Setlist
Tetris: "Main Theme"
Pokémon: "Main Theme"
Halo 2: "Main Theme"
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time: "Zelda's Lullaby"
Super Mario World: "Bowser's Castle"
Sonic the Hedgehog: "Main Theme"
Mega Man: "Dr. Wily Stage"
Final Fantasy X: "To Zanarkand"
World of Warcraft: "A Call To Arms"
Hearthstone: "Main Theme"
Kingdom Hearts: "Hikari"
Metal Gear Solid 2: "Main Theme"
Read MoreWizard World Minneapolis
Wizard World Minneapolis officially began its pop culture weekend takeover last night, with a kickoff event held last night at the rotunda in the Mall of America. In addition to a trivia contest for
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-->Blizzard
Sure, I said I have stopped buying Blizzard games because of their online requirements. For a long time, I refused to buy Diablo III because you have to have an online connection to play the game.
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Video game music tribute band Critical Hit held a concert at the Wizard World Minneapolis show at the Minneapolis Convention Center, last night.
Some of you may know that I'm actually a massive Blizzard fan until they required all of their modern PC games to have internet access for DRM purposes (Diablo III and Starcraft II comes to mind). While I no longer support Blizzard's future games, I still have a soft spot for those early games, and, fun fact, I own many of these games' soundtracks when they came in Collector's Editions.... so I was pretty excited to hear that Blizzard's composer Jason Hayes, when not busy with writing music for the gaming company, he is in an instrumental band called Critical Hit.
Joining Hayes on stage were violinist Michelle Jade, cellist Leah Metzler, and drummer Kevin Dooley. All the songs on their set were from famous video games, and had a good diversity. From Nintendo classics like Super Mario Brothers and Legend of Zelda to more modern games like Halo and Metal Gear Solid.
My personal favorite was the Tetris theme, mostly because we actually wrote a lengthy article Tetris Music, which Jason wrote:
The music is highly addictive even with its lo-fi, 8-bit sound. The most popular song that many artists have covered and has become known as "The Tetris Song" is "Korobeiniki" (Russian: "Коробе́йники"). There's also a variant/original called "Kalinka" that starts out slow and increases in speed and suddenly stops. It's a Russian song based on a poem with the same name written in 1861 by Nikolai Alekseevich Nekrasov and printed in the Sovremennik magazine in 1861.
All the songs were basically cover songs, interpreted as classical instrumentals, with the one exception of World of Warcraft's "A Call To Arms" (as that one song was written by Hayes, himself). The other Blizzard game Hearthstone song was written by Peter McConnell, but Hayes loved that song so much he wanted to use it on his set.
Most of these songs can be found on their debut album Critical Hit: Volume One, available now.
If you attend Wizard World comic book/pop culture conventions, Critical Hit may be playing at these shows. See listing below:
05/09 Philadelphia Comic Con
05/23 St. Louis Comic Con
05/27 Krakow Film Music Festival
06/13 Des Moines Comic Con
06/20 Sacramento Comic Con
08/01 Richmond Comic Con
08/22 Chicago Comic Con
09/05 San Jose Comic Con
09/11 Pittsburgh Comic Con
09/19 Ohio Comic Con
Be sure to check back at W♥M to read our continuing coverage of Wizard World Minneapolis at weheartmusic.com. In the meantime, whatever photos we've processed, we have uploaded in the Wizard World Minneapolis 2015 Photo Gallery.
Critical Hit at Wizard World, Minneapolis Convention Center (02 May 2015)
vu (vu@weheartmusic.com)
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