TR: Video Games Live

Rastuso · July 15, 2007

Well, last year, I found out about the Houston dates about 5 days AFTER the show. I was P!$$ed to say the least. I knew well in advance this year, and got 5th row near center seats for my son and I to attend Video Games Live. Visit videogameslive.com for all sorts of info on the tour.

They have a preshow show that consisted of some play stations set up for all of the current consoles, the Gamecube, and DDR. They also had contests for Space Invaders and Guitar Hero II. The song for GH was Dead, which I don't know, and since I'm a real guitar player, not GH, I can only do well on songs I know. I saw one guy get 98% which is 5 or 6 higher than I can get on anything. THey were playing on medium. The SI winner got 2700 I think.

They also had a costume contest, and my son wore his Halloween costume from last year, Luigi. I decided to upgrade it to Luigi's Mansion. We had a perfectly sized old Dirt Devil that became the Poltergust 3000, and a flashlight completed it. He got complements all night before the show, and got plenty of pics taken of him. There really weren't many folks dressed up, although I saw pics for Saturday night, and there were lots more.

So, time for the contest came around and we went backstage and eventually on stage. My son got picked in the top 4, and then they went on audience applause for the winners. Probably half of the 2000 seats were full at this time. He EASILY won, with the kid vote, and being the only universally recognizable character. If it works, I've attached a video. His prize pack was a bit lame. It was a VGL hat and program from the innaugural '05 shows in CA, and some random crap. They gave away a $2500 laptop to some guys who played Frogger with live orchestra background music.

We made our way back out and into our seats for the show. They started out with a montage of classic video game music, starting with a clicking Pong soundtrack, going to Space Invaders, and then a FABULOUS Donkey Kong rendition where they played all the intro music and soundtrack for the first level, right along with the projection of the game. It was perfect. They even played both Dragon's Lair and Space Ace. Other songs included Metal Gear, FF 7 and 8, Halo and Halo 3, Zelda, Sonic (including the choir doing the "Sega" singing before the game started), and Super Mario Bros. They also had this guy from Youtube fame that plays all the Mario songs on piano at insane speeds. His Super Mario World, including the time's-running-out tune followed by some insanely fast playing warranted his standing ovation.

I can't recommend this show enough. A great idea that I hope continues to grow. I do wish they had done God of War like they apparently did last year, but it was a great show.

R O'G