My birthday gift from Matt was tickets to the first show of Video Games Live at the Hollywood Bowl, which we just got back from. I, not so coincidentally, was wearing my 1up mushroom shirt. As we walked into the ampitheater, a video crew asked to film my shirt, assuring me that they would only show my shirt, not my face or anything else. I must admit, it's very hard to stand still and not giggle loudly when some random guy is admitting to aiming his camera at your boobs. Anyway....

The LA Philharmonic played everything from Pong to Halo. The best part was the opening number, Metal Gear Solid. They had Snake crawling around the stage and climbing up ropes to avoid being seen by a bad guy with a large "!" over his head. At one point, he even hid in a cardboard box (complete with the required paint job) while the bad guy walked by.

During each of the songs, the screens showed clips from the video game or series in question. The newer video games' montages consisted almost entirely of cut scenes, but they did blow up a few things during Halo's.

At the end of the show, about 30 game composers/artists/designers were called on stage. It being the first night of the tour, they had some big names. Seeing as how almost all the major ones were Japanese, I'm not going to even attempt at spelling their names correctly. I will, however, mention that they included the composers from Super Mario, Sonic, Advent Horizon, and Halo.

Now I must go fulfill my sudden and unexplained urge to go blow things up. To the video game machine!