crazybobbles

Let’s step away from the crazy indie music scene and into a very small but vibrant music scene. This is for the video game geeks who spent quite a large proportion of their childhood playing video games, because, you know; getting someone from the opposite sex was just too easy *. As most of you should hopefully know, video games isn’t just mindless entertainment, there are some games which dive deeper than mere zombie killing or princess saving, some games (such as Final Fantasy) include very awesome storylines as well as in depth characters. The music side of it all does pretty well too, some (I’ll say some, because some games have sucky annoying tunes) of which aren’t just mindless catchy riffs but full on orchestrated pieces that build up a grandular (yup thats a word, honest haha) experience for the gamer. This is where Video Games Live 2008 comes in, a concert for reliving your past time gaming memories by listening to the songs we love and will always remember.
* = yup, just toooooo damn easy haha

My friends Jason and Rachel have already been to this last year and told me that it was worth while to goto, so off I go booking the ticket (not much thought process once again) and BAM, i’m suddenly at Southbank with Jason and rachel having a steak dinner before the gig. The steak was pretty awesome, I added some extra nando’s sauce on it and it tasted even better, we sat outside to avoid queueing up and had a lovely chat about life and whatnot. We booked seats up in the balcony which was cooler for viewing the entire orchestra, for me orchestrated concerts were always cool whenever you sat so it never really mattered, though of course it’s probably not the coolest sitting in front of pillar and staring at that for the entire evening but orchestra’s aren’t something you need to see up front and personal etc.

MEAT!

The pre gig was pretty fun, they played loads of micro clips of music videos (involving video games) and other paraody game songs and clips that you can most likely find on youtube, one funny one in particular was “Sephi’s mom” which was a rip off of “Stacey’s Mum”. For those who don’t know, Sephiroth is the antagonist of the epic cult classic game Final Fantasy 7, he’s probably by far the most badass game villain in gaming history with epic scenes of him destroying the hometown of the protagonist as well as brutally… actually, I’m giving away the story aren’t I? Anyway, he’s badass and his “boss battle music” is by far on of the most epic and grandular songs you’ll ever see, complete with crazy gospels singing and wacky guitar riffs (for the film anyway).

The show itself was amazing, it felt like a proper blast from the past when they played songs we immediately recognised. Songs from games such as “Kingdom Hearts”, “Metal Gear Solid“, “Legend of Zelda” and “Mario” were all played. The intervals were snappy as the event organisers interacted with the audience with crazy competitions (a guy had to wear a space invader t shirt, and shoot space invaders by moving himself left and right literally and shooting with a button, he didn’t win though so FAIL). We had a guy from the gusiness book of records (VIDEO GAMERS EDITION! haha) come by to to present some awards, one for the event organiser for doing the most video game shows in one year, and one for composing the most songs in his entire career, so yeah, these guys were badass and know what they’re doing in terms of composing video game music.

We also had a “special guest” who joined the show (I use the term special guest lightly because he seems to be turning up on every show). He was the dude who played Super Mario Brother blindfolded on the piano, his youtube video ended up raking up loads of hits and BOOM, interweb celebritity, he’s now invited to play all sorts of songs from video games such as Mario, Final Fantasy and Tetris, Here’s a rendition of Final Fantasy (which was pretty cool)

Sorry about the videos, i only shot the screen projection since it’s not that interesting shooting the orchestra and all. The show ended with an epic rendition of “One Winged Angel” followed by a rare rendition of “Castlevania.” It was a good event and well worth the money So yeah that’s the music part of the show, NOW for the crazy ass cosplay side of the show.

Upon entering the Royal Festival Hall I immediately noticed a few familiar faces, amongst the crowd of concert goers were people dressed up as video game characters. This became a photography hunting ground for me as I began approaching each and every one of the video game characters and asking if I could take photos of them, all of which were very happy to do so. Some of the costumes were pretty awesome (the one of the guy dressed up as a sims character was simple but awesome) and definitely showed a lot of time and effort made in making the costumes. I’ve labelled each of the video game characters in their respective flickr pages so if you want to find out more about them, just click away and see. There was even a competition at the beginniing of the show to see who was the best cosplay character, the it ended up being Masterchief was his pretty epic suit he wore to the show (complete with flashing LEDs and whatnot). So yeah, I felt all giddy seeing all these people dressed up and what not, it was fun shooting them! Enjoy the shots!

Wow I can use all 4 categories for this post, it has geekiness, music, photography and a bit of everything for when I went out for a meal, score.