Right!
Back in 1990, no one had video game t-shirts, but I had one. It was actually a new shirt that I got for the new TurboGrafx-16, which just came out. The first person that walked in, the first customer I waited on, saw my shirt, and he was a producer at a video game company called Virgin, right down the street. One of Richard Branson’s companies. He was just starting it up. They asked me, he is like, “Well, you know about video games?” Oh yeah. And I downloaded 21 years of information on the poor guy. So he asked me if I wanted a job, and I was hired as the very first game tester for Virgin. And then I was — so I was in California three days and I was in the video game industry, and that was over 20 years ago.
That’s a hell of a level-up!
I was lucky. And I would literally bug the Vice President of the company everyday, I would say, hey, whenever you need music — if you need music for these things, let me know, I will learn how to do it. I will do it for free. And if you don’t like it, you don’t have to use it, at least give me a shot. And I would bug him everyday, and finally, the very first game that we were working on needed sound, and it was music. It was the original Prince of Persia. So I did sound for that and it won a bunch of awards and got great reviews.
This was the Broderbund release?
No, Virgin released a version of it.
Okay.
Yeah, it wasn’t the original. I think the original came out on what, the Amiga or was it the Commodore 64? Yeah, something like that, yeah. It was a version of that. So it was working with Jordan Mechner, but it was a version of it, and a different platform. So I believe the original came out in like 1989. Anyway, so won a bunch of awards, got great reviews for it, so they made me the music guy. He said, okay, well, you could do this then. That was pretty funny, and that was over 20 years ago.
So you have done — because this is only scoring games ever since?
Yeah, I am actually, crazily enough, in the Guinness Book of World Records as the person who has worked on the most video games. Not only for music, but on the most video games ever. The world record that I hold is for 272 commercially released games. But, I’ve since done like ten since then. So it’s like somewhere — closing in at 300.
Wow! That’s crazy. So clearly you have got the background in terms of the production side of making games, but what led to the idea to put on a tour?
My main goal for creating Video Games Live was wanting to prove to the world how culturally significant and artistic video games have become. I didn’t want to create a show for just gamers, for hardcore gamers or whatever. Look, guys like you and me, we know how awesome the music to Final Fantasy and Halo is. We know how great the cinematics for Warcraft are. I had the hardcore gamers in mind, but I also wanted to create a show that anyone can come to and have a greater appreciation of the game industry in general. Not just the music, but the visuals and the interactivity and the fun and the storylines and the characters, too. And that’s what Video Games Live is.
Did you worry about it seeming a bit lofty or high-minded to people?
It’s not just a high-society stuck-up snobby symphony on stage chalking out Super Mario Brothers in tuxedos. I didn’t want to have anything to do with that. And there are some other shows out there that do focus on more traditional and classical experience. And that’s cool! But I think one of the reasons why Video Games Live has been so successful over the years is because it’s something more than just a classical show. We don’t want it to be that. We do like 50-60 shows a year now, all over the world. I mean, no one has achieved kind of the level of what we are doing here. I kind of explain Video Games Live as having all of the power and emotion of a symphony orchestra, but combined with the energy and excitement of a rock concert, mixed together with all the cutting edge visuals, interactivity, technology, and fun that video games provide.