Video Games Live

I just came back from Video Games Live, an orchestral performance of some classic video game music! With a live orchestra, a choir, video and lighting, it was a pretty amazing concert. They ran started off with the very first arcade game, Pong, and ran through classics like Street Fighter, Duck Hunt, Frogger, Sonic, God of War, Final Fantasy and some more recent games like Halo Reach. It's always really cool to see live orchestra playing and this was no exception. It was even more fun that they were playing songs that people are very familiar with and showing scenes from the game made it that much cooler.

The creator of the show, Tommy Tallarico, joined in the by playing the electric guitar. Laura Intravia was the vocalist as well as the flautist and the first song she sang was an opera to Tetris! It was pretty epic, I have to say. Her performance of songs from Zelda was hilarious, as she dressed up as Zelda and Ciela kept interrupting.

There was some audience participation, someone playing Frogger while the orchestra played music according to what you were doing. They also held a Guitar Hero competition before the concert and the winner was invited up onto stage to play an Aerosmith song on Guitar Hero and get 125,000 points (he chose expert level and got WAY over 125,000 points). There were prizes given to these participants (Xbox Kinect, Frogger, Futureshop gift cards etc) as well as prize draws. A lucky winner went home with a PS3 AND a PSP. I'm a little bit jealous of that haha.

I was in total awe of Martin Leung, the pianist, who was discovered through his Youtube video of him performing the Super Mario theme blindfolded. This was actually how he was recruited to be on the tour. It was pretty amazing and made me want to rush home and learn Super Mario music myself (not blinded folded of course). If you're inspired to play crazy fast and well just like Martin, check out this site to print out your own Mario sheet music for free!

Video Games Live is performing in Vancouver for only one more day, April 14th, so get your tickets now! Any gamer (or non-gamer) shouldn't miss this! Also there is a special discount offer of 50% off any balcony seat tickets - the discount code is Canucks. Enjoy!

(Pictures to come soon!)