Video Games Live Concert: Grand Opening in LA

By Spencer . September 30, 2005 . 2:28am

An orchestrated concert composed entirely of video game music sounds pretty cool to all you gamers out there. While this isn’t the first time a concert like this was ever done in the world, Video Games Live is probably the most diverse concert to tour around the US. We had a chance to check out the grand opening Video Games Live Concert in LA and it was a blast. It started out with the theme from Metal Gear Solid with an introduction by the designer of the series, Hideo Kojima. During the music Solid Snake drops in coming down by a sky wire. It got the crowd going in the right direction, energy was high and everyone was cheering. To follow up the huge opening was a video introduction by Koji Kondo who composed the music to the Legend of Zelda and Mario Brothers games. After his introduction a video played featuring some of the highlights of the series going all the way back to the original NES Zelda and all the way up to the upcoming Twilight Princess. Throughout the first act the audience got to hear themes from Medal of Honor, God of War, Tomb Raider and Sonic the Hedgehog. Yuji Naka, the head of Sega’s Sonic Team and creator of Sonic the Hedgehog was around to introduce the theme from Sonic. He seemed pretty enthusiastic about the performance and called it a great honor to be part of the audience.

To kick off the second act there was a surprise live orchestrated soundtrack to two people from the audience playing Frogger. This was a really interesting idea to have a symphony react to each of the player’s moves. While it wasn’t perfectly timed, the audience was into it. Most of the audience was yelling suggestions at the players and cheering when the young 13 year old player brought his green square frog to the other side of the screen. Following up this experience was a live performance from the blindfolded video game pianist, Martin Leung. He played the crystal theme from Final Fantasy 1 and quickly moved into One Winged Angel from Final Fantasy 7. The second act continued with themes from Myst, Everquest II, Kingdom Hearts, Castlevania, World of Warcraft and Advent Rising. Each theme had video game footage played on the five giant screens in the Hollywood Bowl. The second to last song was a medley of Mario Brothers themes with another introduction by Mr. Kondo. The video for this was awesome. It spanned all of the Mario titles from the very first appearance of Jumpman in Donkey Kong all the way up to Paper Mario the Thousand Year Door. As the music switched themes the video changed to different scenes. For instance when Bowser’s theme was played clips of Mario battling Bowser from Super Mario 64 were shown. To end the night the main theme of Halo was played with a full light show.

It wouldn’t be Hollywood if the event didn’t have celebrities. Fans got a chance to meet Naka-san and Kojima-san in rare US appearances before the show. More celebrities were packed into the pre-party area. Gary Coleman was hanging out and having a drink. Xbox 360 spokesman and Lord of the Rings star Elijah Wood was around. The composer of the More Friends concert in LA, Arnie Roth was in the audience. Even Stan Lee took some time off to check out this event.