Comic Convention: Day 1

Today (as in fri sept 1st) is the first day of the anual fan expo (which involves anime, comics, sci fi, horror, and games)

After waiting in line for about an hour we finally got in. Unfortunately I didn't have much time to look around as I have to take off to see the much anticipated Video Game music concert.

The first 10-15 mins of was sort of like an intro to the concert as they played music from old school games like Duck hunt, Ghouls and Ghost, Pong, etc.... they spend roughly 1-2 mins per game.

They then moved on to longer segments featuring music from more recent games. This includes metal gear solid, god of war, kingdom hearts, halo (and a few other ones which slip my mind). And of course other classic songs are included as well such as sonic, warcraft, castlevania, mario, and zelda.

Throughout the whole show, they showed clips of the respective game on the big screen to give the audience an idea of what the game is like (if they haven't played it already). However I feel they didn't do a really good job putting the video together. A lot of the clips they used are the most recent carnation of the games. For example, when they are playing music from warcarft, all you see on the screen are clips from world of warcraft, showing no respect for the older versions which started it all. They actually have the guts to not show a single clip featuring the original nes super mario bros (its all from snes and later). Then again, the video is not the main feature of the show so i can deal with that.

Personally I really enjoyed those classic game songs. Unfortunately the same cannot be said for the more recent ones. They don't seem to understand that some music works great with an intense action scene but doesn't cut it when its on its own (eg. metal gear solid). Or some song sounds almost identical to the ones from the actual game as if they've forgotten that a good amount of game music these days are done by orchestra in the first place....

They did give us a pleasent surprise by inviting a really special guest to the show. I'm sure some of you have seen video clips online of this dude playing mario music on his piano while blindfolded. Well, he was there and he proved that he is indeed a beast by playing main themes from various final fantasy, tetris, and mario.
Throughout the night there was a guy in the audience who kept requesting earthworm jim. The orchestra doesn't know that song so he is out of luck....or is he? The host joked that the piano dude probably knows it and guess what, this guy played a sick earthworm jim song on the piano.

Before the show started I jokingly predicted that Halo will be featured as the "main event" and stated that we should walk out immediately if that was the case.
We were the first people to leave the building....

Day 2 should be more interesting (will feature pictures). Bring on the costumes, nerds, and fan girls!