Image from billboard.com

Video Games Live, a concert tour featuring classic video game tunes as well as works by the tours conductor and main "pitchman," noted game composers Jack Wall and Tommy Tallarico, has finally released a live CD.

This CD has landed on the #10 slot on the Billboard Classical Crossover charts. This is a major accomplishment for video game music in America, and Tallarico and Wall should be proud of this accomplishment. Both have worked hard to promote game music, particularly Tallarico, founder of the Game Audio Network Guild.

The state of video game soundtracks in America is pathetic. You can't easily find soundtracks in stores for anything but the absolute biggest of the bigtime releases- and even then you aren't assured of availability. Yet in Japan, game soundtracks are easily found everywhere.

The fact that this CD is succeeding is proof that there is an untapped market here, as I've always thought. It's just up to both industries- video game and music, to come together and decide to distribute the soundtracks to the mainstream audience.

As to the CD itself, don't expect to find Mario or Zelda music here- though those tunes are played by the group live. Clearly there are licensing concerns that prevent these compositions from being on the disc, but there is music from World of Warcraft, Myst, Call of Duty, and, most significantly to followers of this blog, Castlevania!

Read.