This past Saturday I saw the Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth Orchestra World Tour at Carnegie Hall in New York. I had an extra ticket to spare, which after a brief social media search, went to a very friendly man I’ve never seen before who works for PC Magazine. That’s not really important, but honestly, it’s pretty hard to meet new friends as an adult, so I’m going to give myself credit.
The concert itself was fantastic and – as you probably have guessed – featured an orchestra playing music from Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth. It was the closest I’ve come in a long while to feel the emotion known as “good.” And, sitting there in one of the world’s most famous theaters listening to video game music was a reminder of how far we’ve come.
Final Fantasy Music Shaped My Life
This isn’t me rolling into a bit. No joke here. As I’ve written before, I was always a massive video game music fan and especially a Final Fantasy music fan. Nobuo Uematsu still regularly ranks at the top of my Spotify Wrapped lists, a sign of both my love of the series and my own inability to allow new art to take hold in my brain. But that wasn’t always easy! To avoid repeating a long story, I had to import the original Final Fantasy 7 soundtrack from Japan because nobody wanted disgusting video game music here. I was in middle school figuring out how to do that. Even my friends who loved video game fans were extremely unimpressed with what I’d achieved there. It seemed kind of strange to everyone to be that into it.
Final Fantasy wasn’t even my first video game music love. I recorded Mega Man songs off the TV on a tape recorder. I still own the Super Mario 64 Original Soundtrack that came out around the same time as the system, a rare North American video game music release in the 1990s. Killer Instinct’s CD included a song with some sexy talk in it, making my dad turn red and immediately switch off the stereo in his car on the way home from the store.
Hell, do you remember how you could play a hidden song on a regular CD player with the Castlevania: Symphony of the Night album? I do! And I definitely transferred it to audio cassette and, soon after that during a time when God was alive, MP3s. When Napster became a thing, I’d say 99 percent of my downloads were game soundtracks that were never released in America.
Games Have An Odd Place In Pop Culture
Look, I get it. I’m not unique in loving video game music. Trust me that I know that Spotify and YouTube are packed with game soundtracks (and even more game covers) while Nintendo has its own music app now. But seeing it in concert with so many other regular human beings really drove home what this meant.
I’m not really a person who goes to a lot of concerts. In fact, I actually had tickets to the Final Fantasy 7 Remake tour that preceded this one, but COVID screwed it up for me. And that’s a shame, because I think I needed to see so many video game fans enjoying something I used to be ashamed of loving.
Again, I know we’ve had video game concerts for a long time now. But even when you know something is popular, it’s still easy to fall back into some childhood mindset where it’s embarrassing. Video games are the same way, man. It’s definitely a ridiculous artform, but it’s still often a ridiculed artform. But while music and movie fans are portrayed as snobbish and uptight, video game fans are usually portrayed as feral weirdos whose main form of hydration is promotional Mountain Dew cans. So you can see why I still have some mixed emotions about my appreciation of the fine tunes of the Square Enix corporation.
Video Game Music Is Taking Over
Perhaps it was that it was such a regular thing that struck me. Most of the video game music performances were at larger events. PAX and Comic-Con and the like. They were walled off gardens for nerds to have fun. This was just a regular concert at a regular – if fancy – venue. And the concert itself proceeded as such.
The conductor, Arnie Roth – who I’m sure is really tired of being asked about the ending of Tár – didn’t talk down to the audience. The game didn’t need to be explained to anyone. It didn’t feel like a gimmick. It felt like a concert. When they brought Loren Allred on stage to sing No Promises to Keep, the response from the audience wasn’t just fandom clapping for a game celeb. It was people who appreciated what Allred contributed.
This all seems too simple and I’m just slow to catch up to everyone else. To catch up to the culture. But the reminder was important to me. It was nice to see a video game event where everyone agrees that it’s good and nobody is screaming at each other or some jerk is saying it’s not “legit” art. I’m not saying that video game culture has solved all its problems. Baby, it ain’t solved nearly half of them.
What I am saying was it felt very, very good to just feel normal about this. To feel like this is what everyday people enjoy. Not at a con. Not at a release event. Just a place you can go to hear music performed live. It’s so common now that I almost forgot how unthinkable it was when I was a kid.
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OpenCritic
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Top Critic Rating:
93/100
- Released
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February 29, 2024