To hear the theme to FROGGER played by a live symphony orchestra.
Yup, it was Video Games Live show, and boy was it a blast. If you've not heard of it, it's a live concert where a full symphony orchestra plays themes and music from video games. It's not the usual kind of stuffy orchestral shows you get at the usual Philharmonic hall though - this was at the KL Convention Center Plenary hall and it was FUN!
The National Symphony Orchestra started off with a blast to the past, starting with Pong, then moving on to all the old Atari games and Space Invaders, Frogger, Outrun, and Contra (Holy shit, CONTRA!!!). Boy was that a fun medley - they also showed all the cutscenes and the gameplay on a screen, so it was a hoot watching all those games we used to play for hours on end.
I mean, really, who HASN'T spent HOURS and HOURS playing Contra, Street Fighter and all those old games? Regardless of whether you're still a gamer or not, you MUST have SOME memory of those games! I mean, C'mon... FROGGER! YEAH!
The only thing I was disappointed at was they played mostly console games, many of which I never played before because I never owned a console up till my Xbox a few months back. So while music from hugely games such as Metal Gear Solid, God Of War, Halo, Sonic, and even Shadow Of The Colossus were very well-received in the hall, I didn't feel for them as much as I did when they played the music from say... Super Mario Brothers (heck, later on we even got a SINGALONG of the Mario theme!)
I wish they'd played something from the Command and Conquer series, Street Fighter, or even (a long shot, this) the Wing Commander series, but that was wishful thinking. Oh well, the music that was played was still something awesome and the videos made me want to rush out and buy a damn PS3 NOW NOW NOW I WANNA PLAY GOD OF WAR OMG!!!!
I WAS happy they played something from Final Fantasy VII though - Sephiroth's theme song. And heck, it was hard NOT to geek out when you're watching all those clips of awesome video games AND listening to the music at the same time.
The show was pretty fun too, with Tommy Tallarico talking a lot on stage about video games, and the music. There was a cute chick flutist/opera singer, a JApanese dude who played the Snakeeater theme from Metal Gear Solid; a dude who got to play live-action Space Invaders on stage, and one dude who won the Guitar Hero competition trying to beat 200000 points on Guitar Hero Van Halen (it was only supposed to be on Hard, but the bugger went for EXPERT instead. And he was pretty damn good too!)
They even had Ralph Bear, the CREATOR of the world's FIRST EVER VIDEO GAME live on Skype at one point, and they showed a video clip of him demonstrating the Pong game he had created in the 60's. Wah so primitive WTF!
One gripe though - the afternoon show I went for was rather empty, and only about half the hall was filled. Was the night show any better? Not that it detracted from the show, but it would have been awesome to have more people. Plus it was such a cool and geeky show that MORE people should have come watch it!
Now, excuse me while I go home and play Street Fighter...
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