Dec 092015
We chat with the world-famous composer about Earthworm Jim, the early days of game music and how Video Games Live came to be, all while listening to choice tunes from his second Greatest Hits album.
0:00:00 – Launch (PlayStation Demo Disc)
0:16:26 – Champion (Madden NFL 96)
0:17:31 – The Chosen (Skeleton Warriors)
0:19:36 – Road King (Hyper 3-D Pinball)
0:27:25 – Falling (Earthworm Jim)
0:29:46 – Tangerines (Earthworm Jim 2)
0:31:45 – Subterranean (Earthworm Jim 2)
0:55:38 – DOTA 2 (Video Games Live Level 3)
1:14:27 – Departure (Hyper 3-D Pinball)
I can’t thank you enough for this. I grew up watching some show with videogame reviews etc. that Tommy Tallarico was on and I have been following his career (passively) ever since. This site is super dope. Your reverence for video game music is contagious and part of what makes this hobby fun for me.
This is gonna be an awesome episode! I actually had the pleasure of seeing Video Games Live back in 2010 and it was a magical experience. I don’t think the tour has been to my city since, but I’d gladly go back again. From Halo to Metal Gear, pretty much all my favourite VGM was presented in some form, and it was validating as hell.
Great Show! Tommy sounds like an interesting guy.
And no offence meant by this but Tommy is a man that keeps good track of his accomplishments. Did he have a cheat sheet printed out?
This is seriously an amazing episode. Entertaining and instructive. I wouldn’t mind seeing more episodes like this with the composers recounting how the music was developed and whatnot (obviously hard when many composers are Japanese). Keep up the good work.
This was a fantastic episode that I plan on listening to again tomorrow at work. I watched so much Eletric Playground on G4 so saw him review a lot of games with Victor Lucas (Like I recall his thoughts on Super Mario Sunshine) Anyways, this was the best interview Lasertime has ever done. Fun, well-paced, informative, he seemed to enjoy it almost as much as Chris and Brett. The music choices were great and added so much depth to the show…though I wish they would’ve added the cool spot bonus song when they were talking about it, I youtubed it as soon as I got home.
Thank you for this episode
Great episode! Loved all the insight and intricate music explanations Tommy gave, particularly with how old-school game music was made. Note Number, Note Duration, Time Between Notes. That’d take me forever to get right. 🙂
I greatly appreciate what Video Games Live has done in roping in non-VGM people. While I think at this point I fall in the more classical VGM orchestral concerts camp (aside from the rock/dance acts you’d find at MAGFest and other cons) I always appreciate what he’s done for game music. And his compositions are really damn good. “New Junk City” and “Subterranean” are some of my favorite Earthworm Jim 1+2 tracks and “Destinations Unknown” from The Terminator is simply beautiful.
With that said I was a little bummed by how he criticized the 8-bit era of music. Sure, most of the Japanese composers back then were also programmers, and while the hardware/audio itself was simplistic, that’s why those composers stood out: they were able to make incredibly good melodies that still last to this day with huge limitations.
I interviewed Tommy for Pixelitis back in 2014 during MAGFest. He’s a super chill guy. His VGL panel was hilarious and I was really taken aback by how down-to-earth he was. After the panel I asked him about doing a video interview and he said he was down. Soon after, he was swarmed by fans but he took his time with each one, never tried to rush through things or anything like that. After most of the fans dispersed I asked him if maybe he wanted to reschedule the interview and he was like “No, let’s do it!” and here we go:
VG Live is actually playing in NJ on Jan 2nd. I’m headed there!
http://www.ticketmaster.com/Video-Games-Live-tickets/artist/976815
He really does come off as a down-to-earth guy. Really knows his stuff (obviously), but you can tell that he absolutely loves what he does.
Not gonna lie, this is probably my favorite episode to date.
So much great information here, and it was incredible to get the inside scoop on the audio production tools they had in the 90s. Even better that it was from someone who was changing the industry.
Keep it up, would love to hear more episodes like this.
Check out this old interview / tour of his place that he did in the 90s for Playstation Underground. (Was I the only person who got those discs?)
This was a wonderful episode. So interesting to hear stories from the industry back in the day. Tommy is such an affable dude and everyone who enjoys listening to game music owes this guy big time for helping the songs and composers get more recognition for their awesome work.
I hope you can bring more people from the development side onto the podcast, this was a real treat!
Thank you guys for giving me another solid hour of great audio entertainment! Keep up the great work!
/Billy
Excellent episode. I saw Videogames Live when it came up here, I loved it. But I had no idea just who Tommy was. Now that I have the context of who he is and what he’s accomplish. Makes me really happy I took the time to get my CD and program signed. It’s an awesome show and I’d recommend it to anyone.
That episode was the bee’s knees.I loved all the inside baseball info.
Great episode, would love even more interview formats in the future