That's true. They asked Dave Lights to come back and re-create the shows that Maiden did in the 80's, as they were planning to take the classic set back on the road after the VXI tour (even if Bruce had not returned). I'm really curious what stage set he would have done... maybe stage set that combines at least one element from the previous tours (this would have been very hard task, but a curious one for sure).
Plus, the development of TEH game started during the VXI era, If I'm not mistaken - so TEH tour was meant to be.
I belive it would have been sort of a more... tasteful or retro-ish version of the Ed-Huntour stage. Clearly the idea was to use the familiar stage structure, use the Ed-Hunter game as a visual refercen and incorporate some familiar 80's stage props/drapes into it. That's what The Ed-Huntour stage set ended up being, expect not working too well as it is. While I appreciate the concept around VXI and Ed-Huntour stage shows, they both fail at what the classic stage sets did so well: showcasing any coherence and/or clear visual landscape. They're sort of structur-ish and building-ish, but not quite. They're sort of trying to present a bigger, quite surreal visual landscape but not quite.
Maiden England tour actually pulled off the initial Ed-Huntour idea much better. It took the basic dressing from the Seventh Tour, where as The Ed-Huntour stage clearly tried to borrow a page from World Slavery Tour's book, though this connection is admittedly loose, since the main visual reference was the Ed-Hunter game. Anyway, they both had the idea of a backdrops selection that blends with the rest of the stage dressing. Once again, the icy landscapes and Eddies in ice worked so much better with the Maiden England stage than the CGI/Ed-Hunter game stuff with the Ed-Huntour stage. Of course, every stage show has a selection of backdrops that are tied into the stage dressing, take the Egyptian backdrops or the Mayan pyramid & jungle stuff for example, but both Maiden England & Ed Huntour sort of revised some of the older artworks to fit their visual concept. Icy 2 Minutes to Midnigh Eddie is definitely cool, a CGI Powerslave pyramid less so. Anyway, The Ed-Huntour show was a cool idea to begin with, sort of a proto version of a history tour stage shows we got later, but not quite here or there.
Give Me Ed, mish-mashy as it is, at least didn't even try to represent anything more than that it was and
Eddie Rip's Up the World stage show was more or less the same, while paying little hit/miss quality nods to their older stages and whatnot. Overall, with the exception of
Dance of Death tour, pretty much all of the stages between
The X-Factour and
A Matter of Life and Death Tour suffered from a lack of clearly definable visual landscape brought into flesh. Even Brave New World/Metal 2000 tour stage, to an extent, although that one actually managed to look rather awesome.
I'm not saying it's entirely bad thing, just pointing out that they were definitely a bit more inconsistent with those things back then. That said, I appreciate the effort to do something different with the familiar "boxed" stage structure. There hasn't been any real departures from that after Dance of Death tour, basically. Not saying there has to be, but you know...
But yeah, dragging few stage elements from the 80's to that tour was probably part of the concept anyway.
) I noticed that the stage set was a little different - the scaffolds were removed and we can see BNW Eddie clearer, which is great because the lighting for this tour was amazing (it's like we have different colours of the album cover... cool). The stage looks better without them imo.