Given the constraints on video game cartridges, Tallarico focused on making short- MIDI melodies that could be looped repeatedly. He was later appointed as head of the audio division six months later. The resulting music was approved by Virgin. Tallarico's first musical project at Virgin Interactive was for the Game Boy version of Prince of Persia. While play-testing, Tallarico often asked his bosses to let him create video game music.

Shortly after, Tallarico was given a job with Virgin to be their first play-tester. On his first day, Tallarico met with an executive from Virgin Mastertronic. While homeless and living under a pier, Tallarico took a job as a keyboard salesman at the Guitar Center in Santa Ana, California. However, at 21 Tallarico went to California to try and obtain a job in the video game industry. Tallarico attended Cathedral High School and later Western New England University for a year. He would splice the tape into background music, and then perform guitar over the result for his neighborhood friends. Tallarico would take his father's tape recorder to the arcade to record the songs. He and his father played Asteroids and Space Invaders. Tallarico was introduced to video games as a child. Tallarico cites John Williams's score for Star Wars and Bill Conti's Rocky score as inspirations, in addition to classical composers such as Beethoven. He taught himself to play piano and guitar. His parents took him to see the Springfield Symphony when he was nine years old. Combine this DLC with the original content and it’s an excellent historical collection that paints a cel-animated picture of a specific era of Disney video games during a time when adaptations of animated movies were much bigger events.Tallarico spent much of his youth around music. All of the museum extras are incredible, but might not be as worthwhile unless you’re interested in the history and legacy of these games. Aladdin holds up as a great platformer of the era, but Jungle Book simply does not. I can only hope this Aladdin promo video encourages Nintendo to re-release their bonkers, gonzo Nintendo Power promo tapes from the same era.Īs far as if this DLC is worthwhile, it is if you want to play Super Nintendo Aladdin or have fond memories of the Jungle Book game. The best museum addition is the hopelessly cheesy VHS tape rip of an Aladdin promo video that does a good job of setting the tone for what kid-centric advertising was during the 1990s. This is something a lot of retro collections ignore, and I appreciate the nuggets in the museum section. Concept art and fun facts about the new games are also added, which provide much-needed context as to why these games are notable. Glad it’s here for completionist’s sake, but it’s not very good.Īll of the new games feature Digital Eclipse’s staple watch-along functionality where you can just watch a playthrough of every game.

The Game Boy version is also here, but that’s honestly all I have to say about that. The novelty lies in the art as well as the differences in execution between the Super Nintendo and Genesis versions that are both included. The Jungle Book is the weakest-playing game in the entire package, paying middling homage to classic platformers like Pitfall. The Jungle Book game is similar to Lion King in the sense that it looks nice but isn’t that much fun to play. The SNES version is focused more on acrobatics and platforming, whereas the Genesis one is more action-centric and buoyed by its tremendous animation. Having the ability to look at both versions next to each other is extremely cool because they’re both so different but are pulling from the same source material. While my nostalgia still settles on the side of Genesis Aladdin, the Super Nintendo version of Aladdin is an excellent game. I covered the original release and truly, the DLC just expands on what worked and didn’t work from the original collection.

Old aladin game