Video Games Live Wang Theater Boston

I attended Video Games Live at the Wang Theater in Boston, MA on November 21st 2008. To put it short and sweet, the musical component was disappointing, but the over-all presentation and special guests made up for it. I have been a long time fan of video game music because it is as best as I can describe a very good mix between techno and old school orchestral music. There is nothing that I appreciate more in music then extremely fast piano and orchestral pieces (which is one of the reasons I like ragtime) I bought expensive tickets and was about seven rows back from the stage as I figured it would be a once in a lifetime opportunity...which seeing the special guest's actually made it just that. Im going to start with the negatives and do my best to keep them short.

1. For gosh sakes, they played the actual game music over top of the live orchestra loud enough most times so you couldn't event hear the live component. Now I could plainly see that the people on stage mainly consisted of strings...but personally I would have preferred to hear LIVE MUSICIANS PLAY VIDEO GAME MUSIC...thats why I bought expensive tickets. You could honestly see it in the musicians hollow faces when people ignorant that they weren't actually playing the entire accompaniment stood up and clapped for them. I really bet that the people that put on this show tried to do it all live with the instruments and talent they could get at the beginning. But I bet that what happened is that the target audience that attends these things..probably half of them never attending a real symphony has way too high expectations to hear a perfect rendition of their favorite game music even when there aren't the instruments and talent to do it. Personally, I would have preferred to hear an all strings and minimal brass/wind/percussion rendition of the selections preformed.

2. It was really obvious that Tommy Tallarico's guitar involvement in the entire thing was totally fake. Come on people, no one plays music this perfect. They played his guitar solos completely off the blasting loud overlay music which they were drowning out the entire orchestra with.

Ok lets get to the positives.

1. Ralph Baer and Bill Harrison were the special guests! How cool is that? Ralph and Bill were the first people in history to invent video games. They are both getting up there in age and it was a real honor to be amongst a crowd that gave them an extremely enthusiastic (the most in the whole show) standing ovation multiple times.



Baer played his original table tennis game against some little kid and purposely let him win. When Bill was given the microphone to talk you could tell he was nervous in front of such a crowd and he deferred to Baer after only a few words. Just in that and in the few words Harrison spoke you could tell that he was the real engineer behind the first video games. Baer is a better showman and had proper witness of his original design notes (which makes them legally viable), but I am willing to take a wild guess that the core of the original games was Harrison. You have to give Baer props for all of the litigation he had to wade through in order to get his original patent rights. If you want to learn more about Baer and video game history, I would suggest the documentary: "History of Video Games". Go to 9:08 for Baer.

2. Martin Leung played several piano solos which weren't staged and were very amazing. I would have to say the crowd gave him the second largest applause next to Baer and Harrison.

And that about sums it up. The two positives were enough for me to be happy I attended the show. I also had an opportunity to learn how to ride the Massachusetts commuter rail system. The commuter rail is my destination to the big city without horrible traffic and I look forward to taking it again (bringing along a research paper to read of course).