We went to Video Games Live this weekend, performed by the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra. Another great show. If you don't know what this is, they take music from video games, and create full orchestral arrangements of the pieces. According to their website, they have over 30 different pieces arranged, so each concert is different. The show we saw had the following pieces performed by the MSO and choir:
Not sure if this is normal for the shows or not, but they had Martin Leung, the blindfolded Mario Theme piano player at the show as well. In addition to playing the Mario arrangement that he plays on YouTube, he also played a Final Fantasy arrangement as well as one of the songs from the NES version of Tetris.
In addition, they played the original music for Space Invaders and Frogger while audience members played the games for prizes. When they did Space Invaders, they actually had the guy wear a shirt with the gun on the back that they used to track his movement. So he had to move back and forth across the stage to move the gun in the game. When they did the same thing with Frogger, I was seriously hoping that they would make the two girls they picked to play the game run around to play that game as well, but nope, that was just with a normal joystick.
I loved the Halo, Mario, Legend of Zelda, and Final Fantasy arrangements because those are the songs that I am most familiar with. For each of the songs, they play video of the respective games as well (except Square Enix games, because they're like that), and the visuals for Civilization IV and Tron were great. Kingdom Hearts was good too, but that was clips of the Disney characters' movie appearances, since Sqeenix wouldn't allow images from the game. Medal of Honor was definitely the most visually amazing piece, however. Rather than showing clips of the games, they put together old newsreel clips from World War II and showed that on the screen as the music was playing. It was incredibly moving. However, at the same time, when people heard a part of a song that they recognized, they started cheering. I know that the guys that created the show encouraged everyone to cheer when they heard or saw something that they liked, but when there is a wounded soldier being carted away on the video screen, and people started cheering because the arrangement had just switched to a piece that was apparently popular in the game, I was quite disgusted. I knew going in that I shouldn't expect any amount of decorum from the group going to this concert, but still, this was still disappointing to see.
Overall, the absolute best piece of the night was the second encore piece - Castlevania. I felt that this was the most professionally done piece, and an amazing way to end the show. The finale, Halo, was great too, but when they came back with some song from Final Fantasy VII (apparently a popular song, but I wouldn't know, since I still haven't been able to get myself past the first disc of the game) and this piece, I was absolutely blown away. I guess everyone was expecting them to finish with the FFVII song, so after they played it, everyone assumed that they were done. The composers stayed out there and said that finishing with FFVII was too obvious, so they had to play one more. I'm really glad that they did, because between Halo and Castlevania, the FFVII song just felt like some filler music. I'm sure that some fanboys out there are going to try and rip me apart over this, but as a gamer and a music lover, it just didn't cut it.
If you love video games and the music in them, I highly recommend that you check out this concert if it comes anywhere near you. However, if you are just a music lover, I would have to say that you may want to avoid the show. While the music is excellent and any music lover, especially those that enjoy orchestral music, would love the music played in the concert, the gamers in the audience would detract from the show immensely for you. Even I was expecting a little more class from the audience than what I got.
Posted
Sun, Mar 2 2008 8:38 PM
by
Charles Boyung