Let's Talk About Video Games, Live!
Apr. 18th, 2010 07:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dmjewelleOn Friday night, strange red spotty blisters appeared on my torso. I thought "Oh please please please please please don't let it be chicken pox NOW I got VGL and the Sakimoto concert to go please please please pleeeeeeaseeee."
Guess what I got diagnosed with on Saturday :D
But no way was I going to miss something I paid a crapton of money for, so I covered myself up (as much as I could without resorting to a burqa), took the LRT, and sat in one spot inhaling antivirals and making deals with gods to just get through this one night and then I'll never leave the house until this is over.
In as much order as I can remember:
Medley of 8-bit music - There was Outrun, Space Invaders, bunch of other stuff that while I recognized the screenshots, I've never played these games for the music because it never seemed to STICK in my head.
Tommy Tallarico comes out to talk a LOT. - At least it was fun!
Metal Gear Solid Theme - Or the MGS theme that started from MGS2 and was just so awesome it's a required performance in VG symphonies now. At one point there was a box and a soldier with a light-up exclamation mark on his head moving around the stage. Victor claims that this version is superior to Play!'s version because it used the normal MGS2 ending version. The beginning of the theme was pretty flat, but the sweeping end did make up for it. Zymz gasped in awe.
God of War - The big surprise was the soprano that appeared out of nowhere (this happens a lot because a lot of people are too busy looking at the videos on the screen and forget that there's an orchestra playing under it) and the fact that they're playing something from PISSY EMO SPARTAN GAME.
Shadow of the Colossus - "We got a lot of requests to play something from this game, which was really touching because it's one of my favourite games even though it didn't sale very well and it's a beautiful game and" GET ON WITH IT OH MY GOD.
When he announced SotC that was about the time I forgot I was supposed to be sick and screamed and jumped and went AAAAAAAAAAA like a squealy kid. Then they let me down horribly by making the colossus fight music SO SHORT.
So much love, yet so much rage.
Some segment where we meet the guy who's the father of video gaming. OMG SO OLD. OMG SO AWESOME. OMG EDUCATIONAL SEGMENT. OMG you had better not cut SotC short for this, Tallarico.
Some interactive segment where a chap gets pulled up on stage to play Space Invaders! - We are all backseat gamers by nature. The minute we see anybody playing anything we all scream GO LEFT LEFT LEFT NOW GO RIGHT GO RIIIIIGHT GOOOOOOO C'MOOOON for two minutes. We are such annoying jerks.
Norihiko Hibino plays Snake Eater on sax - All that was missing was the entire audience singing SNAAAAAAAAAAAAAAKEEEEEEEEE EAAAAAAAAAAAATEEEEEEEEER.
Flute Link and a Zelda medley - Flute Link's arrangement was impressive, but I've never played a Zelda game in my life (EVER) so none of it has any emotional relevance to me.
- INTERMISSION -
World of Warcraft - Not that I can remember any one particular track from Warcraft or Dota or WoW, but the medley itself was good and the choir was finally getting into things SO EPIC. Loved this one.
KH - Hikari Orchestral version - They played Disney clips...and ONLY Disney clips. Damn you Squeenix! While it's always beautiful hearing the orchestral theme for KH, I still find Passion's orchestral version more emotional (to me at least).
Mario - It'sa Ma-rio! Seriously. You were expecting a VG Symphony to go through without Mario?
Sonic The Hedgehog - The only crime here is that they make the later Sonic games look good to *play* despite reviews everywhere stating Sonic in 3D is a crime against humanity. I've never played Sonic games after Sonic and Knuckles, so I'm not in any position to comment here.
Megaman - "This game has had so many versions it's lost count of itself - Final Fantasy? That's only up to 13 man what're you talking about?"
Megaman is a game where I recognize the stages, I recognize the sprites, I recognize the feeling of LOSING ALL THE TIME UNTIL THE GAME MAKES YOU FEEL INFERIOR, but I've never noticed the music, and the people singing OKKUSENMAAAAAAN at some point will make me notice it now thankyouverymuch.
Halo Suite - I may have only played 30 minutes of Halo, but DAMN the Halo theme is good stuff. Then Tommy Tallarico gets in on the action with his strangely tiny electric guitar and plays the Mjolnir Mix version and AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA I go wild.
Guitar Hero segment where some guy plays Van Halen's Jump on Expert - His goal was to get 175k points, but he was 50k short even though we cheered him on. Seriously though the guitar solo was insane - if he pulled it off the entire crowd would've bowed down to him.
One Winged Angel - This, like Mario, has become a mainstay. FOR LIFE. The only thing ruining it was the slideshow showing COSPLAY because Squeenix won't allow any of their footage or official art or WHATEVER displayed so we have to contend with weird fanart and COSPLAY? And YET the audience STILL wants this? Screw you people. =.=
- ENCORE -
Castlevania Medley - AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA VAMPIRE KILLER AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA THAT OTHER THEME THAT I CAN'T THINK OF THE NAME NOW AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA. <3
Chrono Trigger/Chrono Cross - So the guy says they've gotten tons of requests but never really thought of doing this so they said okay why not and they started with Chrono Trigger and then the conductor Jack Wall picks up his acoustic guitar and there's Flute Link and Norihiko Hibino and they play TIME'S SCAR AND THE CROWD GOES WILLLLLLLLLLLLLDDDDDDDDD IT'S A HOME RUN LADIES AND GENTLEMEN!!!!! I remember the last performance of Time's Scar the timing was off (must've been Play!) so to hear them keeping to the original was good enough.
After that the audience gives a standing ovation because they've been given their TIME'S SCAR they all went home happy and well-fed (Edo looked like he'd had the best sex of his life - nerdgasm is srs bzns). Or to line up and get autographs. Whichever works for you.
So...how was it?
Taken song-by-song, it was inconsistent - due to the size of the stage they couldn't fit the entire National Symphony Orchestra (NOT THE MPO, take note - they were revelling in some Finnish guy's music so much so a volcano came) and most of the other synths and even Halo's percussion was the background music. As such it was sometimes hard to imagine whhich was the actual performance and which wasn't with the exception of Tommy Tallarico's electric guitar - THAT one was so loud you'd be silly to think it wasn't real. The Halo and Warcraft ones were especially good but MGS and Hikari did nothing for me and I couldn't make out the amount of electric synth that drowned out the strings in Megaman (I think). If they bring it back next year I hope they bring the full orchestra out to play.
Dayamn that would be *orgasmic*.
Guess what I got diagnosed with on Saturday :D
But no way was I going to miss something I paid a crapton of money for, so I covered myself up (as much as I could without resorting to a burqa), took the LRT, and sat in one spot inhaling antivirals and making deals with gods to just get through this one night and then I'll never leave the house until this is over.
In as much order as I can remember:
Medley of 8-bit music - There was Outrun, Space Invaders, bunch of other stuff that while I recognized the screenshots, I've never played these games for the music because it never seemed to STICK in my head.
Tommy Tallarico comes out to talk a LOT. - At least it was fun!
Metal Gear Solid Theme - Or the MGS theme that started from MGS2 and was just so awesome it's a required performance in VG symphonies now. At one point there was a box and a soldier with a light-up exclamation mark on his head moving around the stage. Victor claims that this version is superior to Play!'s version because it used the normal MGS2 ending version. The beginning of the theme was pretty flat, but the sweeping end did make up for it. Zymz gasped in awe.
God of War - The big surprise was the soprano that appeared out of nowhere (this happens a lot because a lot of people are too busy looking at the videos on the screen and forget that there's an orchestra playing under it) and the fact that they're playing something from PISSY EMO SPARTAN GAME.
Shadow of the Colossus - "We got a lot of requests to play something from this game, which was really touching because it's one of my favourite games even though it didn't sale very well and it's a beautiful game and" GET ON WITH IT OH MY GOD.
When he announced SotC that was about the time I forgot I was supposed to be sick and screamed and jumped and went AAAAAAAAAAA like a squealy kid. Then they let me down horribly by making the colossus fight music SO SHORT.
So much love, yet so much rage.
Some segment where we meet the guy who's the father of video gaming. OMG SO OLD. OMG SO AWESOME. OMG EDUCATIONAL SEGMENT. OMG you had better not cut SotC short for this, Tallarico.
Some interactive segment where a chap gets pulled up on stage to play Space Invaders! - We are all backseat gamers by nature. The minute we see anybody playing anything we all scream GO LEFT LEFT LEFT NOW GO RIGHT GO RIIIIIGHT GOOOOOOO C'MOOOON for two minutes. We are such annoying jerks.
Norihiko Hibino plays Snake Eater on sax - All that was missing was the entire audience singing SNAAAAAAAAAAAAAAKEEEEEEEEE EAAAAAAAAAAAATEEEEEEEEER.
Flute Link and a Zelda medley - Flute Link's arrangement was impressive, but I've never played a Zelda game in my life (EVER) so none of it has any emotional relevance to me.
- INTERMISSION -
World of Warcraft - Not that I can remember any one particular track from Warcraft or Dota or WoW, but the medley itself was good and the choir was finally getting into things SO EPIC. Loved this one.
KH - Hikari Orchestral version - They played Disney clips...and ONLY Disney clips. Damn you Squeenix! While it's always beautiful hearing the orchestral theme for KH, I still find Passion's orchestral version more emotional (to me at least).
Mario - It'sa Ma-rio! Seriously. You were expecting a VG Symphony to go through without Mario?
Sonic The Hedgehog - The only crime here is that they make the later Sonic games look good to *play* despite reviews everywhere stating Sonic in 3D is a crime against humanity. I've never played Sonic games after Sonic and Knuckles, so I'm not in any position to comment here.
Megaman - "This game has had so many versions it's lost count of itself - Final Fantasy? That's only up to 13 man what're you talking about?"
Megaman is a game where I recognize the stages, I recognize the sprites, I recognize the feeling of LOSING ALL THE TIME UNTIL THE GAME MAKES YOU FEEL INFERIOR, but I've never noticed the music, and the people singing OKKUSENMAAAAAAN at some point will make me notice it now thankyouverymuch.
Halo Suite - I may have only played 30 minutes of Halo, but DAMN the Halo theme is good stuff. Then Tommy Tallarico gets in on the action with his strangely tiny electric guitar and plays the Mjolnir Mix version and AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA I go wild.
Guitar Hero segment where some guy plays Van Halen's Jump on Expert - His goal was to get 175k points, but he was 50k short even though we cheered him on. Seriously though the guitar solo was insane - if he pulled it off the entire crowd would've bowed down to him.
One Winged Angel - This, like Mario, has become a mainstay. FOR LIFE. The only thing ruining it was the slideshow showing COSPLAY because Squeenix won't allow any of their footage or official art or WHATEVER displayed so we have to contend with weird fanart and COSPLAY? And YET the audience STILL wants this? Screw you people. =.=
- ENCORE -
Castlevania Medley - AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA VAMPIRE KILLER AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA THAT OTHER THEME THAT I CAN'T THINK OF THE NAME NOW AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA. <3
Chrono Trigger/Chrono Cross - So the guy says they've gotten tons of requests but never really thought of doing this so they said okay why not and they started with Chrono Trigger and then the conductor Jack Wall picks up his acoustic guitar and there's Flute Link and Norihiko Hibino and they play TIME'S SCAR AND THE CROWD GOES WILLLLLLLLLLLLLDDDDDDDDD IT'S A HOME RUN LADIES AND GENTLEMEN!!!!! I remember the last performance of Time's Scar the timing was off (must've been Play!) so to hear them keeping to the original was good enough.
After that the audience gives a standing ovation because they've been given their TIME'S SCAR they all went home happy and well-fed (Edo looked like he'd had the best sex of his life - nerdgasm is srs bzns). Or to line up and get autographs. Whichever works for you.
So...how was it?
Taken song-by-song, it was inconsistent - due to the size of the stage they couldn't fit the entire National Symphony Orchestra (NOT THE MPO, take note - they were revelling in some Finnish guy's music so much so a volcano came) and most of the other synths and even Halo's percussion was the background music. As such it was sometimes hard to imagine whhich was the actual performance and which wasn't with the exception of Tommy Tallarico's electric guitar - THAT one was so loud you'd be silly to think it wasn't real. The Halo and Warcraft ones were especially good but MGS and Hikari did nothing for me and I couldn't make out the amount of electric synth that drowned out the strings in Megaman (I think). If they bring it back next year I hope they bring the full orchestra out to play.
Dayamn that would be *orgasmic*.
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no subject
Date: 2010-04-18 04:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-18 02:57 pm (UTC)VGL should have some kinda competition where FF cosplayers take "riveting, fight-scene/interaction scene photos" or something to replace all these googled-esque cosplayer photo slideshow.
no subject
Date: 2010-04-18 06:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-19 01:26 am (UTC)Overall I thought it was great. Gotta admit the crowd was a little bit crazy. We were kinda surprised at the Datuk who apparently helped VGL come to KL.. he was a nice old roly poly dude in a faded weatherbeater, jeans and t-shirt. The Sephiroth song and cosplay montage emotionally scarred my colleagues who have never played FF games rofl. (I dunno maybe if I write in enough they will the FF4 theme some day..)
And whatttt was it really chicken pox :( that's really harsh. hope you recover soon. Glad you still had a good time!
no subject
Date: 2010-04-19 02:57 am (UTC)Maybe the Dato's kids asked him to bring or something, but you never know people these days.
Yeah, it was really chicken pox. :( Didn't dare interact with anybody because my blisters were just forming and I didn't want to take any chances. But TOTALLY worth hiding my chickenpox for oh yeah <3
no subject
Date: 2010-04-19 03:27 am (UTC)LOL I WAS IN ROW U AS WELL I THINK YOU WERE ON MY RIGHT?? The guys in the row just in front of you kept saying "I can die happy now" right? Ahhhh I think I just missed you :(((
no subject
Date: 2010-04-19 09:22 am (UTC)It's contagious when there's pus or the blisters because fluid is what's contagious. But NO I CAN'T GO SEE SAKIMOTO IN SINGAPORE NOOOO do you think Singapore'll bar me if my scabs are gone?
no subject
Date: 2010-04-19 02:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-19 02:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-19 02:59 am (UTC)What time you came wor didn't see you outside time.
no subject
Date: 2010-04-19 09:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-19 02:50 pm (UTC)didn't even notice the red dots and stuff but ahhhhhh I hope you will get well soon!
omh the cosplay during one winged angel made me focus my stare SO HARD on the NSO and people on stage... damn potong steam man.
I was happy that they kept to Time's Scar pretty well too so my night was made from that <33
no subject
Date: 2010-04-19 03:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-20 03:25 am (UTC)hope you get well soon, it sucks having chicken poxxxx ughhh.
no subject
Date: 2010-04-21 03:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-21 03:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-21 04:22 pm (UTC)Has Play! come to your area? What about Distant Worlds? Singapore had those so we went to them instead.
And until now I have never considered people getting the pox TWICE. That is SCARY.