SEGA Community frontman ArchAngelUK spent a good chunk of time chatting to Tommy Tallarico, legendary game music composer and host of the Video Games Live concert. As some of you may know already, he’s doing the soundtrack to Sonic and the Black Knight, so this seemed like the perfect chance to ask him about the blue blur and his experiences working with Jun ‘Junny Baby’ Senoue.
One of the highlights includes Tommy’s intended approach for the game, whereby the legality of the original Sonic the Hedgehog theme tune screwed up a possibility of there being some kind of medieval remix:
I would have loved to have been able to take the original Sonic theme and mess with it. I was able to do something similar when I worked on a lot of the Pac-Man games with Namco… or the Bond game I worked on. I’m not exactly sure if SEGA owns 100% of the rights to that original music or not. I believe we had to go through a few different companies (including the original composer) to get the rights to play it in Video Games Live. But to directly answer the question… I didn’t really take inspiration from past tracks, I just kept imagining the Sonic character and all my Sonic experiences and how I would imagine it sounding like (without being able to use the older stuff).
Tommy also states that he feels the modern Sonic games have lost a certain something that the classics have by the truckload. He’ll be happy to learn that Sega have just released Mega Drive Ultimate Collection for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, then:
I’d be lying if I said I’ve been happy with where the Sonic games and franchise have gone. Maybe I’m just more of an old school type of guy, but I always thought the 2-D Sonic games had more playability and fun factor than the 3-D stuff. I hope that statement doesn’t offend anyone, it’s all just personal opinion and taste I suppose. But I really have a fond place in my heart for the 2-D Sonic stuff.
Give the interview – part one of two – a good read, it’s a blast. Although I have to say that a lot of Tommy’s answers seem awfully similar to an interview I conducted with Tallarico about two years ago. As the interview conducted was a written one, it seems likely that Tommy pulled from his responses to my questions to save time rather than some true underhanded plagiarism going on. But still, naughty naughty… veeeeeeery naughty, guys.
Tommy Tallarico – You Asked, He Answered! Part 1 – Sonic City Blognik (mostly)