Rare Gamer Interviews Graeme Norgate (Blast Corps. Discussion Excerpt)
Please Note: The following snippets of information regarding Blast Corps. have been taken from a larger interview with Graeme Norgate conducted by Rare Gamer found here. All relevant Blast Corps. discussion has been preserved here within its own posting for easier accessibility.
RareGamer: If you could go back and recompose any score you’ve worked on, which one would it be?
Graeme: Any score… with modern day technology or…
RareGamer: Of course, yeah.
Graeme: Of course [Laughs] Blast Corps. because I had that idea… crickey, probably about five or six years ago to do that, but time is not permitting these days so I think I’ve done about five tracks in total.
But I was so restricted with what I had to play with back in those days that it wasn’t how I wanted it to be. So if I had the time… I’ve got the inclination…
[Both Laugh]
Graeme: But if I had the time, that’s what I’d love to do; recompose all that with modern technology.
RareGamer: Okay, which is your favourite track from Blast Corps.?
Graeme: Blimey.. it’s really cheesy but I do like Simian Acres because of the…
RareGamer: The Banjo?
Graeme: The Banjo! Yes, that is what I would call the breakthrough of that project because the game suddenly was coming together, whereas before I was writing music on spec. I.e., you know, ‘You think it’s going to be this,’ ‘You think it’s going to be that,’ so I was writing tunes and not seeing the game – so I didn’t really know what it was going to be like. And that one just writing like a few bars and putting it into the N64 and playing the game with it. And I know Robin [Beanland] came in and he said, ‘That’s my favourite track of yours!’ [Laughs] so [I thought], ‘Right, I’d better carry on with it then’. That was good fun!
RareGamer: King K. Rools theme in Donkey Kong Land [reappeared] in Simian Acres in Blast Corps., are there any tunes that you’ve made in previous games that never came to light but finally got a chance to appear in other titles?
Graeme: Oh, right – so is that the one that was in Donkey Kong Land? Right. Okay. Hang on, let me backtrack… so…
[Both laugh]
Graeme: Yeah – that’s a good question, I’ll need to ask Robin [Beanland] about that, because I think they removed it when they did the Rare Replay. I think they had to take that tune out because it was in DK Land.
I think Robin knows; when I asked him he said he’d find out what happened.
So [pauses] before I answer the question, I’m going to have to ask him about it again. I did that through laziness. [laughs] I can’t remember why I did it either, because I wrote DK Land first and then for whatever reason — I think what it was… sorry I’m just rambling now, it’s like Grandpa Simpson. [laughs]
Blast Corps. went through a period where the Stampers didn’t like it, they didn’t think it was ‘cute enough’… It was always Chris Stamper’s idea – his idea was to do Blast Corps. years and years before we did it. I don’t think it was [turning into] what he wanted. So we went through this period of, ‘it’s too dark’, ‘it’s not cute enough’ and I thought, alright… [laughing] ‘I’ll show you cute!’
[RareGamer laughs]
Graeme: So I took a tune from DK Land and turned it into… whatever it’s called in Blast Corps. [laughs] I probably just called it, ‘Graeme’s level’, something like that. What was the question?
[Both laugh]
RareGamer: From the King K. Rool tune in Donkey Kong Land to Simian Acres in Blast Corps.-
Graeme: That is!
RareGamer: So, over the course of your career you’ve worked on a lot of games and have gained a lot of experience in doing so – are there any songs you’ve made from your earlier days that you cringe on hearing now?
[Graeme laughs]
Graeme: No, they’re all brilliant, what are you talking about? Oh, loads! [Laughing] Absolutely loads – and if I didn’t, I think that would be something wrong with my brain because the idea is that you improve as you go along. I’ve definitely said this before – I don’t know if it was in an interview or not – but there was a piece in Blast Corps. which was the Shuttle Launch which I absolutely cringe whenever I hear it. Even when I wrote it I thought, ‘What am I doing’, you know? Stuck it in anyway.