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Tommy Tallarico | |
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Background information | |
Born | Springfield, Massachusetts, U.S. | February 18, 1968
Genres | |
Occupation(s) |
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Instrument(s) |
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Years active | 1991–2022 |
Member of | Video Games Live |
Website | www |
Thomas Andrew Tallarico (born February 18, 1968) is an American video game music composer, sound designer, businessman, musician, television personality, live show creative director, and producer. He and his company, Tommy Tallarico Studios, worked on several video games since the 1990s. [1] He co-hosted the television shows Electric Playground and Reviews on the Run from 1997 until 2006. [2] In 2002, he created Video Games Live (VGL), a global video game music orchestra.
In 2018, after he became the president of Intellivision Entertainment, the company began work on and sought investors for an original video game console named the Intellivision Amico, for which Tallarico was frequently present in pitch videos. He has since stepped down from his position as CEO but remains on the company's board as president. To date, the console has yet to be released.
In 2020, it came to Tallarico's attention that a sound effect he owned from a game Tommy Tallarico Studios worked on, Messiah , was used without permission in the video game Roblox . This led to a legal dispute which ended in 2022 with the removal of the sound effect from the game. In 2022, a video by British YouTuber Harry "Hbomberguy" Brewis documented an investigation into many disputed high-profile claims that Tallarico had made concerning his career.
Tommy Tallarico grew up in Springfield, Massachusetts, later attending Cathedral High School. [3] [4] He told The Washington Post in an interview he would take his father's tape recorder to the arcade to record songs as a child. [5] After graduating high school, Tallarico attended Western New England University for a year. [4] According to the Los Angeles Times , Tallarico moved to Southern California in 1991 to try and obtain a job in the video game industry. [6] Tallarico took a job as a keyboard salesman at a Guitar Center in Santa Ana, California. [4] On his first day, Tallarico met an executive from Virgin Mastertronic. Shortly after, Tallarico was given a job at Virgin as one of their play-testers. [6]
Tallarico's first musical project at Virgin Interactive was for the Game Boy version of Prince of Persia . "The main focus of writing video game music back then was it had to be simple and have a great melody," Tallarico said. [4] Tallarico worked on a number of other games while at Virgin Interactive, including The Terminator . [7]
Tallarico continued working with Virgin Interactive as head of music and video division until 1994, when he went on to found Tommy Tallarico Studios. David Perry formed Shiny Entertainment at the same time, and the two studios collaborated on Earthworm Jim and MDK . [8] In 2005, Tallarico wrote part of an orchestral score for Advent Rising performed by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. [9]
In September 1999, the "oof" sound effect was created for the game Messiah during its development, with the involvement of sound designer Joey Kuras (then employed at Tallarico Studios) and potentially, Tallarico. [10] [11] Tallarico has at times claimed that Kuras created the sound, that it was a collaboration between the pair, and that he created it himself. [11] [12] The sound effect was subsequently used in Roblox from 2006 to 2020, played after a character died in-game, and became an iconic part of the game after its adoption by meme culture. [13] Tallarico, who claims ownership of the sound, disputed Roblox's use of it in June 2019. [14] This dispute ended in July 2022 when the Roblox Corporation pulled the sound from all games on its platform. [15]
In 1997, Victor Lucas, founder of the Electric Playground, started Electric Playground TV with Tallarico, which provided gaming news and reviews. In 2002, the reviews section of Electric Playground, Reviews on the Run, was spun-off into its own program, which Tallarico and Lucas hosted as well. In the U.S., Reviews on the Run was broadcast on G4 TV as Judgment Day. [16] [17] [ dead link ] In 2006, Tallarico began to spend less time on the show owing to other projects, missing almost all of 2007 and 2008. In 2009, Scott Jones took over his spot as full-time co-host with Victor Lucas. [18] [19]
In 2002, Tallarico co-founded Video Games Live, a symphony orchestra concert series that plays music from video games, with Jack Wall. [20] Tallarico hosted and played guitar for the shows. He also created the visuals—scenes from video games, as well as lights and lasers—that are played in sync with the music. [21] [22]
Tallarico has produced seven VGL albums. The first album, Video Games Live Volume 1, debuted at No. 10 on Billboard Top 10 for Classical Music Crossovers. [23] The second volume, Level 2, also sold as a Blu-ray DVD concert, debuted at No. 8 on the same Billboard list. [24] In August 2013, Tallarico also opened a crowdfunding campaign for the third album Level 3 on Kickstarter. [25] According to Tallarico, Kickstarter was chosen as the means to fund the album because he had not been successful in attracting support from the recording industry, which he claimed was because music producers "don't think gamers are willing to pay for music" [26] and did not recognize the perceived "culturally artistic significance" of video game soundtracks. [25] The Level 3 campaign successfully met and surpassed its goal of $250,000. [27]
In 2014, Tallarico and electronic dance music artist BT began working on Electronic Opus . As with Video Games Live, Electronic Opus presents EDM music alongside a symphony orchestra. They used Kickstarter to fund an album, with a goal of $200,000. The show opened at the Miami Winter Music Conference in 2015. [28] [29]
In 2016, Tallarico co-produced the Capcom Live! concert tour with Shota Nakama. [30] [31]
Following the death of Keith Robinson in 2017, founder of Intellivision Productions, Tallarico purchased a stake in the company from the estate. In May 2018, Intellivision Entertainment was re-formed with him as president. In the winter of that year, he announced the intent for the company to release the Intellivision Amico with the target of October 2020. [32] As of July 2022, it is reportedly still being worked on. [33]
As of September 2022, the Amico has been delayed at least three times. [34] The console has been viewed very negatively by critics, drawing criticism for its delays, [35] fundraising tactics, [36] and use of NFTs. [37] The status of the console has been described as "grim" by TechRaptor [38] and compared to a car crash by Kotaku. [39]
In February 2022, Tallarico stepped down from his role as CEO of Intellivision, remaining on board as the company's president and largest shareholder. He was replaced by the company's former chief revenue officer Phil Adam. [40]
In 2002, Tallarico founded the Game Audio Network Guild (G.A.N.G.), a non-profit to recognize achievements in video game music and audio. [41] The guild hosts annual awards for achievement in game audio. [42]
In November 2022, British YouTuber Harry "Hbomberguy" Brewis published a video essay which documented many of the high-profile claims that Tallarico had made concerning his career—including the number of video games he worked on, the number of Guinness World Records he earned, being the creator of the sound effect at the heart of his Roblox legal dispute, and being the first American to work on the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise—and concluded many were either gross exaggerations or knowingly false. [11] [43]
Tallarico is vegan, and advocates for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, including donating music for the PETA browser game Super Tofu Boy in 2010. [44]
According to the LA Times , his home in San Juan Capistrano "looks as if a 12-year-old with a huge bank account went wild", including a life-size Indiana Jones, several Star Wars characters, and a statue of Merlin. [45] Tallarico has falsely claimed that the house had at one point been featured on MTV Cribs . [11] [43] [46] [47] As of February 2024, he has listed it for sale for $2,999,000. [48]
Year | Title | Role(s) | Notes | Ref. |
---|---|---|---|---|
1991 | Chuck Rock | Testing | [49] | |
Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves | Quality assurance | Game Boy version | [50] | |
1992 | Prince of Persia | Music & SFX | [43] | |
Muhammad Ali Heavyweight Boxing | With Michelle Sorger | |||
Monopoly Deluxe | Music & sound coordinator | |||
Jeep Jamboree: Off Road Adventure | Game Boy version | [51] | ||
Greg Norman's Golf Power | Product manager, assistant manual editor | [52] | ||
M.C. Kids | Quality assurance | |||
Corporation | ||||
Club Racquetball | Sound | With Steve Henifin | ||
Global Gladiators | Music, Sound FX & Samples | Sega Genesis version | ||
Batman: Return of the Joker | Music & sound | |||
1993 | Another World | |||
The Terminator | Director of Music & FX | With Brad Fiedel, Bijan Shaheer, Joey Kuras and TeknoMan of Teknologic | [53] | |
Cool Spot | Music, SFX & samples | Sega Genesis and Super NES versions | ||
Super Caesars Palace | Executive musicians, actor | With Steve Henefin | ||
RoboCop versus The Terminator | Director of Music & FX | |||
Color a Dinosaur | Music & sound | |||
Super Slap Shot | ||||
1994 | Race Days | |||
Caesars Palace | Music | With Seth Mendelsohn & Matt Furniss | ||
Disney's Aladdin | With Don Griffin | |||
Earthworm Jim: Special Edition | Music & SFX | With Mark Miller | [43] | |
The Jungle Book | Director of Music and FX | With various others. | ||
Heart of the Alien | Music & sound | With Jean-François Freitas | ||
Demolition Man | Original game music | 3DO version, with Keith Arem, Joey Kuras & Charlie Malone | ||
1995 | Agile Warrior: F-111X | Sprite actor, ingame sound effects | With Joey Kuras and Keith Arem | |
Madden NFL 96 | Music & sound | |||
Spot Goes To Hollywood | ||||
Earthworm Jim 2 | With Tony Bernetich and Christopher Beck | [54] [ better source needed ] | ||
Jim Lee's WildC.A.T.S: Covert Action Teams | ||||
1996 | Burning Road | "U.S. Remix" Composer | ||
Golden Nugget | Music | |||
Skeleton Warriors | Music & SFX | With Todd Dennis, Jean-Christophe Beck and Eric Swanson | ||
Black Dawn | With Todd Dennis | |||
1997 | MDK | |||
VMX Racing | With Mark Duncan & Jon Studtmann | |||
Duckman: The Graphic Adventures of a Private Dick | Voice talent, music composition | With Todd Dennis, John Lawrence & Bill Hendrickson | ||
Treasures of the Deep | Music and sound effects | With Steve Woods & Todd Dennis | ||
The 7th Guest | Sound | With Steve Henifin | ||
1998 | Wild 9 | Music and SFX | With Sonic Mayhem | |
HardBall 6 | Sound effects | |||
WarGames: Defcon 1 | Music & Sound FX, voice acting | |||
Apocalypse | Movie scoring and sound effects | |||
Beavis and Butt-Head Do U. | Music & sound | |||
1999 | Ultra Fighters | Music | With Scott Coldwell | |
Redline | ||||
R/C Stunt Copter | Audio script | |||
Demolition Racer | Writer, producer, performer, sound effects | With various others | ||
Knockout Kings 2000 | Sound design | With Joey Kuras | ||
Tomorrow Never Dies | Music and Sound FX | With Sonic Mayhem, Howard Ulyate & Todd Dennis | ||
Wings of Fury | Music | Game Boy Color version | ||
Unreal Mission Pack I: Return to Na Pali | Sound effects | With Alexander Brandon & Eric Heberlin | ||
2000 | Messiah | Music and sound effects | With Jesper Kyd and Joey Kuras | [12] |
Arthur's Absolutely Fun Day! | Music | |||
Spider-Man | With Howard Ulyate | |||
Sacrifice | Sound effects | With Joey Kuras | ||
Evil Dead: Hail to the King | Music composer, producer and audio production coordinator | With Todd Dennis, Chris Rickwood & Jack Wall | ||
2001 | Knockout Kings 2001 | Sound and audio | With various others | |
Maximo: Ghosts to Glory | Music & sound design | |||
Casper: Spirit Dimensions | Sound and voice | With Joey Kuras | ||
Oddworld: Munch's Oddysee | Music | Opening cinematic only | ||
2002 | Scooby-Doo! Night of 100 Frights | With Todd Dennis & Howard Uyate | ||
Street Hoops | Audio director | |||
2003 | War of the Monsters | Sound FX | ||
Black & Bruised | Voice over producer | |||
Devastation | Additional music | |||
Maximo vs. Army of Zin | Music, sound design & voice acting | With various others | ||
SpyHunter 2 | Cinematic audio, sound design & composition | With Joey Kuras & Howard Ulyate | ||
2004 | The Incredibles | Sound FX design | With Nathan Lee Smith | |
The Bard's Tale | Music, audio, lyrics, sound design | With various others. | ||
Fugitive Hunter: War on Terror | Music producer | |||
The X-Files: Resist or Serve | Audio director | |||
2005 | Advent Rising | |||
2006 | AND 1 Streetball | |||
Jaws: Unleashed | Orchestrations, arrangements | With various others | ||
Snoopy vs. the Red Baron | Music & sound design | With Joey Kuras and Scott Ligon | ||
Pac-Man World Rally | With Joey Kuras | |||
2008 | Line Rider 2: Unbound | Sound effects | ||
Defendin' De Penguin | Composer | With Mike Rubino & Rod Abernathy | ||
2009 | Sonic and the Black Knight | Music, arrangements | With Howard Drossin, Richard Jacques, Jun Senoue and others | [43] |
2010 | Flip's Twisted World | Music and sound effects | With Joey Kuras | |
Super Tofu Boy | Music donation | [44] | ||
2012 | Retro City Rampage | Actor |
This section of a biography of a living person does not include any references or sources .(December 2022) |
Year | Title | Notes |
---|---|---|
1994 | Virgin Games Greatest Hits, Vol. 1 | Compilation of tracks from various games |
1996 | Games Greatest Hits, Vol. 2 | |
2006 | Earthworm Jim Anthology | Compilation of music from Earthworm Jim with remixes |
2008 | Video Games Live – Level 1 | |
2010 | Video Games Live – Level 2 | |
2011 | Play for Japan: The Album | With various others, charity album |
2014 | Video Games Live – Level 3 | |
2015 | Video Games Live – Through Time and Space: Chrono Piano Album | |
Video Games Live – Level 4 | ||
2016 | Video Games Live – Zelda Majora's Mask Piano Album | |
Video Games Live – Level 5 | ||
2018 | Video Games Live – Level 6 |
The Intellivision is a home video game console released by Mattel Electronics in 1979. The name is a portmanteau of "intelligent television". Development began in 1977, the same year as the launch of its main competitor, the Atari 2600. In 1984, Mattel sold its video game assets to a former Mattel Electronics executive and investors, eventually becoming INTV Corporation. Game development ran from 1978 to 1990, when the Intellivision was discontinued. From 1980 to 1983, more than 3.75 million consoles were sold. As per Intellivision Entertainment the final tally through 1990 is somewhere between 4.5 and 5 million consoles sold.
BurgerTime, originally released as Hamburger in Japan, is a 1982 arcade video game from Data East released initially for its DECO Cassette System. The player is chef Peter Pepper, who must walk over hamburger ingredients in a maze of platforms and ladders while avoiding anthropomorphic hot dogs, fried eggs, and pickles which are in pursuit.
A home video game console is a video game console that is designed to be connected to a display device, such as a television, and an external power source as to play video games. While initial consoles were dedicated units with only a few games fixed into the electronic circuits of the system, most consoles since support the use of swappable game media, either through game cartridges, optical discs, or through digital distribution to internal storage.
The Blue Sky Rangers is a group of Intellivision game programmers who previously worked for Mattel in the early 1980s.
Demon Attack is a fixed shooter video game programmed by Rob Fulop for the Atari 2600 and published by Imagic in 1982. The game involves the player controlling a laser cannon from the surface of a planet, shooting winged demons that fly down and attack the player in different sets of patterns.
Astrosmash is a fixed shooter video game for the Intellivision console, designed by John Sohl, and released by Mattel Electronics in 1981. The player uses a laser cannon to destroy falling meteors, bombs, and other targets.
Messiah is an action-adventure video game developed by Shiny Entertainment and published by Interplay. The game was promoted for its tessellation technology, which was claimed to drastically increase or reduce the number of polygons based on the speed of the system running the game. Messiah received a mixed response from reviewers.
Shark! Shark! is an Intellivision game originally designed by Don Daglow, and with additional design and programming by Ji-Wen Tsao, one of the first female game programmers in the history of video games. The player is a fish who must eat smaller fishes in order to gain points and extra lives while avoiding enemies such as larger fishes, sharks, jellyfish, lobsters and crabs. After eating a certain number of fish, the player's fish grows in size and is thus able to eat a larger selection of fish. However, while the larger fish becomes a bit faster, he is less agile than the small fish and has a harder time avoiding enemies.
Advanced Dungeons & Dragons is an Intellivision game and was one of the first Advanced Dungeons & Dragons games to be licensed by TSR, Inc. It was later retitled to Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Cloudy Mountain to distinguish it from the sequel, Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Treasure of Tarmin. It is the first Intellivision cartridge to use more than 4K of ROM.
Lock 'n' Chase (ロック・ン・チェイス) is a maze chase video game developed by Data East and released in arcades in Japan in 1981. It was licensed to Taito for distribution in North America. Lock 'n' Chase has similarities to Pac-Man, including a goal of collecting dots, with the addition of doors that periodically block pathways. Home versions for the Intellivision and Atari 2600 were published by Mattel in 1982 and an Apple II version in January 1983.
Jack Wall is an American video game music composer. He has worked on video game music for over 20 games including the Myst franchise, Splinter Cell, Jade Empire, Mass Effect, and Call of Duty. Wall earned a degree in civil engineering from Drexel University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and, after a brief stint working in civil engineering, transitioned into music production. He worked with musicians such as John Cale, David Byrne, and Patti Smith, and, after performing increasingly complex production and sound engineering tasks, moved into music composition in 1995.
Earthworm Jim is a series of platform games featuring an earthworm named Jim who wears a robotic suit and battles the forces of evil. The series is noted for its platforming and shooting gameplay, surreal humor, and edgy art style. Four games were released in the series: Earthworm Jim, Earthworm Jim 2, Earthworm Jim 3D, and Earthworm Jim: Menace 2 the Galaxy, with the first game released in 1994. The series had lain dormant for almost a decade before Gameloft remade the original game in HD for PlayStation Network and Xbox Live Arcade in 2010. Interplay announced Earthworm Jim 4 in 2008; little to no information surfaced until May 2019 and August 2020, and development went dormant once again by January 2023.
Earthworm Jim 4 is a proposed video game in the Earthworm Jim series. It was originally announced by Interplay Entertainment in 2008, and referred to by Interplay as "still in development" in May 2011. Later commentary over the next decade from individual developers would contest its development status, until May 2019, when it was announced that the game was being developed for the Intellivision Amico console. Lack of updates in the years following has again lead to the belief that the game is on hold or cancelled.
Roblox is an online game platform and game creation system developed by Roblox Corporation that allows users to program games and play games created by other users. Created by David Baszucki and Erik Cassel in 2004 and released in 2006, the platform hosts user-created games of multiple genres coded in the programming language Lua. For most of Roblox's history, it was relatively small, both as a platform and as a company. Roblox began to grow rapidly in the second half of the 2010s, and this growth has been accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Skiing is a sports video game produced by Mattel and released for its Intellivision video game system in 1980. Up to six players compete individually on either a downhill or slalom course to see who can complete the course the fastest. For the game's initial release, Mattel obtained a license from the U. S. Ski Team and used its name and logo in the game's box art. In 1988, INTV Corporation released an enhanced version of the game entitled Mountain Madness: Super Pro Skiing.
Snafu is a video game released by Mattel for its Intellivision video game system in 1981. One of a number of snake games released in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Snafu features players controlling ever-lengthening serpents as they attempt to corner their opponents and trap them.
Beauty & the Beast is a platform game written by Wendell Brown for the Intellivision and released on December 31, 1982 by Imagic. It is a single-player game with a concept similar to Nintendo's Donkey Kong.
The Intellivision Amico is a home video game console that is being developed and marketed by Intellivision Entertainment. It was originally slated to be released in October 2020, but repeated delays followed, leaving the console without a release date.
The Terminator is a 1993 platform shoot 'em up game developed and published by Virgin Games for the Sega CD. It is based on the 1984 film of the same name, and includes full motion video from the film. The game was praised for its graphics and its soundtrack performed by Tommy Tallarico, although the film footage was considered low quality. The gameplay also received some criticism.
The 6th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards was the 6th edition of the Interactive Achievement Awards, an annual awards event that honored the best games in the video game industry during 2002. The awards were arranged by the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences (AIAS) and were held at the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas on February 27, 2003 as part of the Academy's 2003 D.I.C.E. Summit. It was hosted by Dave Foley with presenters including Cliff Bleszinski, Xander Berkeley, Don James, Shigeru Miyamoto, Julie Benz, Blue Man Group, Tony Hawk, Ed Fries, Kelly Hu, David Jones, Nina Kaczorowski, Doug Lowenstein, Syd Mead, Mike Metzger, Vince Neil, Tommy Tallarico, Amy Weber and Victor Webster. It had musical performances by Unwritten Law and The Players Band.