Hmm, a multi-day event?

So the music concert is on Friday, and some other part is on Saturday?

Tokyo Game Show!  A wonderful event with about eleventy billion people where the lines are so long that you can't see more than about four games in a day.  Still some nifty swag, though.

Admittedly, I'll feel less special with my TGS copy of Gyakuten Saiban orchestra now that Kahori is selling them. 

Did anyone here attend the concert? If so, please tell me everything about it! I would like to know which tunes were played, especially from Ico.

I will be posting my report soon.  Sorry it's taking so long!

Oh yes, there's goodies on the way...   
Just a little bit longer and there'll be tasty treats!

The ICO selection was the vocal song, ~You Were There~

Your tasty treats will be better than my tasty treats, so I'd better darn well hurry up and get my description done before it's irrelevant... 

*cryptic*

*cryptic*

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.

Sounds like a lovely concert indeed!  I wish I could've been there...
Glad to hear the Zelda medley was original, after the disgrace that was the Play! "arrangement" - ripping Hyrule Symphony's track 13 in it's entirety, OGC1 (the Superman part - as Qui-Gon Joe calls it), and the ending coda from Smash Bros. Melee...  Just terrible.
Dr. Mario's "Chill" would've been interesting to hear.  I always thought it was much better than "Fever", but that's what gets all the attention.
Can't imagine that Smash: Brawl theme without the choir though...
Also, SMOOCHES to Crystal for this:

Yes!  Ordim and I thank you!  At least putting that bug in his ear just might get the ball rolling...  Let's hope.

This is a big file!  Takin' a bit of time to download... can't wait to hear.

Qui-Gon, where are your impressions good sir?

WOW. That tracklisting sounds amazing, and here's why:

2) Puzzle Medley  (classic)
6) Beyond the bounds  (WOW)
10)  ICO you were there  (even if it sucked)
11) Namco Arcade Medley  (ZOMG!)

Funny story that you might appreciate. When I was in Chicago with Chudah for the Play concert, there was the Uematsu/Angela Aki meet and greet the day before. We settled in to the left of the stage near the speaker, and there was this Japanese dude really close to us that kept rubbing against Chudah's hubby. I thought he was just some Japanese dude, or a fan or something, but it turns out that it was KONDO! So hilarious. For the rest of the week we just kept making jokes that the dude who composed the most well-known VGM tunes ever was bumping into Marty's ass throughout the whole in-studio performance.

In retrospect, I am a little envious.

My impressions are based on the audio recording...
112 MB for everything in the zip

*Really* liked those Dr. Mario parts inside the Puzzle Medley, those are so catchy and bring back fun memories. 

The MSG2 main theme is at the verge of becoming an overused standard, but it's still fun to hear live...  At least until it gets included in a few more concerts, then I might get sick of it

the YS medley was Fantastic!!  *Really* loved this part too. 
Classic Ys I&II material which really deserves to be played more often, because it's still as damn good today as it was then.

While I was looking forward to the Outrun segment, the end result just didn't quite get the right feeling... the guitar and the orchestra didn't seem to match up right, and it was somehow lacking the right rhythm to really get grooving.    Decent, but at least they attempted.

Ditto can be said for the Anubis song, the vocals and orchestra just didn't match up right.

The ICO tune itself has some supremely lovely parts to it, so I'll mirror Crystal's idea that a straight instrumental would be heavenly...

Namco Arcade Medley was another one I looked forward too, and the second half of this LONG medley is where most of the fun is.

Oh, speaking of the Puzzle Medley again, maybe someone can identify which game this part is from, from 4:47 through 5:28.  Beautiful stuff!

Friggin' hilarious!

Just listened to the recording... can always count on slightlydark (Skylark?) to sneak a recorder in!

"Final Fantasy" was as lovely as ever... sounds like the FFIX arrangement.

Not a big fan of the series, but the "Metal Gear Solid Main Theme" is such a great piece of music, and it's breathtakingly performed here.

Smash: Brawl main theme is actually *better* without the choir.  O_o

My two favorites were the Puzzle Medley (Columns, Tetris, and "Chill"!!!) and the Zelda Medley - about damn time we get an inspired arrangement!  I still want "Hyrule Field Main Theme" in its entirety though.  But wow, what a great arrangement!

Everything else was nice, but totally unfamiliar.  I recognized a few of the Earthbound tunes and theY's music was very nice too, but I've never heard any of it before.

I will never understand why some people seem to hate the arrangement? After all, it is a new full orchestra arrangement of the Hyrule medley that was performed by a string quartet originally. The Press Start arrangement was quite nice indeed, but nothing groundbreaking fresh in my book.

Hehe, indeed! *crossing fingers*

That's true.  But we never heard "Dark Overworld" or "Hyrule Field Main Theme" performed by a syphony orchestra before until now.  That alone makes it fresh to me!  Not to mention they didn't steal any of the arrangments from an existing score, which is always a plus.

Also, what is that last song in the Puzzle Medley?  It begins at 5:45 and is very lovely and so familiar.  I know I've heard it before...

Yeah, you are right. Do not get me wrong. I think the Zelda arrangement is one of the best in the whole concert. But quite frankly I am not too impressed from what I heard else from Press Start 2006. I was expecting much more from a _Japanese_ game music concert.

Yeah okay.

Sorry, I've just not really had the time or energy to devote to any posts of decent length... just short responses as a general rule.  I should've posted impressions from the concert immediately following it.

1. MGS main theme - Like Crystal said, was pretty much the same as the MGS2 version.  Pretty good stuff, though I think I've overlistened to the piece of music and it's not as exciting for me anymore.

2.  Puzzle Medley - this was pretty awesome.  While a lot of the themes were ones I didn't know, it certainly kept my interest with popping in ones that I did.  Hearing the Gameboy Tetris theme live in orchestra (yes I know it's a traditional folk song or whatever, but still) was pretty darn cool.

3.  Popolocrois - I also don't know this series, but the music sounded vaguely familiar.  Perhaps from having listened to it on one of the OGC CDs a loooong time ago?

4.  Mother Medley - I honestly recognized nothing from this, despite having played Earthbound.  Seemed to be a solid performance, but I never found most of the music in Mother to be all that memorable, personally.

5.  Outrun - The electric guitar performance didn't seem to synch very well with the orchestra, and part of that had to do with the sound amplification, or lack thereof.  The player actually stopped to turn it up at one point in the middle of the piece.  I felt this one went on a looong time and was pretty repetitious.

6.  Anubis - I've never heard music from Anubis before, but this really impressed me and makes me want to hear more.  Unfortunately the vocalist just didn't seem very... well, good, to put it plainly.  She seemed to have way too hard a time keeping up with the fast stuff.  I really want to hear what this originally sounded like on the ost.

7.  Ys - Freaking awesome.  A lot of the same themes from the Lilia Symphonic Suite on FNC (a CD set I finally recently picked up for myself), but still fresh, and still ridiculously cool to hear performed live.  It was so worth going just to hear this.

8.  Romancing Saga - Pretty good.  If you've heard the opening overture from Minstrel Song, you know what this sounds like.  Personally I like a lot of other music from that ost a whole lot better than this, but it was still pretty okay.

9.  Monster Hunter - Didn't really do anything for me.  I keep thinking about picking up one of the games, but the only people who ever recommend them to me over here are the skeazy otaku type, which kind of makes me fear how much fun I'd actually have with them.

10.  Ico - Agreed, Crystal.  Vocalist was awful (far worse than she was for the Anubis song).  I was so disappointed in this piece.

11.  The Namco medley seemed fun, even if I didn't know a whole lot of the music.  I think the only thing I recognized in it was Druaga.

12.  Zelda - Probably my favorite piece from the concert.  A powerful (non-Superman themed) performance of some of the best pieces of music from the Zelda series.  Sort of similar to the Hyrule Symphony one, but obviously a lot fuller and richer with the entire symphony orchestra playing.  The only thing more I could've asked for would've been some Hyrule Castle love.  Oh well... still awesome!

13.  Final Fantasy theme - Another main theme of a game series that I like less than a lot of the other music from it.  It was beautiful for what it was, though.  I just find myself wishing I could hear other themes from the series performed live instead of this one repeatedly ALL THE TIME.

14.  Smash Bros. Brawl - I actually like the vocal version, but this one was pretty darn cool.  I also totally suspected this was going to be an encore piece, being that Sakurai and Uematsu were both there.

After the concert we didn't realize there was going to be a meet and greet, so we didn't bother rushing out of the auditorium (our seats were pretty crappy too... my friend and I both agreed that the half-priced "A" tickets were probably better seats than the expensive "S" tickets where we sat aaaaaaaaall the way in the back on the first floor).  When we finally got out there, everyone was completely mobbed, and I wasn't able to get up to anyone.  My friend being very small was able to slip under the throngs and get Sakurai's signature for herself, though, so that was good for her, at least.

In any case, I'm glad I went, but I wish I'd known more of the music and that they'd done some stuff that's less over-done in some cases.

First off, I'm very impressed with the sound quality. Really nice job there.

1. MGS main theme. Is this actually different than the game orchestral version? I rather listen to Virt's version of this. =p

2.  Puzzle Medley. hehe, that one was nice. Too bad they didnt play Column's theme entirely.

3.  Popolocrois. Very nice. It was long enough and they did all the themes I wanted to hear. SS will love that.

4.  Mother Medley. I think most of it was from Mother 1 which I am not so familiar with. Still a nice listen.

5.  Outrun. I wish they kept to symphonic only and didnt add the electric guitar in there. Also, they could have medled the 3 themes easily. Meh ~

6.  Anubis. Don't know the original music, and I found the whole thing quite messy. May be the recording. =/

7.  Ys Medley. Aaaah. This is good. Sounds like they actually asked Kentaro Haneda for his arrangement cheets at times, but hey, I'm not sure anyone could ever do better. Bad point: too short !

8.  Romancing Saga. Eventhough I'm a huge SaGa music fan, I never liked that Minstrel Song intro. But getting the main Romancing SaGa main theme live made up a thousand times for it. Hearing the orchestral version of this on the OST back then was already a 10 years fantasy coming true, so I can't imagine how I would have felt if I actually attended the concert. *goosebumps overdose*

9.  Monster Hunter. Don't know any of that. Nice listen though. Definitely going to check on the original tunes.

10.  Ico. Couldnt go through that one ... ;_;

11.  Namco medley. Didnt recognize much of it. Was still shaking my head left and right through the whole thing. Shows the power of early arcade catchy melodies. =p

12.  Zelda medley. haha, that was awesome. re-Awoken my hopes for orchestral Zelda goodness as well. Though what I'd *really* like would be a Link to the Past themed album... (also: *quietly strangles the coughing guy in the background*)

13.  Final Fantasy theme. Classic. <3

14.  Smash Bros. Brawl. Nice version, and a nice way to end the concert.

Out of all the recent VGM concerts taking place all around the world lately, I think that's the one I would have enjoyed the most. Let's  hope they do that again sometimes and actually release CDs of it.

Thanks again for the recording guys.

[Oh, speaking of the Puzzle Medley again, maybe someone can identify which game this part is from, from 4:47 through 5:28.  Beautiful stuff!]

I found out just now.

BPS-Tetris's TechnoTris

[Also, what is that last song in the Puzzle Medley?  It begins at 5:45 and is very lovely and so familiar.  I know I've heard it before...]

<BPS>Tetris's Troika

Ooops...  Sorry Crystal!  -_-