Lets start with the fact that the Super Mario, Legend of Zelda, Metal Gear and the classic video game medleys were still intact. Unfortunately, little seems to have been added to said lineups, but they are still of great quality. And the “video game pianist” came out on two different occasions, once to perform the music from the Final Fantasy series (the whole series, not just One-Winged Angel) and again to play some music from the Super Mario series (some of which he played with a blindfold on) with some Tetris thrown in for good measure. Both of his performances were met with standing ovations.

But what was especially exciting about this Video Games Live was the new additions to the lineup. Along with the aforementioned Castlevania (which was brilliant), they also played the music of the Metroid series (also for the first time at Video Games Live). This was very pleasing as well as somewhat thought provoking as to why they didn’t play the music from Metroid before.

BUT! Possibly the greatest addition to the Video Games Live lineup was the inclusion of……………………………drum roll please………………………………………………………………………………………………………..wait for it……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….wait for it…………………………………………………………….. MEGAMAN!!

Yes, someone must have read at least a part of my past Video Games Live post (but probably not) and thought “Umm, why don’t we play Megaman music again?”  This segment was absolutely wonderful! I even gave it a standing ovation and was cheering like mad for this.  To hear the Dr. Wily’s Castle theme from Megaman 2 was simply amazing!

And of course we still had the other great music from past shows such as Kingdom Hearts, though they weren’t allowed to show any footage from the game during the performance due to Square-Enix’s arrogant and strange demands to not have their games shown even though we already know what the games look like, but at least we get to see some clips from some classic Disney films.

There was also a cool segment in which they had a Guitar Hero specialist play some Guitar Hero for a prize (though the song he played, as well as the prize escape me for the moment).

There was also a segment for Need 4 Speed music that was kind of the “bathroom break” segment for a lot of people it seemed. The Mass Effect bit also didn’t seem too impactful on the audience, and the time used for those parts of the show could have been used better, but it wasn’t by any means unpleasant.

But overall I feel the new entries to the lineup, as well as the great segments from the past, really made this Video Games Live something special. And what made it even better was it didn’t feel like such a commercial this time. There was no “Age of Conan” segment (I use Age of Conan as both a figurative and literal example) to drag the show down at all. And the parts of the show that I may have said any negative comments about (like Halo or the One-Winged Angel bit) are still top quality.

So Video Games Live still may not be my perfect video game concert (where art though Donkey Kong Country), it is without a doubt getting better. Much better. The commercialization is gone, and they gave more time to the classics. I hope it continues to get better, and maybe one day it will become my ideal video game concert.

A winner is you!