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Video Games Live!
Nov. 26th, 2006 11:37 amYesterday, I joined ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
lazerus101, beaitchtwo & tktiger to attend the first Video Games Live concert to be performed in the UK as part of their world tour. Needless to say, I had an utterly fantastic time. The music was amazing, with full orchestral performances of Zelda (Twilight Princess version), Final Fantasy 7 (One Winged Angel), Sonic The Hedgehog, Civilisation IV, Beyond Good and Evil, World of Warcraft, Headhunter, Tetris (arcade), Kingdom Hearts, Super Mario Brothers, Myst, Metal Gear Solid, Halo and many more including a "classic arcade medley" which started off with pong and blended into Space Invaders and lots of other games including Ghosts and Goblins and Outrun (utterly fantastic). In addition to the normal performances, they had Martin Leung, the Video Game Pianist come on and firstly perform a Final Fantasy medly of 10 tracks (breaking the keyboard in the process) and later came on to perform Super Mario Brothers while blindfolded and then after taking the blindfold off, repeated the song getting repeatedly faster until I thought the keyboard was going to melt. He then played the Gameboy version of Tetris on the piano and again continued to do it at super fast speed... really something amazing to witness :). They also did live performances of both Space Invaders and Frogger with someone from the audience playing the game and the orchestra responding in real time.
Before the concert started, we decided to try out pictochat as with that number of game fans around, there must be other people thinking the same thing. Lo and beholdmiyabisan and kittiah were there. Turned out they were literally a metre away from us at the bar! At one time, pictochat pretty much had almost 4 full channels meaning 64 people with DSes on pictochat. Ended up having a gigantic crowd of people on DSes but it seems due to the signals flying about, multiplayer gaming seemed to have troubles. One guy of the group only had a PSP so I gameshared Every Extend Extra with him :P.
I never realised how the songs would sound with a live orchestra but I was literally blown away. I never realised Sonic The Hedgehog could sound so good! Absolutely loved both Zelda and Final Fantasy (easily my favourites). While they finished on Halo, they did an encore of the music from the Halo 3 trailer which sounded fantastic and was a great way to finish the night.
During the concert my eyes started watering pretty badly. At first, I thought it was due to feeling emotional from the music, but I then realised it was due to my contact lenses. I think it may have been from where I was sweating which got into my eyes earlier or something, but regardless I took them out during the intermission. I'm glad I did though as my eyes were both totally bloodshot which was pretty scary.
After the show, they had a number of video game composers do a meet and greet in the lobby. BH wanted to get his CD of Sonic R signed by Richard Jacques but the queue was far too long so I decided to break off and try for the earlier train which I missed by mere minutes thanks to a broken down train on the district line. Due to engineering works, I had to get a bus from Woking to Winchester, then a train to Southampton and then wait for a night bus to take me home. Didn't get home until 3am, but still got home sooner than the others who I had broken off from.
Despite the contact lense and transport issues, I had an great time, and I can only thank Laz for thinking of it and buying the tickets and for Bungle dropping out so I could pick up the spare ticket :).
lazerus101, beaitchtwo & tktiger to attend the first Video Games Live concert to be performed in the UK as part of their world tour. Needless to say, I had an utterly fantastic time. The music was amazing, with full orchestral performances of Zelda (Twilight Princess version), Final Fantasy 7 (One Winged Angel), Sonic The Hedgehog, Civilisation IV, Beyond Good and Evil, World of Warcraft, Headhunter, Tetris (arcade), Kingdom Hearts, Super Mario Brothers, Myst, Metal Gear Solid, Halo and many more including a "classic arcade medley" which started off with pong and blended into Space Invaders and lots of other games including Ghosts and Goblins and Outrun (utterly fantastic). In addition to the normal performances, they had Martin Leung, the Video Game Pianist come on and firstly perform a Final Fantasy medly of 10 tracks (breaking the keyboard in the process) and later came on to perform Super Mario Brothers while blindfolded and then after taking the blindfold off, repeated the song getting repeatedly faster until I thought the keyboard was going to melt. He then played the Gameboy version of Tetris on the piano and again continued to do it at super fast speed... really something amazing to witness :). They also did live performances of both Space Invaders and Frogger with someone from the audience playing the game and the orchestra responding in real time.Before the concert started, we decided to try out pictochat as with that number of game fans around, there must be other people thinking the same thing. Lo and behold
miyabisan and kittiah were there. Turned out they were literally a metre away from us at the bar! At one time, pictochat pretty much had almost 4 full channels meaning 64 people with DSes on pictochat. Ended up having a gigantic crowd of people on DSes but it seems due to the signals flying about, multiplayer gaming seemed to have troubles. One guy of the group only had a PSP so I gameshared Every Extend Extra with him :P.I never realised how the songs would sound with a live orchestra but I was literally blown away. I never realised Sonic The Hedgehog could sound so good! Absolutely loved both Zelda and Final Fantasy (easily my favourites). While they finished on Halo, they did an encore of the music from the Halo 3 trailer which sounded fantastic and was a great way to finish the night.
During the concert my eyes started watering pretty badly. At first, I thought it was due to feeling emotional from the music, but I then realised it was due to my contact lenses. I think it may have been from where I was sweating which got into my eyes earlier or something, but regardless I took them out during the intermission. I'm glad I did though as my eyes were both totally bloodshot which was pretty scary.
After the show, they had a number of video game composers do a meet and greet in the lobby. BH wanted to get his CD of Sonic R signed by Richard Jacques but the queue was far too long so I decided to break off and try for the earlier train which I missed by mere minutes thanks to a broken down train on the district line. Due to engineering works, I had to get a bus from Woking to Winchester, then a train to Southampton and then wait for a night bus to take me home. Didn't get home until 3am, but still got home sooner than the others who I had broken off from.
Despite the contact lense and transport issues, I had an great time, and I can only thank Laz for thinking of it and buying the tickets and for Bungle dropping out so I could pick up the spare ticket :).
