pset express

If you haven't heard of video games live, then go view this video:

It's a concert series created by video game composers Tommy Tallarico and Jack Wall, and as the name suggests, they play video game music live with a local orchestra and choir, and they also bring in special guests in to spice up the show.

Anyway I managed to get some last minute tickets last week, and I got an awesome chance to actually see these guys live instead of on Youtube. And I went to see them at Wang Theater in Boston last Friday.

So I arrived at the concert a bit early, and there was a mini gaming convention in the lobby. People were selling gaming merchandise, Razer had a demo/info booth, there was a pathetic Guitar Heroes tournament, and there was also a costume contest. There was this badass guy dressed up as Travis Touchdown from No More Heroes, but these two cute kids (they looked around 6) dressed up as Link and Zelda won. Too bad I forgot to take out my camera because some costumes are hilarious.

Then the concert was about to start, so I went up. I got pretty nice seats (row d of the mezzanine), and this was what the stage looked like:

It was kind of ironic how there's a video game concert in a classical looking opera/play house), with some fancy decorations on the ceiling:

Then some douchbag down my row started complaining to a staff about how people weren't suppose to bring cameras, so I had to keep my camera on the down-low for the rest of the concert.

The concert started, and Tommy (MC) and Jack (Conductor) promised that they were only give a special concert for us because they're both from Boston. And the music was much better than how they sounded on Youtube (which was pretty damn good). At the same time they played they also had funny clips on a huge projector screen from the game of the music they're playing, and the band was amazingly well synced to the action sequences in the video:

The songs from God of War and Civilization IV were fucking epic, and they actually brought in the guy who did the vocals for civ.

The "concert" wasn't just completely music as they did a lot of cool gaming-related things. They had this guy come up to the stage and play Space Invaders by running back and forth across the stage to control the position of the ship. They brought in Ralph Baer, the creator of video games, and he played the first video game he created (a ping pong game that looked much more complex than pong...) with this 8 year old. When he left, he must have gotten a 10 minute standing ovation. The other big special guest they had was Martin Leung from:
and he played a lot of songs from Mario, Tetris, and Final Fantasy. It was awesome.

And then.... they played music from STARCRAFT 2

Towards the finale, Tommy busted out his sick guitar and rocked out with the band. Martin and the two soloists from God of War and Civ IV got on stage as well, and they did an epic rendition of the Halo music. Then there was an encore, and they played the theme from Castlevania (which imo was a bad choice...) And this was how it ended:

From left to right: Martin, Jack, Tommy, and the soloists

It was an awesome way to spend my Friday with some friends, enjoying and celebrating how much gaming has evolved.

number and pix plz

you were expecting something weren't you