Review: Video Games Live

To go to a concert based on music in video games has to be one of the stranges things I've ever done. I've been to plenty of concerts before, but when you drill down into gamers to find the ones that really appreciate the music, you know your on another level. There really isn't anything like it. But there should be.

I can see a few other ways to do it; music from movies preformed live is the first thing that comes to mind. Jurassic Park, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings...the size of the pool of canidates for the set list is almost unimanginable.

But there is a little more on the artistic side when it comes to video games. In the early days, music was simple if there was any at all. PONG for example had none, but it was the first thing the National Symphony Orchestra played. The beeps and boops from the game were translated into the ground work for the introductory composition about of the most earliest video games. Space Invaders, Asteroids, Tempest and more soon followed. At first, all of the music was from other composers but matched to the individual games personalities. Once they reached Dragon's Lair, they switched to actual game music rescored for a full orchestra. Hearing Super Ghosts and Ghouls performed live made remembering one the hardest games in existence (some think) slightly more enjoyable.

Tommy Tallarico and Jack Wall, the creators of the show, had something like 300 games to their musical credit. I didn't know they were that involved with the industry.

I also realized that whenever you take a subset of gamers and find a particular event or aspect of gaming to talk about, you really get the hardcore of the hardcore. Sure there were normal people there like me, appreciators of the craftwork, and you also got people who just enjoy orchestra music, but you also got the typical ADHD, "parent's basement", cleanest-t-shirt-I-own types crawling out of the woodwork. Thankfully, everyone was in full check to enjoy the show and cheer on their favorite games.

I thoroughly enjoyed the two and a half hour show. Listening to the great music brought back some good memories. Watching a couple audience members compete at Frogger and Space Invaders for prizes (a Ferrari laptop and a DS) was quite hoot too, especially when you play Space Invaders by running back and forth across the stage to move.