Dustice

So last Saturday I went to go see the Video Games Live! concert. I expected a cheesy half-assed performance of some popular songs but instead had one of the most fun experiences of my geek side of life. For those of you who have never heard of Video Games Live (henceforth abbreviated as VGLive), the idea is to bring video game music to a new art form by incorporating a live orchestra and choir, synchronized video elements, lighting effects, and audience participation. Also each show is different - they have about 50 different segments prepared and are constantly adding more to their repertoire, but can only perform 20 or so during each performance. They choose which segments will be performed based upon the culture of the city they are performing in as well as a poll on their website. The result is an unique and surprisingly clever performance, with a quirky feel that really draws in the entire audience.

Segments that I distinctively remember:

• Old School Arcade Games
• Metal Gear Solid 4
• Mario old and Mario new
• Guitar Hero
• WoW
• Metroid
• Halo
• Starcraft
• Zelda
• Civilization 4 <3<3<3 (I know Baba Yetu in Swahili by heart)
• Kingdom Hearts
• FFVII (One Winged Angel rocked)

Favorite moments:

• Turning on my DS and seeing FULL PICTOCHAT rooms!!! Made waiting during the intermission pretty much a segment of it’s own. I made friends with a couple of kids who like Inuyasha, drew pictures of MidnaxLink action, and found some /b/tards - just to name a few of the hijinks that went on in there.
• The WoW segment. Hearing the theme sung by a full choir was just amazing. It felt so epic. Also, during the song some guy yells “FOR THE ALLIANCE” and was met with “FOR THE HORDE”. This continued throughout the piece until the end when the conductor turns around and says “ok guys, time to settle this once and for all… ALLIANCE *met with cheers* HORDE *met with rawrs*. EPIC. I almost yelled “YOU ARE NOT PREPARED” during the Illidan scene, but I managed to contain myself.
• Guitar Hero - this was one of the interactive segments and also one that never appeared before they played in Austin. The girl who won the Guitar Hero contest before the show got on the stage - the setup: if she plays this song by Aerosmith (with the orchestra and choir playing the music instead of the game) and gets 175000 points on Hard, she gets a $2.5k AMD (Austin company) laptop by Dell (Austin company). So she gets up on stage and the announcer says something about “tell that to the people who say girls don’t play games” and all the girls in the crowd go crazy. Then when she’s about to select the difficulty everyone starts chanting “EX-PERT! EX-PERT!”. She puts it on expert and starts playing and damn… the whole crowd went wild whenever she hit a star power… and then went really crazy when she hit 175k.
• Before the encore the announcer said something like “when I was a kid we all stuck up our lighters when we wanted an encore - but lets do something different. Everyone pull out their DSes and PSPs and Cellphones and WAVE THEM! YEAH WAVE THEM! Whoa hey, that guy over there is waving a laptop! Is that a Mac or PC? A Mac? You can’t play games on a Mac!” - shortly after that everyone started screaming “ONE. WINGED. ANGEL!”
• Getting that cute Yuffie cosplayer’s #. <3 Rawrrrr~
• Ok not really, but there was some really good cosplay (Sephiroth was super impressive, as well as Rufus Shinra, oh and a Princess Peach. LOOOOTS OF MASTER CHIEFS). I suddenly got the urge to cosplay Uruyuu Ishida. Someone stop me.

So yeah, if you can’t tell I had a toooon of fun. I think most of it was just the crowd’s energy - I don’t think I’ve seen so many geeks per square foot - ever. Also I was able to experience a ton of the songs in a completely different light, mostly because of the choir - everything sounds so much more amazing when they’re singing right in front. DEEEFINITELY going next time it’s in town. And dragging all of you with me muhahah~

PS. Kirbey Lane is delicious. Esp. the Kirbey Queso. WHY HAVEN’T I GONE THERE BEFORE.