Last night the BF and I went to see "Play! A Video Game Symphony" at the Rosemont Theatre in the Chicago 'burbs. Here are my impressions of the event:

We got there about 30 minutes before the show started, which was nice because it made for good people watching. It was very interesting to see the diversity of people showing up. You had ages from 13 to 60-something, male and female, cool kids and high-geeks all coming together. I'd estimate there was about an 80/20 male to female ratio and as far as age went there was a big concentration of 17-22 year old guys, a smaller concentration of 23-30 year old guys and the rest of the theatre was all miscelaneous ages. The theatre probably could hold (in my unprofessional opinion) about 2-4 thousand people and was about 85-90% full.

Now unbeknownst to Michael and I, this event was the world premiere of this show. Consequently many of the composers for the songs they played were physically in attendence for the show. Shortly before it started, they all came out in a group to take their seats (without any announcement) and the crowd recognized them and gave a spontaneous standing ovation. They had: Nobuo Uematsu (Final Fantasy), Koji Kondo (Super Mario Brothers, Zelda), Bence Pajor (Battlefield 2), Jeremy Soule (Morrowwind), Jason Hayes (World of Warcraft), Martin O'Donnel/Michael Salvatori (Halo). The crowd absolutely loved them and gave them the same sort of fantastic cheer that sports fans would give to a championship team.

After a short introduction the show starts. Here's what they played and in the order they played it:

Final Fantasy VIII, "Liberi Fatali"
Super Mario Brothers, compliation of songs from various entries in the series
Shenmue and Shenmue II, "Sedge Tree"
Battlefield 1942/Battlefield 2, They played the opening theme from '42 and the middle eastern theme from 2
Final Fantasy VII, "Aeris's Theme"
Sonic the Hedgehog, compliation of songs from various entries in the series
Metal Gear Solid, Main theme
Kingdom Hearts, compilation of songs

INTERMISSION

The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind/Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion, compilation of songs
Final Fantasy series, "Swing de Chocobo"
Chrono Trigger & Chrono Cross, complication of songs
World of Warcraft, complication of songs
Silent Hill 2, "Theme of Laura"
Halo, complication of songs though I recognized the main Halo intro music that is used in all the trailers
The Legend of Zelda, complicaiton of songs
Final Fantasy VIII: One Winged Angel

As each song is played, three huge screens hanging over the orchestra display gameplay scenes. I really liked this effect - it made the whole thing hit home more when you saw your favorite characters doing their thing to live music. For better or for worse, they kept these gameplay scenes fairly short - 60 seconds or less for each entry. I can understand that they want you to focus on the music and not be distracted by visuals...but I actually enjoyed the parts with visuals more. Maybe they'll tweak this going forward?

The conductor, Arnie Roth, was a cool guy and you could tell he was genuinely enthusiastic about this show and all the songs, and had a great deal of respect for the various composers. He took all the music seriously and had some fun joking with the crowd when they would shout out songs they wanted to hear that weren't on the program like Tetris :wink:

As far as audience favorites goes, I'd definitely say the Final Fantasy games got people standing up cheering the most, but almost all the games had fans giving standing ovations. One segment that got a lukewarm reception (to my disappointment) was the Battlefield 1942/Battlefield 2 portion. I originally thought this might be because the audience was made up mostly of console fans but then World of Warcraft got a crazy ovation later and that game is PC only. Hmmm....

The audience also had alot of fun with the original themes from Super Mario Brothers, Sonic, and Zelda. They would play video sequences from different games in the series, but by far the original NES versions of Mario and Zelda got the biggest reaction. The audience kinda did a half cheer/half laugh at these when they came up on screen. The laughing portion was I think part loving nostalgia and partly chuckling at the old graphics since this stuff is coming up on screen shortly after you've just seen some beautifully rendered 3D modern game. Nevertheless, the audience clearly loved these games. Though one thought I had as I was looking around at many of the 17-21 year olds was "Have these guys ever even played Super Mario or Zelda??" Geez I'm gettin' old! :wink:

Personally, my favorite portions were from the games I've played or at least know the music to. Of the list of games, I've only played Super Mario, BF 1942/BF2, ES IV: Oblivion, Zelda, Halo (never played it but know the main theme), and World of Warcraft (I've never really played it, but I know the music just from having the BF play it behind me all the time.

All of these were great but my absolute favorite of the show was one I'd never heard before from a game I've never played before. As their last song, they played Sephiroth's theme from FFVII (I just noticed this doesn't match what they printed in the program listing that I typed in above). It was so powerful and so emotional that I could just imagine how intense the music would have made the last battle from FFVII. The Orchestra also included a live chorus and they really belted out the vocal portions of this song - they really did a great job. For those of you who actually have heard this song before and have alot more understanding of it's meaning and importance from the game, I can guarantee you'd have tingles going up your spine if you heard this.

After they finished this song, the Audience gave a roaring standing ovation, demanding an encore...and after a couple minutes Arnie came back out and they did Sephiroth's theme again. I don't know if this was planned or if they didn't expect anyone to want an encore and they just didn't have any other music prepared but needless to say the audience was happy.

Overall, it was a great show and I recommend it to anyone who really enjoys game music. The show will be travelling the world and you can find their scheduele Here, at their website. Next up is Stockholm.

These have been around the internet for awhile now, but they crack me up so I'm posting them here too.

The evoloution of Dance.  This guy is amazing!  Great moves and a lot of fun to watch.  He blends together your favorite dance songs from the '50s all the way to present day.

Mortal Kombat Theme song 'music video'.  You just have to watch this.  These kids are nuts, but in a good way!

The Transformers Theme song 'music video'.  Same two guys as the MK theme.  If you're a child of the '80s like me then this one's for you.  Love the two transformation sequences!

Live Action Japanese version of Mike Tyson's Punch-Out on the NES.  Very Cute :)

No better way to start my first Blog entry than by saying Holy Mother of God, Supreme Commander is looking amazing!! 

Thanks to Hailenki, for this video of the E3 Supreme Commander demo.  After watching it, I'm just in awe.  This game is everything Total Annihilation ever was multiplied by 10. 

I almost don't know where to begin because there's so many incredible things in this game.  How about the support for a dual-monitor setup where you can have one screen show the zoomed out strategic view and the other shows a closeup view of whatever battle you want to keep an eye on.  Come early '07 it'll be time to shop around for enormous widescreen LCD monitors (I'm hoping the game will work just as well on one huge monitor instead of two smaller ones).  This feature is just incredible and really is going to be a necessity to be competitive in multiplayer.  If you don't have this and your opponent does, you're almost guaranteed to become toast unless you can zoom in and out like a crazed chimpanzee on speed and also remember the strategic view in your head while you're zoomed in messing with the tactical setup.

Next up is the amazing and long overdue method of adjusting the patrols.  It almost looked like Adobe Photoshop, the way the presenter grabbed the lines of the fighter group patrol path and dragged them easily and quickly to adjust their direction.  This is a vast improvement over patrol paths in any other RTS to date, by far. 

How about the unit scale with the huge battleship dwarfing the tanks?  Definitely nice to see and makes you appreciate your big & expensive units all the more.  Speaking of units it was just jaw-droppingly gorgeous to see a SupComm battle in action, particularly with the Cybran spider walkers absolutely laying waste to the massed UEF force of smaller tanks and vehicles.  Destroyers that can sprout legs and walk up on shore to join a land battle?  LOL, awesome!  Chris Taylor truly is a genius in RTS gaming.

All of these things are great and I think they have all the more impact just because the RTS genre has been devoid of much innovation for far too long.  Other than the concept of national borders put in place in the RON/ROL games, I can't think of much in the way of new RTS game conventions that have come along in recent years. 

Early 2007 can't come quick enough!