It was with great anticipation that I attended the concert Play, featuring music from a number of well-known computer games such as Elder Scrolls IV, World of Warcraft, Halo, Final Fantasy, Sonic the Hedgehog and Super Mario Brothers. I was lucky to get tickets - I happened to be browsing a newly released Singapore Arts Festival booklet and booked tickets on the spot more than two months in advance. By then, almost the entire concert hall had been sold out and I had to settle for seats with a restricted view.
It was definitely wonderful to hear some of this fantastic and under appreciated music being performed by a full orchestra and choir. It was definitely a chance to relive parts of my childhood through Super Mario Brothers, Sonic the Hedgehog and, especially, the encore piece from Shinobi. You could hear the laughter and delight of the audience as they flashed scenes from the various video games on three large screens above the orchestra. There were many retro scenes from the original Super Mario Brothers and Sonic games that definitely brought back memories.
The themes I enjoyed the most were from Halo and Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, probably because I have played those games. Final Fantasy VII: One Winged Angel was also a fantastic piece complete with full orchestra, choir and pipe organ. Admittedly, you sometimes did feel that it was a bit of a stretch converting video game scores for full orchestra when they had often been written for guitar, drums and synthesizer.
Still, the reaction of the crowd and the ticket sales attest to the mass appeal that this music has and it is not hard to see why. It clearly has an immediacy that classical music once had, but now lacks. This is the same with cinema music with movie themes such as Star Wars and Harry Potter almost instantaneously recognizable. As a fan of both video game and cinema music, I hope there will be many more concerts like Play in the future.
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See, I commented so you don't have to feel so tragically alone in the vast expanses of cyberspace.
Die I hate you because you got to attend PLAY! and I didn't. Rabidly collecting video game soundtracks isn't quite the same thing as hearing the songs performed LIVE. One Winged Angel... Sigh... The original game actually used a recording of a choir in the song, which was groundbreaking at that time and I shall stop geeking out now.
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