My Favourite Game Thomas Mars

The Phoenix frontman on performing at The Game Awards, social gaming and creativity within limitations

Thomas Mars is the lead singer of French dance-pop band Phoenix, best known for their Grammy Award-winning album Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix. We had the opportunity to speak to Mars during the band’s break from touring their sixth studio album, Ti Amo, and just had to start by asking him about their recent appearance on Geoff Keighley’s stage.

Seeing you at The Game Awards was a real surprise. Were the Mario and Sega references hard to implement?

Yeah, the Sega logo saying ‘Phoenix’, I wanted that because when I met Chris in the band, one of the first things he did was bring Sonic to my place. The first year we met we were either making music or we were playing Sonic. Then we expanded the idea to getting these Nintendo sounds and adding these textures in the song like an 8bit game. It was a fun little thing to do. Branco [Laurent Brancowitz, Phoenix’s guitarist] spent a lot of time putting those sounds in. I also tried to harmonise the same way they say ‘Say-Gah!’ which is really hard, but in the end we decided, ‘Let’s not waste any more time on this’. (laughs)

What’s your earliest gaming memory?