On Sunday, my sisters, father and I went to see the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra perform Video Games Live! I expected it to be a nerd fest, of course, but this actually was well thought out but pretty much as I expected.
I kind of feel the pre-show was lacking but maybe that was due to the fact that I showed up only 15 minutes before the actual show. Maybe I have high expectations of available nerdy readiness when I go to shows and conventions (etc… etc…) and always seem to be let down in some way.
ANYWAY, my sister, Jennifer had planned long in advance that she was going to reprise her Link (Hero of Time) costume and wear it to the show. In fact, the organizers encourage people to dress up as their favorite video game characters. Right as we arrived, they were judging the costume contest and one brave man dress as Kratos from the God of War series.
Among the audience were quite a few more Links (and Zeldas) and I managed to spot a quite convincing Princess Toadstool and grabbed a picture with her.
The orchestra performed the classics. It was similar to the songs I had heard from bootlegs over other concerts that did the same thing. Of course, the game I most looked forward to hearing was the Legend of Zelda music because, come on, a good chunk of games dealt solely with music! Unfortunately, I was quite disappointed because they seemed to just revolve around the main Zelda theme without deviation into the other great pieces in the series.
Aside from that, I was joyed to watch the two competition they had. The first one brought a girl from the audience up on stage to become a huge space ship to defend from the Space Invaders. They had her put on a black T-shirt and on the back was a green space ship and there was some sort of tracking device that monitored her position to correspond with the cursor on screen. She failed to move enough on stage to get ahead but it was funny enough to watch her (and the many people yelling “shoot the sides!!”) The second competition was for the Guitar Hero champion. The winner was decided before the actual show and the one with the highest score was invited on the stage later on in the show. His job was to beat Aerosmith on “Hard” and get 200,000 points. The guy was cheeky and said he could do it on “Expert.” Well, he wasn’t successful and was just short of getting the necessary points. Still, WAY better than I could ever do!
Another high light was the appearance of the man whom invented the first video game. They first showcased the first video game demo and then chatted with the inventor, Ralph Baer, over Skype.
All in all, a good evening of nerdyness and entertainment.
