The Super Mario Bros. Movie is finally out and we are preparing for the internet to soon become awash with hidden references and spoiler talk. One of the film's aspects immediately brought to our attention, however, is to do with the credits, in which it seems that Rareware composer Grant Kirkhope has not been included despite his iconic DK Rap (from Donkey Kong 64) featuring in the film.
If you want to go into the Mario Movie completely blind and without any knowledge of when the track appears, we suggest watching the film before you head into this article as we will go on to talk about the track itself and how the movie uses it...
Kirkhope took to Twitter shortly after the film's release to comment on the fact that he is missing from the film's credits. This is despite the DK Rap playing a pretty prominent role during Donkey Kong's introduction in The Kong Kingdom, during which the 'chorus' line of "DK, Donkey Kong" is repeatedly chanted while the music plays underneath.
The credits themselves simply list the track as "From Donkey Kong 64", completely removing the composer from the situation and drawing the following disappointed response from Kirkhope in which he didn't seem surprised by the omission:
Kirkhope's disappointment comes as the latest in a line of creatives being omitted from credits despite their prior work on the projects. Back in February, a number of Metroid Prime creatives revealed that they felt "let down" by the remaster's crediting, in which they were similarly grouped under the singular game title.
With music composition now so easy to source, we struggle to understand quite why Kirkhope is missing from the credits — his work does play a small but prominent role in the film, after all. Perhaps this is something that Illumination and Nintendo will be able to fix in the future to ensure that all crediting is as it should be.