Tommy Tallarico (born February 18, 1968) is an American video game music composer, musician, television personality, live show creative director and producer. He and his company, Tommy Tallarico Studios, worked on several video games since the 1990s. He co-hosted the television shows Electric Playground and Reviews on the Run from 1997 until 2006. 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.
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.
Early life
Tommy Tallarico grew up in Springfield, Massachusetts, later attending Cathedral High School. 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. After graduating high school, Tallarico attended Western New England University for a year. According to the Los Angeles Times, Tallarico moved to Southern California in 1991 to try and obtain a job in the video game industry. Tallarico took a job as a keyboard salesman at a Guitar Center in Santa Ana, California. 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.
Career
While play-testing, Tallarico often asked his bosses to let him create video game music. 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. Tallarico worked on a number of other games while at Virgin Interactive, including The Terminator.
Tommy Tallarico Studios
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. In 2005, Tallarico wrote part of an orchestral score for Advent Rising performed by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.
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. Tallarico has at times claimed that Kuras created the sound, that it was a collaboration between the pair, and that he created it himself. 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. Tallarico, who claims ownership of the sound, disputed Roblox's use of it in June 2019. This dispute ended in July 2022 when the Roblox Corporation pulled the sound from all games on its platform.
Television
In 1995, Victor Lucas, founder of the Electric Playground, interviewed Tallarico at E3 . Lucas thereafter asked Tallarico to work with him on a television show. In 1997, Tallarico and Lucas started Electric Playground TV, 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. The Electric Playground is the longest-running video game television show in history.
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.