Press Start Report
1) Metal Gear Solid 2 Main Theme: almost the same as on the MGS2 cd except no synth.
2)Falling Block Puzzle Medley: ditties from Meteos’s Menu (The road you travel) Mode, Dr. Mario Fever, Columns's Clotho, Gameboy Tetris Music A, Dr. Mario Chill, Puyo Puyo Fever, BPS-Tetris's Techotris, BPS-Tetris's Troika and some others I don't know.
When I heard that catchy Music A, I almost wanted to start conducting right then and there.
I’ve had Dr. Mario’s Chill stuck in my head like a broken record ever since the game came out.
3) Popolocrois story: Don’t know this series.
4) Mother Medley:
Mother 1:8 melodies
Mother 2:8 Melodies
Snowman
Mother 3 Logo type
Mother 3 Poki's Theme?
Mother 3 Love Theme
5) Splash Wave from the game, Outrun): Guitar accompanies the orchestra.
6) Beyond the bounds from the game Anubis Zone of Enders: The vocalist, Maki Kimura, dressed in Egyptian/middle eastern attire, started singing in a foreign language and then English at times, with the guitar substituting as a backup vocal. Orchestra was too loud and seemed to drown out the vocalist's garbled singing.
7) Ys: Don’t know this series. Lyrical music though.
Part 2:
Nobuo and Tanaka, Sakurai, and the creators from various games came out to the 20th century Fox fanfare, which I thought was amusing. They said they’re never going to have a concert so close to TGS ever again b/c they’re exhausted.
Nobuo served as co-MC for the 2nd half of this concert.
Nobuo likes to talk A LOT.
He made jokes even when the instruments were tuning; it was so funny. A millisecond after they finished tuning, he immediately started talking again.
8) Opening from Romancing Saga Minstrel Song
This young looking guy named Kenji Ito came out to play the piano along with the orchestra. He and Nobuo talked about their experience at Black Mages 2 event.
9) Proof of a Hero from the game Monster Hunter:
The monster hunter creators came out to talk about their game.
I thought it was an ok song, although the introduction sounded like Superman.
Was even cooler when I heard it at TGS the next day, when walking by their booth. It was not a song that needed to be done live though because it's already orchestral in the soundtrack.
10) ICO you were there: the same singer, Maki Kimura, came out to do this one in a formal white dress.
She “butchered” this beautiful song. Original is a boy soprano. Maybe they should have got a young boy to do this too. This would have been a beautiful instrumental without the vocals.
Michiru Oshima came out after this and talked out about ICO.
11) Namco Arcade Medley: No comment; don’t know any of their stuff.
There was Mappy, Skykid, and Pacman, and others. I think.
12) Koji Kondo came out. He was dressed in this dark suit. They talked about when he went overseas and that he got a standing ovation. He did the New Super Mario Bros theme on piano (at Play! Chicago). Nobuo asked if he wanted to do the piano solo now. But Kondo didn’t want to, for some reason. (boo hoo)
Legend of Zelda Medley 2006:
Starts off with the main theme, and then transitions to the Dark World Field theme from SNES. This part starts off slowly and gradually gets louder and march-like, and then Zelda’s theme starts in first with the quiet harp and then this beautiful violin solo. The First chair violinist did the vibratos so delicately that I almost shed a tear. Then they transitioned into Hyrule Field theme from Oot, which always is a great song, with such energy and ended with the main Zelda themes again.
Encore 1:
VGM wouldn’t complete without…..you guessed it.
13) Final Fantasy Main Theme: the exact same as always; A Majestic and grand piece of music.
Encore 2:
14) Super Smash Bros BRAWL Main theme for the Wii Console:
An instrumental version! I don’t particularly like this song with the vocals.
So I was ecstatic to hear it without them.
The solo vocalist parts were substituted by the cellos, then strings, and then trumpets; all joined in one by one towards the astounding finish.
VIPs (Kondo, Sakurai, Nobuo, the Mother Creators, etc) went outside near the exit to say goodbye to the concertgoers.
Oshima and the Monster hunter creators were not among them.
Big crowd for the meet and greet.
I was one of the first ones out. I made a beeline for Kondo.
I gave him a cd to sign and said something like "please make a Zelda Orchestral Concert.”
He smiled awkwardly and said thank you.
Rating: 7/10
I didn’t know many of them. Some were just crammed into the medley. The songs with vocals were so-so. I do have to give them credit for collecting different VGM here and there though.
But I’m glad I went anyway. Dr. Mario Chill and the Zelda medley were worth hearing, and meeting Kondo, of course.
Joe, please do write yours too.
Edit: Added more info to Puzzle Medley.