Background and career
Tommy Tallarico (born February 18, 1968) is an American video game music composer, sound designer, and television producer. Since the 1990s, his company Tommy Tallarico Studios has produced audio for many video games. He co-hosted the television series Electric Playground and Reviews on the Run from 1997 until 2006. In 2002, he created Video Games Live (VGL), a concert series featuring orchestral performances of video game music. In 2018, Tallarico acquired the Intellivision brand and formed a new company called Intellivision Entertainment, which began developing a new video game console named the Intellivision Amico. Tallarico frequently appeared in pitch videos to solicit investors for the Amico project. He has since stepped down from his position as CEO but remains on the company's board as president. As of 2025, the console has not been released. In 2019, it came to Tallarico's attention that a sound effect used in the online game platform Roblox, widely known as the "oof", had been created by Tommy Tallarico Studios and legally belonged to him. This led to a legal dispute which ended in 2022 with the removal of the sound effect from the game. Later in 2022, a video essay by British YouTuber Hbomberguy documented many dubious claims that Tallarico had made about his own career, including his alleged involvement in creating the "oof" sound.
Tommy Tallarico was born on February 18, 1968, and grew up in Springfield, Massachusetts and attended Cathedral High School. He told The Washington Post that as a child, he would take his father's tape recorder to the arcade to record songs. 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, he was given a job at Virgin as one of their play-testers.
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 Sega CD version of The Terminator.
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, by sound designer Joey Kuras, a Tallarico Studios employee, and possibly by Tallarico himself. Tallarico has at times claimed that Kuras created the sound, that it was a collaboration between the pair, and that he created it himself. In 2006, the same audio was used in the online game platform Roblox as the default sound effect that played when a player character died, and later became iconic in meme culture due to its usage in Roblox. 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 effect from all games on its platform.
In 1997, Victor Lucas, founder of the Electric Playground, started Electric Playground TV with Tallarico, which provided gaming news and reviews. In 2002, the review segment of Electric Playground, titled Reviews on the Run, was spun off into an independent television series, with Tallarico and Lucas continuing in their roles. In the U.S., Reviews on the Run was broadcast on G4 TV as Judgment Day. 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.
In 2002, Tallarico co-founded Video Games Live, a symphony orchestra concert series that plays music from video games, with Jack Wall. Tallarico hosted and played guitar for the shows. He also created the visuals—scenes from video games, as well as lights and lasers—that are played in sync with the music. Tallarico has produced seven VGL albums. The first album, Video Games Live Volume 1, debuted at No. 10 on Billboard Top 10 for Classical Music Crossovers. The second volume, Level 2, also sold as a Blu-ray DVD concert, debuted at No. 8 on the same Billboard list. In August 2013, Tallarico also opened a crowdfunding campaign for the third album Level 3 on Kickstarter. According to Tallarico, he chose to fund the album through Kickstarter because he had not been successful in attracting support from the recording industry, which he claimed was because music producers "don't think gamers are willing to pay for music" and did not recognize the perceived "culturally artistic significance" of video game soundtracks. The Level 3 campaign successfully met and surpassed its goal of $250,000. In 2014, Tallarico and electronic dance music artist BT began working on Electronic Opus. As with Video Games Live, Electronic Opus presents EDM music alongside a symphony orchestra. They used Kickstarter to fund an album, with a goal of $200,000. The show opened at the Miami Winter Music Conference in 2015. In 2016, Tallarico co-produced the Capcom Live! concert tour with Shota Nakama. In 2024, video game music composer Laura Intravia accused Tallarico of selling music arrangements from Video Games Live concerts that he did not own the rights to.
Sources
Net-worth figure: Celebrity Net Worth (October 2026), in USD. Biography and career facts: the person's Wikipedia article and linked reporting. Snapshot date for all StarWorth figures: 28 October 2026.
