Video Games Live

So today we went downtown to see Video Games Live at the Paramount Theater. Our friend Andy has a friend who is a Paramount Club member, so we were able to get really good seats at the last minute through some magic. We met up with Andy, and his friends Nick and Karen, at Microsoft, and the 5 of us carpooled downtown together and had early dinner at the Cheesecake Factory, before going over to the Paramount and sitting in the Club for an hour. (I'm not fully entirely sure why we went and sat in the Club to be perfectly honest, but we had great timing for the Factory as we were able to get a table right away, but while leaving we saw a ton of people waiting.)

Before the show there was a costume contest, won by two little kids dressed as Mario and the Princess. There were plenty of other people wandering around the place in costume anyway.

The performance itself went something like:

Opening/NES Medley
Megaman Medley
World of Warcraft Unlock Song (I don't know the name of it, it's apparently a quest reward)
A Skype session with Ralph Baer (the guy who invented the Magnavox Odyssey, the first game console)
Interactive Frogger -- two people came up from the audience and played Frogger on the big screen, while the orchestra adapted the music to their game
Afrika (the VGL orchestra was being conducted by Wataru Hokoyama, who wrote the Afrika score)
Flute Link (some girl named Laura who's become famous as a cosplaying flute player)
Halo (they had the Halo composers there, too)

Act 2 opened with Shadow of the Colossus (whatever).
Castlevania Medley
Tron Medley
The Icarus Kid performance (basically a Metroid-remixing dude)
Metal Gear Solid 3 opening
Guitar Hero Performance "Jump"
Street Fighter Medley
Final Fantasy 7 "One Winged Angel"
Chrono Trigger / Chrono Cross Medley
"Still Alive" (sung by Flute Link Laura and guitar by Tommy "Video Games Live" Tallarico)


The Guitar Hero thing was probably the most crazy -- they'd had a Guitar Hero competition before the performance, but we missed it since we were down in the club area, so the winner of it got called up on stage during Act 2. (I was a bit annoyed when he announced her name like "CG... is she a girl? Hey get that guys, a GIRL schooled you all at Guitar Hero. How many girl gamers are there out there tonight?" What the hell is this, 1990?) Anyway, she was told that to win the prize for this segment, she had to get 250,000 points on Van Halen's "Jump" on Hard difficulty. She was all like "Screw that, I'm doing EXPERT" and put it on Expert, and sure enough, she was able to get like 280,000 points or so. Pretty crazy. The orchestra played along with her and the choir yelled "Jump!" at the right times.

(Did I mention there was a choir? They were relevant a few times but overall I'm not sure I get what having them adds, other than some comic relief, like when Tommy yelled "are you ready, audience? are you ready, Megan? are you ready, orchestra? are you ready, choir?" before the Frogger competition, and then said "I dunno why the choir is psyched, there's no singing in Frogger.")

Tommy Tallarico is pretty annoying as a host. I don't think I can really say more than that.

I thought it was pretty neat how they had videos coordinated with the music, for all the games, that part was very well done.

I'm not sure I'd go back to VGL again, but then again, I'm not as big a videogame nerd as I was ten years ago; I'm largely unfamiliar with a lot of newer stuff, especially since I had no game console with me in Japan for the last 4 years. Plus, for whatever reason, I feel like older videogames have more memorable melodies anyway.

Shrug.

Something that amused me was going around wearing my Hanshin Tigers videogame parody t-shirt and watching people trying to surreptitiously stare at my chest trying to figure out what the bloody hell the shirt actually was, since it was clearly videogames-related but not of anything any of them had ever seen before. If anyone had actually GOTTEN it I would have been delighted, but it's not the kind of thing I expect.