Multi-orchestra video game music festival to be held at online Tokyo Game Show 2021
01 September, 2021
With summer gradually fading away, it’s once again time for the semi-annual Tokyo Game Show (TGS) to hit the scene, bringing all sorts of previews and announcements in the gaming world. However, like last year, the COVID-19 pandemic has once again made it too difficult to organize live, so the whole show has been moved online.
Though it doesn’t quite have the same live excitement, one bright side is that we can all take part from anywhere in the world. And to make it an even better virtual event, TGS2021 upped their own game by adding in a full music festival.
Naturally, the theme will be video game music, and TGS is promising “numerous gaming masterpieces that painted various generations.” This means we might be able to expect classics dating as far back as the "Mappy" theme song.
And in true music festival fashion there will be three stages. Two stages will hold full orchestras playing pop versions of our favorites alongs with the sweeping scores to epic games like "Final Fantasy VII."
The third stage will be for other styles of performance such as big bands and jazz ensembles, and if none of the jazz groups open with the intro to "Grand Theft Auto III," then this whole venture will have been a profound waste of time.
At the moment there are few details, but we know it’s going to be big and streamed online for the whole world to see. An online presentation announcing the details of this year’s TGS will take place at 5 p.m. (JST) on Wednesday, during which time more details are sure to emerge.
Whatever these details may be, the event seems sure to please. Many netizens came out in response to the announcement to show their support and curiosity.
“That looks totally great.”
“I sooooooo want to see this!”
“And it’s streaming?!”
“Music from current games is good, but I really want to hear stuff from NES and SNES.”
“It’ll be better than the Olympics because they’ll play Nintendo music.”
“Nintendo doesn’t exhibit at TGS, but maybe their music will be there.”
“I’m tired of orchestras though. Too many orchestras in video games.”
“I can’t think of a lot of famous music from Japanese video games, but do western video games have any memorable songs?”
“It looks like they’re taking advantage of moments from the Olympics and spreading the greatness of video game music even more.”
It does seem like TGS is taking the warm reception the Olympic opening ceremony got for its use of video game themes, and throwing in Fuji Rock’s wise idea of not making it necessary to go to Fuji Rock at all by streaming most of their content online for free.
Throw in TGS’s industry connections, and it ought to be a pretty stellar lineup of classic game music. It’d certainly be nice to hear some nostalgic classics like "Super Castlevania" or "Mega Man II," but with nearly half a century of music to choose from you can’t throw a fireball without hitting a masterpiece, so they can’t really go wrong.
Source: japantoday.com