OSV has finally arrived at one of our favorite events of the year: Northern Virginia’s Music and Games Festival (MAGFest). The renowned 4-day videogame music party is starting off louder than usual this year as it seems that for the first time ever, the Fest has truly reached critical mass. The normally mid-sized festival is bursting at the seams with rowdy concert-goers, artists, fans and musicians, and we’ll be in the thick of it bringing you updates all weekend.
Last night MAG kicked off with its first night of concerts, featuring VGM cover bands X-Hunters, Rare Candy and Bit Brigade. The latter definitely was the stand-out of the night, providing the soundtrack to a live speed-run of Ninja Gaiden projected on enormous screens. The guy playing managed to make it through the entire game without getting hit more than a handful of times while the band itself followed along with uncanny precision, proving that the most exciting (and least frustrating) way to play Ninja Gaiden is having it performed for you.
MAGFest regulars Rare Candy also exhibited much gusto with unique, synth-heavy covers of the classics. And X-Hunters, while traversing the well-trodden and somewhat tiresome route of Mega Man metal covers, still managed to provide a nice high-energy opening to the festival’s coming onslaught of live music.
Click through for photos from our first night at the east coast’s numero uno videogame music festival.
Photos by Emi Spicer
X-Hunters
Rare Candy
Bit Brigade
Ninja Gaiden speedrun. That’s brilliant. Love that game to death. He didn’t even get knocked off by the falcons, huh?
Regarding Rare Candy, did they perform “Undersea Palace” from Chrono Trigger? Loved that performance last year.
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Awesome, I actually bought tickets for last year but ended up not going. Totally forgot about it this year, but will definitely make it to there one of these years. Hope to see some epic performance vids too.
Jayson Napolitano, they did play Undersea Palace, with a guy from Entertainment System on bass and Chris Baines switching to guitar. Great performance. I also enjoyed their version of Gourmet Race.
Bit Brigade was indeed the highlight of the night. The band is tight and they managed to make the game’s cheesy story really exciting.