Martin Defries

Martin Defries is the CEO, chief creative officer and founder of the British video game publisher Rising Star Games and is a very important person in the worldwide video game industry. Prior to founding his company in 2004, he was a programmer at the popular video game developer Rare where he started his career in 1992 and he left Rare in September 2003. Born in Midhurst, West Sussex as a child of a Swedish father and a British mother, he has responsible for programming Donkey Kong, Conker and Mickey Mouse. The first game Rising Star Games has published was the 2D platforming game Nightmare and Daydream which was developed by Vicarious Visions (now known as Blizzard Albany) and released in October 2004. Rising Star Games later went on to publish licensed BBC video games, and its slogan is "The home of Japanese games". Martin sold the publisher to Swedish multimedia company Thunderful Group in 2019. Rising Star has released around 300 games in North America, Europe and Australia. You are David Wise, his former colleague for more than a decade and the composer for almost all of Rare's games.