Video Games Live, Raleigh Symphony
Whoa, a veritable torrent of posts. Anyway, I wanted this written up, so I'm just cross-posting it to tumblr and here and wherever.
So hey, I went to a concert. Video Games Live Bonus Round at the Raleigh Symphony. I had initially passed on this ongoing promotion when it started up a few years ago, since back then the game list didn’t look too interesting to me and the guy who runs it, Tommy Tallarico, seemed like a cheesy wannabe-rockstar. Well it turns out he is that, but it also turns out he puts on a pretty good show, and this year they pulled out some really fantastic selections. It was a good time, glad I went.
The other thing that got me to go was the soloist for the night was Jillian Aversa. I’ve been appreciating her work since back when she started collaborating on tracks over at OCRemix over a decade ago as pixietricks. So it was great to get to meet her and share some memories.
For anyone interested, I jotted down the evening’s playlist (they like to swap in segments on the fly) and some notes below the cut.
Unless otherwise noted, everything is a medley of popular tunes from the given franchises…
- Castlevania - Symphonic rock arrange of the usual, Vampire Killer, Bloody Tears, etc. Nice.
- Shadow of the Colossus - !!! The big surprise of the night. Loved it. They played a bunch of the opening and then one of the colossus battles. Sweet.
- God of War - Dun care about the franchise, but nice Jillian vocals
- Journey - Apparently they’ve done this one before, but it was another great surprise for me. Beautiful.
- Space Invaders - I know, what? They had someone from the audience play it live using body-tracking to move the ship (which didn’t actually work very well) while the orchestra played accelerating bloops as the ships descended. Amusing anyway.
- Kingdom Hearts - Played the main theme (yay, Yoko Shimomura music!) set to animation from the Disney movies used in the game.
- Monkey Island - I have to admit I haven’t played it, but I appreciate both the old-school and the bouncy pirate music.
- Bioshock - Haven’t played this either, but the moody period score is nice.
- Silent Hill 2 - Apparently sometimes the director/composer tours with them when he’s available, but not tonight.
- Resident Evil 4 - Eh, some technically impressive stuff to pull off in live orchestra, but it amounted to generic hectic action soundtrack.
- (intermission)
- Destiny - This was interesting. You may note this game isn’t out yet. And apparently long-time Bungie composers O’Donnell and Salvatori collaborated with Paul McCartney? Okay then. Cool.
- Skyrim - More recent stuff I haven’t played. Choir got a work-out.
- Mass Effect - And an even more popular thing I haven’t played. Pity the videos didn’t use any femme-Shep.
- Warcraft: Rise of the Lich King - See God of War
- Guitar Hero - This was actually kind of epic. The winner of a lobby GH contest came up and played some Foo Fighters song on Extreme difficulty w/ symphonic backing, trying to beat 400k pts for a prize. Got it at the last second, everyone went wild.
- Megaman - Yesssss. Medley from the 8-bit games, mostly the famous stuff from 2 and 3, in orchestral rock. Good times.
- Liberi Fatale (FFVIII) - Honestly I was relieved this wasn’t One-Winged Angel. FF8 isn’t my favorite, but this is a fun piece and not nearly as over-exposed.
- (encores)
- Chrono medley - Very yes. I don’t remember exactly, but I think they did the opening and Memories of Green from Trigger, and the opening and a battle theme from Cross. Great stuff.
- Still Alive - Jillian came out and sang with the audience singing along. Good fun.