Blog - /Personal

Epic: an overused word. Also: describes the Video Games Live concert experience that I had at the Greek Theatre tonight.

The highlights for me were:

• Songs from Chrono Trigger!
• Oboe solo in Legend of Zelda medley.
• Music from Halo 1 and 3, with live guitar and full orchestra and choir. Just excellent sound. It made me want to play through Halo 1 again. And get the soundtrack.
• Music from World of Warcraft! It was amazing to hear the background music that I usually take for granted done with such precision and volume. Syncing it with visuals from the in-game trailers was also a nice touch.
• Excellent performance of One Winged Angel from Final Fantasy VII, with cosplay pics being shown on the display, as an encore.
• The Video Game Pianist renditions of Final Fantasy and Mario tunes.
• Music from various Castlevania and Mega Man games, some of which I recognized from my The Advantage CDs.
• A live performance of Aerosmith's Sweet Emotion on expert mode in Guitar Hero by a talented audience member, with guitar and orchestra accompaniment. And some sort of odd-looking tube for the first 20 seconds or so of the song.
• Seeing Out Run footage while the orchestra played some of its music, as I was walking in. Man that takes me back.

There were a few things that could have made the show even more amazing than it already was.

• I couldn't place one of the songs in the Chrono Trigger medley that most time was spent on. Perhaps it was a Chrono Cross piece? I would have liked to have heard even more themes from Chrono Trigger, and more time spent on that segment overall.
• For Castlevania: Stage 3 (I think that's what it was), instead of them saying "go, go, go", I was expecting to hear some really sweet high notes being hit on the guitar. Most likely, this is due to me being familiar with the live performance version of the song by The Advantage from archive.org.

Stacked parking was an interesting experience. Lots of people waiting in their dark cars, and then simultaneously leaving. It was more painless than it looked. One car nearby was rocking out some video game tunes with some sort of synchronous blinking lights on their car while everyone was waiting to get started.