Why would Illumination have a specific bias against Kirkhope, who they probably don't even know who he his, and decide to keep his name out of the credits if Nintendo had sent them the full credits for the song? That doesn't make any sense.

To be fair, Nintendo putting "Thanks to the original game's development team" instead of properly crediting the devs is their standard, with games developed in Japan too. The whole Dread situation is terrible, but I think I'm more inclined to blame Mercury Steam than Nintendo (since we have no precedent from them).

So I don't think there's a pattern against Western devs. Higher-ups including Miyamoto, Tanabe, and Sakamoto, have always talked positively about their relationship with Rare, Retro, and Mercury Steam, we recently had Bowser's Fury, a semi-mainline Mario game co-developed by NST, and Advance Wars remake by a Western indie dev will be released soon. The Project H.A.M.M.E.R. fiasco might be the only instance of racism inside Nintendo, if we believe the rumors.

With that said, I agree Kirkhope should have been properly credited. I don't think your post was racist btw, only misinformed.
 
0
It's not specifically a Nintendo thing.

I never said it is, so that's irrelevant. What is relevant is that Nintendo did it, and that's what I'm commenting on.


It's not specifically a Japan thing or a Japan versus the west thing.

I never said any of these either.


Your commentary was shortsighted and ignorant, seemingly coming from the perspective of "Oh, Nintendo hates western talents" which is batshit nonsense.

My comment comes from the perspective of this being the third time Nintendo does that in a relatively short period. I specifically referred to western partners because it's who it keeps happening to versus we not having any known instances of it happening to in house creators, so it's a trend. Can you imagine if Twilight Princess HD didn't have the full credits for the people who made the game at Nintendo and instead only credited Tantalus and whoever was involved with the remaster? I can't, so why did that happen with Metroid?

I should probably have said "outside partners" instead of western because I admit the term comes with a lot of baggage but I meant no connotations beyond stating a fact that keeps happening.
 
My comment comes from the perspective of this being the third time Nintendo does that in a relatively short period. I specifically referred to western partners because it's who it keeps happening to versus we not having any known instances of it happening to in house creators, so it's a trend. Can you imagine if Twilight Princess HD didn't have the full credits for the people who made the game at Nintendo and instead only credited Tantalus and whoever was involved with the remaster? I can't, so why did that happen with Metroid?

I should probably have said "outside partners" instead of western because I admit the term comes with a lot of baggage but I meant no connotations beyond stating a fact that keeps happening.
Maybe ask Retro Studios, as they're an American studio remastering their own game with outside partner help, as opposed to EPD handing Twilight Princess HD to Tantalus, or MercurySteam failing to credit members of their own staff on the game they developed. They're all different projects in their own circumstances.
 
0
It's possible and potentially legitimate to criticize Nintendo about that if we have proofs that they are esponsible of this really bad credits situation. That still does not explain what it has to do with who is western and who is not. This not about " the term coming with a lot of baggage", this is about suggesting that a possible miscoundict of Nintendo, that would abolutely not be acceptable, is based of the fact that they are not "western" themselves.
 
0
Come on, Nintendo…

hbomberguy has a whole video about properly crediting artists.

We don’t recognize the work and achievements of people who make games. We recognize the people who exploited that work the best. It’s so easy for history and credit to get wiped away.
It’s important for us to care when companies and individuals do things like this. The last part of the aforementioned video is really poignant, including the final line:

Those who let hucksters write the history they’re trying to learn from are doomed in some other horrible way. And, for one, I don’t think history gets to be written by a guy who wasn’t even on Cribs. It wasn’t even Cribs!
(I regularly use that last sentence when I’m so appalled by something I can’t articulate it in another way.)
 
Last edited:
Apparently they also used a song from Bowser's Fury in the movie which wasn't composed by Kondo and didn't credit the composer, so I stand corrected. I thought they viewed outside contributors differently but apparently they're equally shitty to everyone.
 
Apparently they also used a song from Bowser's Fury in the movie which wasn't composed by Kondo and didn't credit the composer, so I stand corrected. I thought they viewed outside contributors differently but apparently they're equally shitty to everyone.
heads up: i disagree with the notion that what you said is xenophobic, but nintendo games not crediting their original devs in remaster is not new. There is a very decent amount of them happening and i can find them for you if you want.

At the same time they do seem to credit original devs more than not, so it might have been Retro yeah.
 
It's pretty standard for Nintendo for not including the original staff list, just a simple "Thanks to the original staffs" when it was given a remake/remaster treatment, no matter where it was developed. But as someone else said, it's not like Nintendo is trying to rewrite history here. The original staff list is still available for people to see.

Kinda weird the western audience start getting hung up on this since Pac-Man World. I'm not saying it's bad to not properly credit the team, and I would prefer them to properly credit the people for the song in this case, but it's a little odd it's happening now of all times.


Come on, Nintendo…

hbomberguy has a whole video about properly crediting artists.


It’s important for us to care when companies and individuals do things like things. The last part of the aforementioned video is really poignant, including the final line:


(I regularly use that last sentence when I’m so appalled by something I can’t articulate it in another way.)
You say that, but Nintendo has a much better record than most people would think. hbomberguy bring up the Capcom sound team in the '90s as an example how women get the short end of the stick in the credit department (only able to use nickname/pseudonym) compared to Nintendo in the '90s where they have no problem listing Soyo Oka on every game she worked on.
 
You say that, but Nintendo has a much better record than most people would think.
Good for Nintendo. 🤷‍♀️ Being better than Capcom is irrelevant though since Nintendo clearly isn’t where it needs to be with crediting artists, particularly given we’re still discussing instances of Nintendo not properly doing so in 2023.
 
I just realized there’s a crediting issue with the movie’s music that’s worse than not specifically crediting Grant Kirkhope for the DK Rap (or the composer for the other song taken directly from a game) that I haven’t seen anyone else bring up—that being that the official soundtrack (and I think the movie credits too, but I’m not 100% certain about that) says “original Nintendo themes by Koji Kondo” when…no, that’s not the case at all, actually. Like, even excluding unused music, there are definitely Nintendo themes in the movie that weren’t composed by Kondo, yet he gets all the credit anyway.

Not only is that failing to credit the original composers, but it’s also wrongly attributing their compositions to someone else entirely! What the hell is up with that, and why isn’t that the big crediting issue that’s being talked about? That’s not to say that the DK Rap credits don’t matter as well, because they do, but the Kondo thing is kind of the bigger issue and it encompasses the DK Rap as well because it’s basically being implied that the DK Rap is also composed by Kondo, not Kirkhope, because it’s a Nintendo theme and Kondo is being erroneously credited for all “original Nintendo themes” in the movie.
 
The soundtrack is starting to come out in places like Australia and the credits on it are just as disappointing. Koji Kondo is on the album art but the actual track metadata just lists "Nintendo Co., LTD." for any track that contains music from the games.

pY3h09o.png


It costs nothing to credit the actual composers. C'mon Nintendo/Illumination/Universal/whoever.
 
The soundtrack is starting to come out in places like Australia and the credits on it are just as disappointing. Koji Kondo is on the album art but the actual track metadata just lists "Nintendo Co., LTD." for any track that contains music from the games.

It costs nothing to credit the actual composers. C'mon Nintendo/Illumination/Universal/whoever.
As uncool as that is, that’s at least better than slapping the name “Koji Kondo” on everything, including stuff that absolutely wasn’t originally composed by him. One is withholding giving specific credits (which is still not cool) but still correct in the general sense that they’re all compositions from Nintendo, while the other is falsely attributing credits to the wrong person entirely. But yeah, it’d be better if they just credited all the original composers specifically and correctly.
 
0
I just realized there’s a crediting issue with the movie’s music that’s worse than not specifically crediting Grant Kirkhope for the DK Rap (or the composer for the other song taken directly from a game) that I haven’t seen anyone else bring up—that being that the official soundtrack (and I think the movie credits too, but I’m not 100% certain about that) says “original Nintendo themes by Koji Kondo” when…no, that’s not the case at all, actually. Like, even excluding unused music, there are definitely Nintendo themes in the movie that weren’t composed by Kondo, yet he gets all the credit anyway.

Not only is that failing to credit the original composers, but it’s also wrongly attributing their compositions to someone else entirely! What the hell is up with that, and why isn’t that the big crediting issue that’s being talked about? That’s not to say that the DK Rap credits don’t matter as well, because they do, but the Kondo thing is kind of the bigger issue and it encompasses the DK Rap as well because it’s basically being implied that the DK Rap is also composed by Kondo, not Kirkhope, because it’s a Nintendo theme and Kondo is being erroneously credited for all “original Nintendo themes” in the movie.
Ok sad to say this but this is common in the music industry.

You know Hans Zimmer? 90% of the stuff that features him as composer is made by one of his many ghost writers from his studio (Remote Control Productions) who dominate like more than half of Hollywood's blockbusters (even Brian Tyler from Mario is one of Zimmer's lackeys)

Only very few composers nowwdays credit people properly (or dont use co-composers or ghost writers, such as John Williams or if im not mistaken, Alan Silvestri)
 
Ok sad to say this but this is common in the music industry.

You know Hans Zimmer? 90% of the stuff that features him as composer is made by one of his many ghost writers from his studio (Remote Control Productions) who dominate like more than half of Hollywood's blockbusters (even Brian Tyler from Mario is one of Zimmer's lackeys)

Only very few composers nowwdays credit people properly (or dont use co-composers or ghost writers, such as John Williams or if im not mistaken, Alan Silvestri)
Sure, but we’re not talking about ghost writers or anything like that here. Kondo is being credited for music from games that he had no hand in composing for at all and that had never been attributed to him in any way previously (whether correctly or not)—the movie soundtrack credits are ignoring known history and straight up lying about original compositions when that was never an issue before with the actual games. At worst individual tracks wouldn’t be credited to specific people, but erroneously crediting compositions to someone entirely unrelated is, to my knowledge, not something that has happened with Koji Kondo and other Nintendo music before this.

Regardless, my main point was that I’m surprised that more people (or anyone else, really, ‘cause I haven’t seen any other discussion of it at all yet) aren’t talking about the crediting issue with Kondo compared to the specific case with Grant Kirkhope. Like, people aren’t seeing the bigger issue here.
 
Sure, but we’re not talking about ghost writers or anything like that here. Kondo is being credited for music from games that he had no hand in composing for at all and that had never been attributed to him in any way previously (whether correctly or not)—the movie soundtrack credits are ignoring known history and straight up lying about original compositions when that was never an issue before with the actual games. At worst individual tracks wouldn’t be credited to specific people, but erroneously crediting compositions to someone entirely unrelated is, to my knowledge, not something that has happened with Koji Kondo and other Nintendo music before this.

Regardless, my main point was that I’m surprised that more people (or anyone else, really, ‘cause I haven’t seen any other discussion of it at all yet) aren’t talking about the crediting issue with Kondo compared to the specific case with Grant Kirkhope. Like, people aren’t seeing the bigger issue here.
Well thats cuz Grant is their bro who is on social media sad about it while the guy that did the Bowser's Fury OST is not even on social media.
 
Quoted by: Tye
1
Well thats cuz Grant is their bro who is on social media sad about it while the guy that did the Bowser's Fury OST is not even on social media.
Yeah, I figured the main reason is because Grant talked about it on Twitter, but I’m just surprised (though I guess I shouldn’t be, knowing how people—and social media in general—tend to be…) that no one else seems to be picking up on the bigger issue, and at the very least I’m pointing it out here in hopes that some more people, well…do, and maybe help spread the word. ‘Cause it’s weird that people are only really talking about Kirkhope.
 
Yeah, I figured the main reason is because Grant talked about it on Twitter, but I’m just surprised (though I guess I shouldn’t be, knowing how people—and social media in general—tend to be…) that no one else seems to be picking up on the bigger issue, and at the very least I’m pointing it out here in hopes that some more people, well…do, and maybe help spread the word. ‘Cause it’s weird that people are only really talking about Kirkhope.
It's disappointing, but not necessarily weird.

This is a Nintendo-focused forum where Kirkhope gets held up as a folk hero for writing (in addition to his other work) a corny rap song about Donkey Kong over two decades ago. And so when Kirkhope is ignored by whoever at Illumination compiles the credits for music, obviously it's Nintendo and specifically Miyamoto at fault, because that's how a myopic understanding of the film industry works.
 
The OST credits might be due to the composers' contracts. They made these tracks as Nintendo employees, just like whoever designed, idk, one of random Game & Watch artworks cameoing in the movie.

Perhaps the composer of the Bowser's Fury theme had a different contract, which required Nintendo to mention at least the game, and/or prevented them from rearranging the music.
 
0
It's disappointing, but not necessarily weird.

This is a Nintendo-focused forum where Kirkhope gets held up as a folk hero for writing (in addition to his other work) a corny rap song about Donkey Kong over two decades ago. And so when Kirkhope is ignored by whoever at Illumination compiles the credits for music, obviously it's Nintendo and specifically Miyamoto at fault, because that's how a myopic understanding of the film industry works.
I wasn’t even talking about strictly on this forum, I meant in general. I haven’t seen anyone else bring up the Koji Kondo credit issue anywhere yet, but I’ve seen people sharing the Grant Kirkhope stuff all over. As said above, I think it’s mostly just because of Grant’s tweet, and people aren’t bothering to look into matters more than that themselves.
 
Yeah, I figured the main reason is because Grant talked about it on Twitter, but I’m just surprised (though I guess I shouldn’t be, knowing how people—and social media in general—tend to be…) that no one else seems to be picking up on the bigger issue, and at the very least I’m pointing it out here in hopes that some more people, well…do, and maybe help spread the word. ‘Cause it’s weird that people are only really talking about Kirkhope.

I brought up the Bowser's Fury song when it came to my knowledge. People are talking about Kirkhope because he tweeted about it and at that point the general public didn't even have access to the movie, so that was the only problem everyone knew about, it's simple as that.

I hope this gets reported as a bigger story by the press, but as it is now, people are just commenting on the info they have available.
 
I brought up the Bowser's Fury song when it came to my knowledge. People are talking about Kirkhope because he tweeted about it and at that point the general public didn't even have access to the movie, so that was the only problem everyone knew about, it's simple as that.

I hope this gets reported as a bigger story by the press, but as it is now, people are just commenting on the info they have available.
This is absolutely not going further than gaming nerd circles.
 
I wasn’t even talking about strictly on this forum, I meant in general. I haven’t seen anyone else bring up the Koji Kondo credit issue anywhere yet, but I’ve seen people sharing the Grant Kirkhope stuff all over. As said above, I think it’s mostly just because of Grant’s tweet, and people aren’t bothering to look into matters more than that themselves.
Question for you - why should people look into it themselves? Why should people care about this, of all things?
 
Quoted by: Tye
1


Back
Top Bottom