It took four hours to drive there (!) but it was worth it.

When we arrived, we landed in “stacked parking” in Lot A, which meant that someone would be trapped behind us in the event that we left late. We didn’t plan to stay for the VIP afterparty because we had the kids in tow…

Back to front:
Chance Thomas, Dee Baker,
David Hayter, me, and
Shawn Clement, plus
a guy looking for an autograph

I did the “Meet & Greet” first along with a whole bunch of other folks. It took a while to figure out where exactly I was supposed to sit, because you couldn’t even see the autograph tables for the density of the crowd there. I ended up sitting next to David Hayter, who is best known as the screenwriter for X-Men – The Last Stand and X2 – X-Men United. But that’s not what everyone wanted. You see, David is also the voice of Solid Snake in the Metal Gear series. This meant that he started out being asked if he would do the voice, and quickly this progressed to “Would you call my friend? It’s his birthday!” to “Would you record my voicemail greeting message?” David ended up doing “Hello. This is Solid Snake. Bernard/Melissa/Aaron/etc isn’t here right now. We’re going after Metal Gear!” dozens and dozens of times — often two or three times for the same person, since the recording interfaces on cell phones are confusing and glitchy. He was incredibly classy about it, though, shaking every person’s hand and asking everyone’s name.

The autographing lines

Shawn Clement and I were joking about how much attention David was getting, but I was able to divert some fangirlism Shawn’s way when I told my daughter Elena that Shawn had done music for Buffy the Vampire Slayer on TV. That got her eyes nice and wide. There were also a handful of diehard SWG fans who stopped by, including a couple from Westwood College who are working through a game design program there, so I got my quota…

They had warned us to expect about a thousand people looking for autographs. They weren’t kidding. Final attendance count at the show was almost 9000. Because of this, I didn’t really get to see hardly any of my friends from the game biz who were also there — I managed to wave at Seamus Blackley and Mike Morhaime briefly as I searched for my seat at the autographing tables, but that was about it.

The crowd

The concert itself opened with the same classic game montage that I have linked previously. After that we were treated to music from Final Fantasy, Advent Rising, the Mario games, a really moving set from Medal of Honor set to wartime footage rather than game cinematics, and much more. During the Metal Gear segment, a soldier with a light-up exclamation point over his head patrolled the stage while a stealthy orange crate snuck around. A tribute to the movie Tron mixed footage from the original games, the film, and the recent shooter, and ended with a lightcycle crossing the stage.

There were also two interludes where audience members were brought up to play classic games on the big screen. They were unbelievably bad at Frogger and Space Invaders. As the Space Invaders game went on, the Goodyear blimp counted down the time played in the sky overhead.

This was the display during the intermission.
At the end, it announced “Press START or clap
to begin.”

My kids were the ones you heard screaming incredibly loudly during the Sonic montage, as they shouted out every time they saw a game they own. Since they own all of them, I hardly heard the music. The solo piano by Martin Leung playing a medley of Final Fantasy pieces was actually more impactful to me than the orchestral take. And, for that matter, the piece that was apparently written for his daughter by one of the members of BT was more powerful than many of the game pieces that followed.

That said, you walked out feeling buoyed up; the music held its own, and the whole thing was a very enjoyable extravaganza. There were folks there that were clearly season pass holders to the Bowl, who took it all in stride. My kids loved it, but we did indeed skip the afterparty because they went from wide awake to stumbling black-eyed zombies within minutes of the show ending.

Sure enough, someone was trapped behind us in Lot A when we got there — pretty much the only cars left in the lot. As we drove away, I think I heard them saying they’d been in the car with the heat running, and now were out of gas. Uhh… sorry.

At 1am, the drive back was nice and quick.