Banjo Kazooie Nuts and Bolts was my last game at Rare and of course was a very upsetting time for me as I’d been there 13 years. I had no idea when I started back in October 1995 that the games I worked on would go on to be such successes and that people would still mail me about them today. So, I decided early on that it would be great if I could include little references from the first two games in the new video games music as everyone had such a fond memory of the early games. It was great to re-visit the old stuff and work out which old tune would fit well into a new tune.

The first piece I had a go at was Spiral Mountain. Rare had just bought us a real Banjo so I thought I’d definitely have to learn it enough to get that tune done. I just stuck a mic up in my office and sat and worked out the chords and recorded it into Pro Tools. I intentionally made it a little rough round the edges, I imagined it was Banjo sitting there trying to remember how he played the Banjo all those years ago. I think I did Mumbo’s Mountain next, at that time I thought that level was going to make it into the game but it didn’t in the end, you can hear a bit of it in the trailer for the game. I have the full 5 minute version so I’ll put it up on this site some time. One of the pieces that a few people have asked me about is a Nuts and Bolts version of Grunty Industries that I did but it didn’t get used, so here it is, it’s just my MIDI demo version but you can hear what I had in mind.

As I was doing Viva Pinata Trouble in Paradise at the same time as Banjo it quickly became obvious that I just wasn’t going to have enough time to get it all done. I asked Robin Beanland and Dave Clynick to help me out with the video games music and the sound design was shared amongst the rest of the Rare music staff. I would’ve liked to have done all of Nuts and Bolts, sound design too, but I would never have managed it. As it was, it meant I had to do two orchestral trips to Prague in the same year only a few months apart.

I suppose it was fitting that Nuts and Bolts was my last game at Rare, I’d sort of come full circle. Needless to say that my time at Rare was an unbelievable experience and I wish them all well.