We caught up with Tommy Tallarico, co-creator of Video Games live again last week as they came through DFW to perform with the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra. Tommy told us about what all has changed since they performed in Dallas in 2007, and about some upcoming projects, both for him personally, and for Video Games Live.

Luke Wallace, Realm Media Networks (RMN): So it's been two years since we last spoke. That was back in 2007. Video Games Live was just starting a regular schedule at that point. It had been pretty sporadic before then, but it had become more regular, with shows a few times a month. Since then, you've been real busy. I count about 100 shows since then. Can you tell us about some of the places you remember the most out of those last couple years?

Tommy Tallarico (TT): Yeah, some of the places, like when we go down to Brazil, for example, it's just a whole other vibe. It's insane. We go down for three weeks at a time, and play sold out shows to 5-6-7,000 people at a time. And their so passionate about it down there. Screaming through the whole show, chanting through the whole show, humming along to the symphonies, it's real intense. We also played a couple shows in Taiwan a couple times, and they really, really love Video Games Live out there. We get off the airplane at the airport, there's like 100 people, holding signs and stuff, greeting us at the airport! Last time we played there, we played in February at the Taiwan International Music Festival, with synchronized fireworks, big outdoor thing. There were 100,000 people there. It was crazy. That was huge. Those are some memorable ones, but we played Wolf Trap with the National Symphony Orchestra, our country's orchestra, just this past weekend. And some other highlights over the past couple years? Portugal, Spain, the first video game concert in France. We played Germany, London, and Mexico, we played in a 6,000 seat bullring in Mexico, which was insane! And our big news coming up, in regards to the rest of the year, is that we're doing a whole tour in China, which is gonna be huge, and we're right about to announce two dates in Tokyo, Japan during the Tokyo Game Show (TGS), and I can tell you we're going to put out some press releases in a few weeks here. It's going to be the greatest video game concert ever produced! Because we're going to have every single major game composer in the world at that event, either performing on stage with us, or as a special guest. And when I say all the greatest, I really mean all the greatest. If you were to list your top 10 game composers, I guarantee they're going to be at the event.

RMN: So, Mexico, Canada, England, France, Portugal, Scotland, Germany, Taiwan... has that traveling been hard?

TT: I love it! I'm a single guy, I don't have any kids. My brother works with us, so he's on the road working with us. We're all a little family of friends here. We just got back from Singapore. Singapore is a place, where in my life time, I may have never have travelled to, if it weren't for Video Games Live. We're going all sorts of amazing places, and we always try to get there a couple days early, or stay a couple days later, so we really have time to soak in the culture, and look around and stuff. No, I love to travel. I really do.

RMN: You've got a big Blizzard event coming up in a couple days. How beneficial has that partnership with Blizzard been?

TT: I've been friends with Mike Morhaime, President and CEO of Blizzard for almost 20 years. We've always been good friends, and Russel Brower, who runs the audio part at Blizzard, another very dear friend of mine for 10-15 years. And all the composers, Jason Hayes, who does most of the Warcraft piece that we do in our show, Video Games Live, it's written by Jason. So yeah, it's really been great, Blizzard's always been very supportive of us, they really understand it, they really feel that Video Games Live is the best show to really represent their stuff, with our effects, video, and lighting... the way we get the crowd going. We've played at four Blizzard events over the last couple of years. We helped them to launch Starcraft 2 in Korea. We played BlizzCon in Anneheim twice, and we also helped them to launch Diablo 3 in France. So it was very cool because, here there are playing the Starcraft 2 trailer, for the very first time, while Video Games Live is synchronized, playing it with the orchestra. They know how to do it, they do it right, they do it big! We're just really happy to be their friends, and we'll do more of these things. We're probably going to be doing a special Blizzard show over in Taiwan later this year. We're incorporating a special Blizzard show with our normal show in Houston, with the Houston Symphony. It's our 4th year back. Whenever we come back to a city, we're always trying to come up with new ideas. Like here tonight, we were here a couple years ago in Dallas with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, but tonight we have a bunch of new stuff. Chrono Trigger, Chrono Cross, Castlevania, Metroid, a whole bunch of stuff. We're playing Mega Man now, a bunch of fun stuff. There's always great material. We've created over 60 segments for Video Games Live, but we can only play 20 of them a night. We've never played the same show twice. In those hundreds of shows on the website, we've never played the same show twice.

RMN: So you mentioned a couple of the new segments that have been added. How do you decide which ones get pulled for each event?

TT: It's my toughest job! [laughs] If we've been there already... For tonight I took the Dallas setlist, and I said, "ok, what did we play in Dallas last time?" You gotta play some of the standards. People want to hear Mario and Zelda, and Metal Gear, and Kingdom Hearts, and certain Final Fantasy. But the great thing is whenever we come back, you're gonna see a whole new visual experience, or maybe it's different music from Metal Gear Solid this time, or different music from Final Fantasy. There's so many great things. One of the first things you'll notice from this year compared to last time is we're using three screens now, and we're incorporating them interactively. For example, when we play Warcraft this year, when the video happens, effects happen that work within the video on the sides. So if there's fire in the main video, we have fire going off on the sides. It creates more of an environment. We're always updating the videos as well, and adding new games. The Metal Gear video you'll see this time is synchronized differently than the one you saw a couple years ago, it incorporates more Metal Gear 4 footage. And again, always adding. We're not playing it tonight, but we also play Metal Gear 3: Snake Eater. Even though we keep the franchise sometimes, we'll change up the tunes. But that being said, yeah, there's so much great stuff, how do you choose, right? Is it Metroid or is it Castlevania tonight? Is it Mega Man or Chrono Trigger? How very very difficult to figure that out.

RMN: Have you ever thought about letting the public decide?

TT: Oh, they do! Sorry, on our website, on the front page of videogameslive.com, our mailing list has you put in your area code, or city and state, and then what games you want to hear. We can extract that data and use that. We use it mostly for countries, because the folks in Taiwan have very different tastes than the people in Japan, which have different tastes from the people in China, which have different tastes than the people in New Zealand, and Brazil, and Mexico. I'll give you an example. For some reason, people in France love Monkey Island! That's like their favorite game ever, of all time! So we did a special Monkey Island arrangement for the french show. Beyond Good & Evil, with Michel Ancel, the great french designer. We played Beyond Good & Evil there, but we also played the new trailer from Beyond Good & Evil 2, while they played the music live and Michel actually did the sound effects with his mouth on the microphone. There's so many great things, and that's why the Japan show's going to be so special. It's going to be epic on many levels. If you can imagine the talent that's there.

RMN: Any other games you're looking to incorporate soon?

TT: Sure, right now we're working on an Earthworm Jim segment, one of mine. A lot of people ask us for that one. We're working on Shadow of the Colossus right now. We just finished Mega Man. Super Smash Brothers, a lot more Final Fantasy, 4 or 5 more Final Fantasy tunes. Silent Hill, with Akira [Yamaoka]. We just finished Metal Gear Solid: Snake Eater. Those are some of the upcoming ones. Also, we get a lot of requests for Pokemon, so we're looking at some of the battle music right now, and we're also doing a orchestral arrangement of Still Alive from Portal, with the choir, and a singer, and stuff. So we're thinking about doing that as well. So much great stuff out there. Pac-Man, we're doing a big band swing Pac-man arrangement, with Ms. Pac-Man. Lots of stuff out there.

RMN: Very cool, do you ever have any problems getting the rights to play a game? Is there some stuff you've been wanting to play, but haven't been able to?

TT: Not really, at the beginning it was almost impossible, people thought we were completely insane! Now, game companies are calling us, saying "hey, can you put our new game in your show?" So the tides have turned. Once we've grown it from three shows a year to 70 shows a year, we've proved the concept, and become the most successful at doing it, it's been easier for us to get stuff in the show. That being said, Square Enix does their own show, that tours around, called Distant Worlds. So they like to keep the video exclusive to their show and what they're doing, but they love Video Games Live. Square supports Video Games Live. They obviously allow us to play their music in the show, they're really excited about it. Exclusives don't last forever, so who knows, in the future, hopefully you'll see Final Fantasy images in our show. But we have so much great stuff too, and now we have all HD cameras, and the double screens, so showing the musicians playing, that gives us a great opportunity to showcase the music, [Nobuo] Uematsu-san, the de facto genius, so it's a nice switch.

RMN: So for fans that can't make it to the shows, two years ago you just announced, with us, that you were about to release a CD and a DVD. How have the sales of those been, and what's been the fan reaction?

TT: Well, the CD... we didn't release the DVD, because when we had filmed it, it wasn't in HD, and everyone's crossing over now, and everyone wants HD stuff. So we held off on the DVD till we can put it out right. We're only going to release something if it's right. There have been other game concerts out there that have released garbage, and I don't think that really forwards our industry at all. We're not in this for the money. It's all about the quality. So for example, our album got delayed 6 to 9 months because we wanted to include certain pieces on it. Castlevania being one of them. And we weren't going to release until we were happy with everything on the album. Good recordings, good mixes, etc. So when we recorded that album, Video Games Live: Volume 1, we recorded it at Abbey Road Studios, which is the big studio in London where the Beatles did all their records, and we incorporated live tracks and studio tracks, and it was on EMI, which at the time was the biggest record company in the world. It's all about the marketing and the distribution. It's not all about having a great product, either. So we're not sloppy about anything. So it was released worldwide, so you can walk into a record store in Brazil, or Taiwan, or China, or Japan, or London, England, or Paris, France and find Video Games Live in those stores. And that's important. It's definitely the biggest selling Video Game concert album so far to date, worldwide. In the U.S. it debuted at number 10 on the Billboard charts. And that's because of the proper marketing, and the proper distribution muscle that we had behind it. So with the DVD, you're going to see the same thing, and that's why we're waiting. We're not just going to release some crappy DVD, like some of the others have. We're going to have a major network television special, and we're going to do it right, with special performances, with special guests. The whole thing.

RMN: What about you personally, what projects are you working on outside of Video Games Live?

TT: This is it! [laughs] No, actually at the end of last year I was contacted by my friends over at SEGA of Japan, and they asked me if I could write some songs. They knew I was on tour, so they asked "How many songs could you write by the end of the year, for the new Sonic the Hedgehog game?" For me, Sonic is just an iconic franchise, how could I say no? So what I thought was going to be a two week vacation at Christmas ended up being "Sonic Writing Time." So I ended up writing three songs for the new Sonic and the Black Knight game. And then I've been working on a really interesting project with some friends of mine in Canada called Flips Twisted World for the Wii. It's a really fun game, the music is kinda like Earthworm Jim and Donkey Kong Country, and I hadn't done anything like that in such a long time, so when they contacted me, I was kinda excited to get away from the big, epic, massive operetic choir and ochestra. I'll mess with a little four piece band, and break out the banjo and accordian and just have some fun. And the time schedule allowed me to write a couple songs here, a couple songs there. We're about half way done with the music now. We've still got another 6 or 7 months to go, so I'll be cranking out some more tunes when I get back, we've got a three week break in August. So yeah, it's fun, but I have to pace myself, because it's kinda difficult. You have to be careful from taking on too many projects, because my focus is definitely Video Games Live.

RMN: So if you had to tell people what they had to look forward in the next year from Video Games Live, what would you say?

TT: I think the big thing is, for all the people who've seen the show before, they're going to get a whole new experience in 2009 and 2010. Like I said, and you'll see that tonight, with the quality and the polish, and even like small, simple things. For example, Jack's podium is now synchronized, and lights up, and is synchronized with all the lighting. Simple things like that. Using the three screens has made a big difference. Using the cameras. More special effects. Even people who've seen the show before, we're always adding to the production, and adding new music, and improving existing arrangements, updating videos, and things like that. For all the people who haven't seen it yet, now is the time to come and see it, because we're really starting to hit our stride, and we're in so many different locations around the world, there's probably someplace somewhat near you that is going to be having Video Games Live over the next 12 months. Now's a good time to see it.

RMN: Well, I'm excited about it. Thanks for your time!

TT: Rock on!