The rain was a problem. As I carefully wound my car through the narrow streets of Philadelphia, it wasn't so much droplets of precipitation falling from the sky as it was a shimmering solid wall preventing me from seeing more than a few inches past my bumper. My carefully plotted route (thank you, Mapquest!) was now completely useless to me, as various streets were closed off due to the downpour. Eventually, I found the entrance to the parking for the Mann Music Center, which I was somewhat surprised to discover was a field. I sloshed through the soupy grass, handed my soggy ticket to the remarkably cheerfully attendant, and heaved a sigh of relief as I found my thank-goodness-it's-under-cover seat. As I sat there in the muggy night air, dripping onto the floor, I thought to myself, "This had better be one hell of a concert."

From the program, it certainly looked like Play! A Video Game Symphony had the makings of a good time. Jason Michael Paul (the money and planning guy) and Arnie Roth (the music guy) had assembled a play list sure to please any game fan, including music from Shenmue, Silent Hill 2, World of Warcraft, Battlefield, and Morrowind. Of course there were the requisite entries from the Final Fantasy series; after all, Paul and Roth were behind the Dear Friends and More Friends shows, but there were also medleys planned from the Super Mario and Sonic franchises. The crowd around me was not quite what I expected; apart from the cosplaying girl a few rows in front of me and the guy carrying the NES messenger bag, nobody stuck out as an "obvious" gamer. The couple in back of me turned out to be a brother and sister—she'd told him about the show after she'd missed it in Chicago. The guys in front of me certainly weren't the sort you'd expect to be excited about listening to an orchestra, but one was practically vibrating with excitement at the chance to hear Jeremy Soule's Morrowind score live, and another got some ribbing for wanting to hear Sonic. I was about to pursue the matter with them more, when the lights dropped and the show began.

I had my watch on, so I know the show had at least two solid hours of music in it, but it felt like mere moments had passed between lights down and lights up. Mesmerizing isn't quite the right word, because that implies that the audience was a passive, sitting there dazzled as the music washed over them, but that couldn't be further from the truth. As the familiar, yet marvelously orchestrated strains of the Super Mario Bros theme swelled out from the orchestra, three massive screens overhead displayed the oh-so-familiar landscape of World 1-1. The crowd went nuts, cheering and hooting as Mario bumped bricks, squashed goombas, and collected fire flowers. Resting members of the orchestra tilted their heads to watch the screens, too, proving that no-one is immune to Mario's universal appeal.

Each Play show has its own share of surprises, and ours was the world premiere of the soundtrack to Prey, written by Jeremy Soule. Anything by the guy who gave sound to Morrowind and Oblivion is going to be good, so when I say that it was the lowlight of the evening, that gives you some idea as to just how amazing the rest of the night was. You might enjoy the music from Halo, or even have it on your iPod, but until you hear it done by a full orchestra and choir, you really just don't appreciate the sheer weight of it. As the choir sang the familiar angelic tones that open Halo and Master Chief looked down on us, we collectively knew it was time for some serious business and just wanted someone to hand us a weapon.

At the other end of the emotional and aural spectrum was the Swing de Chocobo, a delightfully cheeky interpretation of the Chocobo theme from Final Fantasy. With fantastic trumpet solos and a peppy beat, it was a bright spot of foot-tapping playfulness amongst the other, more majestic pieces of the concert. While themes from Metal Gear Solid and Blue Dragon were dramatic and moving, Laura's Theme, from Silent Hill 2, complete with electric guitar, was as gritty and unnerving on stage as it was in the game.

If the crowd went nuts during the SMB medley, they went positively ballistic when Roth announced the final number of the evening, Final Fantasy's One Winged Angel. Not being a big FF fan, I was unfamiliar with the piece in question, but once the music kicked in, punctuated by the choir's calls of "Sephiroth!" I understood what all the fuss was about. After a quick encore and a much-deserved standing ovation from the crowd, the orchestra, choir, and conductor left the stage, leaving the crowd at once both happily satisfied and hungry for more.

Play isn't flashy. Except for the screens, which are used to show the orchestra more than they're used to show any game footage, the entire event is seriously low-tech. No lasers, no game cabinets, no celebrities, just an enthusiastic conductor and some truly magnificent music. Some might say that the stripped down approach is just another way to cut costs, but those jaded cynics are missing the point. Normally, the music in video games is, by definition, part of the background. It's an essential component to the gameplay experience, but it's one that tends to get overlooked in favor of hi-tech graphics or especially tasty physics. Play takes away all the distraction so that you can really pay attention to just how nuanced and layered the soundtrack to some of your favorite games really is. You wouldn't immediately think that the theme to Super Mario Bros, which you can mimic pretty darn well just by singing "do do do do-do do-do" would really qualify as music on anything but the most basic scale, but I defy you to hear it turned into the catchy samba that it is in Play and not be blown away. What sounds like a gimmick ("video games meets an orchestra? Pshaw!") turned out to be a memorable, fun, touching, exciting, enthralling evening, and an absolute must-see not just for fans of gaming, but for fans of music in general. Do whatever you have to do to catch it when it comes to your hemisphere.

- Maj1013