This year the Video Games Live proposed its third appearance in five years of existence and more than 250 shows. Its creator, Tommy Tallarico, a big fan of video games and music, explains to us, like every year, that he wanted to find a way to reconcile the two and to please the players by offering a Live show. And it must be said that this small company, created with his composer friend Emmanuel Fratianni, is a great success, more than 3,000 people gathered on Friday December 17 at the Palais des Congrès.
The show starts off strong with a medley of some themes from the series featuring our friends the Belmonts: Castlevania. Against the backdrop of images from a few episodes, from NES to PS3, Tommy’s electric guitar joins the orchestral chords of the troupe. The crowd is already hot and resumes the “hey, hey, hey” on a track from the 1st NES game. Opening + Castlevania.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nWMJFuJ0BA
We then had the opportunity to discover some very fun mini-clips, mixing two video games in a funny situation. The ship of R-Type in the universe of Space Invaders, Sonic in the universe of PacMan who finishes the level in two seconds flat, or the character of GTA in the universe of Frogger, destroying a few cars on the level, causing an unprecedented pile-up to ultimately cross the level quietly. Success is at the rendezvous, the room loves it!
R-Type vs Space Invaders
Sonic vs Pacman
GTA vs Frogger
Tommy returns to play with some musicians from the orchestra, Laura’s theme (Silent Hill 2). It’s nice, but unfortunately it’s a bit long as the song has no lyrics, and the music turns out to be quite repetitive (just like a song when you listen to the instrumental version).
Our host explains to us that it is a special day for him today, because TRON, a 1982 video game film, was released the same day in the USA (“TRON Legacy”), and for the occasion, the VGL presents the music for the first film. For this piece, we will have to close our eyes, as the visual torture is cruel … Excerpts from the film and the games are mixed, giving rise to incomprehensible sequences that can cause strong headaches. The music is not really captivating, we even hear “it sounds like nothing” around us, people are obviously not in it, unlike Tommy.
Tribute to TRON
