Tommy Tallarico

Tommy Tallarico (born February 18, 1968) is the owner of Tommy Tallarico Studios, the executive producer and CEO of Video Games Live and a two time Guinness World Record holder. Tallarico has composed music for games such as Earthworm Jim. His company was hired as an outside contractor to create sound effects early in the development of Metroid Prime, and their work recurred throughout the series, as well as the Space World 2000 demo.
==Metroid Prime==
Tallarico is uncredited in all of the games; allegedly this was because of an error on Retro Studios' part, and Tallarico claimed to have received an apology for the omission. After major restructuring at Retro and the cancellation of their other projects (Car Combat, NFL Retro Football and Raven Blade), Tallarico's contract ended and Retro's internal audio department took over Prime, but retained his work in the game. On his website, Tallarico claimed that his studio "did a lot of the main sound design".https://web.archive.org/web/20160215050756/http://www.tallarico.com/index.php?s=metroidprime Contrary to popular belief at the time, he was not hired as the game's composer, and has never set foot inside Retro Studios. Scott Petersen later asked Tallarico for his original sound sessions and high bit-rate and sample-rate mixes of all of his sounds, for archival purposes. Petersen further praised Tommy and his colleague Joey Kuras for their contributions.
Tallarico claimed in an interview with Shinesparkers that Nintendo producer Shigeru Miyamoto and Retro's then-president Jeff Spangenberg approached him at a party during E3 1998 and offered him a role on a "top secret" project. Tallarico said he immediately accepted the offer since Miyamoto was involved. Learning it was Metroid further excited him, especially as the series had never been developed outside of Japan.Metroid Anniversary Special: Tommy Tallarico (gamesTM), page 42, unknown issue While sounds are usually added in post-production, Tallarico said that Miyamoto requested that he create "really cool" sounds with no direction. Clark Wen, who was later hired as the audio lead of Prime, said he took the opposite approach for the remainder of the project: weapons first, sounds second. He also said that only the Power Beam and Charge Combo sound effects had been done when he started working on Prime, apparently contradicting Tallarico's account of how much audio he had contributed. A video released by the YouTube personality Hbomberguy in 2022 examined this discrepancy and other claims Tallarico has made and came to the conclusion that they were exaggerations or lies.hbomberguy. "ROBLOX_OOF.mp3". YouTube. November 17, 2022. Retrieved December 3, 2022. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0twDETh6QaI (starts at 51:36)Yarwood, Jack (November 18, 2022). "New Video Examines The Many Lofty Claims Of Tommy Tallarico". Time Extension. Retrieved November 22, 2022.
In 2003, Tallarico released his studio's Prime sound effects as part of the SFX Kit library. Kuras' name appears in the metadata for every sound in the package, indicating that he, not Tallarico, created them, instead Tommy is listed as the executive producer of the kit.SynaMax. "Who created Metroid Prime's first sound effects?" YouTube. December 12, 2022. Retrieved May 31, 2023. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJ6GxBWHogI
==Trivia==
*Asked by Shinesparkers whether he believes Metroid games are better suited to having an orchestrated score (such as that of Metroid: Other M, composed by Kuniaki Haishima) or a traditional, atmospheric and synthesized score, Tallarico said that he thinks it can work either way or with a combination of both.
*Tallarico was featured in Shinesparkers' tribute video for the series' 25th anniversary.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqOyhS8hLVI
*Tallarico claims to be a cousin of American musician Steven Tyler.
==Gallery==
IGN Unplugged Issue 15 2002-08 IGN.com US 0013.jpg|Tallarico mentioned in the August 2002 issue of IGN Unplugged.
==External links==
*Official website
*Tallarico on LinkedIn
*Tallarico on MobyGames
*Shinesparkers interview
*Wikipedia article
*Tallarico on IMDb
*Facebook fan page
==References==
ru:Томми Талларико
Category:Retro Studios employees
Category:Composers