Before: rather uninteresting textured scene.  4 textures are used here, and they came from staroffice 5.  all of the vertex colors are white.  

this is the file static_lighting.blend

in control + z (shaded) mode you can see the effect of several sphere lamps with different colors.  

and the result, with the monstrous red arrow showing which button to press to convert the colors seen in the above image to vertex colors

 

Notes

vertex colors darken textures, they cannot make it any brighter.  [the blending of vertex colors and textures is multiplicative, which you can play with as the Multiply blending mode in Photoshop]

having light sensitive faces in the game engine would currently result in the colors you specify here being the BRIGHTEST color when lit [ignoring secularity, which is that shiny dot you see on shiny surfaces like glass].  essentially that means you will have another mesh intending to be light sensitive, or static lighting in vertex colors and dynamic lighting are mutually exclusive

so that you don't have some vertices with white-or near white colors that don't appear they should, set the secularity of the material to zero.  

it also is a good idea to get familiar with your lamp types

I have more examples of this [some technique info there too] in lighting_examples.html