There have been numerous accounts of bloggers and their fifteen minutes of fame thanks to YouTube.
Live music and music videos (R.I.P. MTV) are accessible beyond belief, but seeing as how this particular article pertains to the former we’ll stick to the topic and avoid my ranting and raving on who shot first – Numa Numa or All Ur Base.
Live music being what it is, we’re regularly subjected to poorly-filmed footage on the latest cell phone model advertised between Desperate Housewives and Ugly Betty by fangirls rooting for their super-sensitive boyfriend’s microphone fellatio.
This is not that footage.
I admit willingly that I am proud to have been “made” in the 80s, as was Nintendo. Being this proud of my 
birthright to whoop major gluteus maximus to the max in Dragon’s Lair or RBI Baseball, I present the Video Games Live Orchestra. Caught live and in person, this gracious performance provided a new generation some classical instruction on where you can really stick that Wii remote.
For three years, the video game industry has put together and heavily promote a full-scale symphonic and psychedelic experience that is intended to “help encourage and support the culture and art that video games have become.”
Somehow, I think it has worked.
They are touring again this year, and have covered a wide-range of games including Pong, Tetris, Galaga, Dragon’s Lair, and even Punch-Out. As you can tell from the video, the crowd was certainly full of people my age who vividly remember this short but tasty list of early gems.
Typically, their set list (according to Wikipedia) goes something like this:
- Advent Rising
- Beyond Good & Evil
- BioShock
- Castlevania
- Civilization IV
- Command and Conquer (Red Alert)
- Dragon’s Lair
- EverQuest II
- Final Fantasy (multiple segments)
- God of War
- Halo (multiple segments)
- Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
- Headhunter
- Kingdom Hearts
- The Legend of Zelda series
- Lucasarts Medley
- Mass Effect
- Medal of Honor
- Metal Gear Solid
- Metroid
- Myst
- Sonic the Hedgehog
- Space Ace
- StarCraft II
- Super Mario Series (multiple segments)
- Tom Clancy Series Medley
- Tron
- Warcraft (multiple segments)
- A Classic Arcade Medley from over 25 classic games (which is somewhat comical for games with no music as sound effects are made by the orchestra for Pong and Robotron).
Now, under normal circumstance I wouldn’t promote viral videos since they do enough work on their own, but in a case such as this I must make an exception. They have traveled the country and the world, and now witness the movement on your home computer.
