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Loose Fantastic Arcade stretches idea of what video games can be [Austin American-Statesman](Austin American-Statesman (TX) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Sept. 22-- At most video game conferences, noisy expo floors allow attendees to check out big-budget games, while in panel rooms, game developers typically talk about the pressure-cooker challenge of working in large teams to put these kinds of games together. Fantastic Arcade, which ended its fifth year as a free Austin event on Sunday night, is not like that. You don't imagine, for instance, that there are other game conferences where a chunk of programming time is devoted to letting a developer tell a lengthy joke about a dog getting drunk at a bar. Or another conference where attendees score points and prizes for eating disgusting custom-made food like anchovy popsicles. Or where attendees can get full-menu alcohol and food pretty much anywhere they sit or stand. The four-day Arcade, which runs alongside the film event Fantastic Fest, is not like other game conferences, but what's really special about it is not that it's stretching the definition of what a game festival can be. It's that it's helping change the perception of what video games themselves are. For four days at the newly re-opened Highball and its neighboring Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar movie theater, what video games once were -- commercial, increasingly mainstream, ubiquitous in a mobile technology culture -- no longer mattered. At the festival, practically anything can be a video game, even and especially tiny projects from individuals trying to hammer something together in their free time. It doesn't have to be pretty. Many Fantastic Arcade games use crude, sprite-based graphics instead of aiming for photorealism. Some games were clearly put together quickly, sometimes in just a few days in Game Jam events, and are works-in-progress. Other games, such as physics-challenged breakdancing game "QED," don't even have to work to be the subjects of a raucous, hilarious game tournament. This year, eight games were loaded into full-sized arcade consoles, complete with cabinet artwork. Another 30 were loaded into computers around the festival that anyone could access and play. And several more kiosks featuring sponsor Sony's hardware gave a glimpse of upcoming indie games. There were shooting games ("Starfighter"), fighting games ("Gang Beasts"), adventure games ("Dropsy"), but mostly games that defied genre such as "Banana Chalice," a psychedelic flying game about a cat who shoots bananas, which won a special jury award at the festival. Its gobsmacked developer, Kyle Reimergartin of Seattle, could only exclaim, "Life! Bananas!" and something unintelligible before leaving the stage at a Sunday night award ceremony. The best thing about the fest, perhaps, is that after five years, it has grown to take on some of the personality of its director, the affable and always-entertaining Wiley Wiggins. Wiggins was a constant presence as funny emcee, tournament play-by-play announcer and champion for indie developers. Though the fest has a set schedule of programming, it keeps a loose vibe. Sometimes things run late, held up by technical glitches such as a lack of game-controller batteries or a struggle to pack attendees into a single room, as when famed game developer Tim Schafer discussed his 1998 PC cult hit, "Grim Fandango," Friday evening. But if that looseness bothered attendees, I didn't hear even a whisper of it. Most seemed thrilled to have access to so many games from developers they may not have otherwise ever heard about. Here were some of my highlights of this year's Fantastic Arcade: --Schafer's talk, which began with co-presenter George Royer of White Whale Games telling a hilarious drunk-dog joke, demonstrated how important "Grim Fandango" was to gamers. Schafer, known as much for his humor as for games such as "Full Throttle" and "Psychonauts," discussed how film noir and Dia de los Muertos mythology came together for "Grim," which is being remastered for an upcoming release. Unfortunately, there's no date set for that; Schafer said he's still trying to recover game art and other assets needed to rebuild a high-def version of it from old LucasArts staffers who worked on "Grim Fandango." --IFC's "Food Party" star Thu Tran proved the perfect host for Arcade's zaniest event, a Sunday night competition called "Barfcade." About 30 short, competitive food-themed video games were randomly played by two contestants. All the games included virtual shrimp and, before long, the contestants had tried durian creme popsicles, bologna-sardine tacos and an entire stick of butter each. The point system broke down, but the wild, random event was not unlike Tran's chaotically hilarious show, and it drew a large, appreciative crowd at the Highball. --My favorite games of the fest included "Push Me Pull You," a cartoony sumo/soccer game in which two sets of jammed-together bodies compete. If it turned out the game was inspired by the surgery horror movie "Human Centipede," I would not be surprised. "Lovers In A Dangerous Spacetime" is both adorable and extremely challenging, requiring teamwork and coordination to defeat enemies of an orb floating in space. And "Gorogoa," with its beautiful artwork and brainy puzzles, lingered in my brain. --Game tournaments on a giant Drafthouse screen have become a big part of Arcade. A tournament I saw featuring a four-player "Asteroids"-like combat game called "Astro Duel" was as exciting as last year's hit, "Samurai Gunn." Fantastic Arcade has a list of the games from the festival at its website, fantasticarcade.com. While some are still in the works, many of the games are available to play online or to download for free. ------ Watch a video of Fantastic Arcade fun online at www.statesman.com. ___ (c)2014 Austin American-Statesman, Texas Visit Austin American-Statesman, Texas at www.statesman.com Distributed by MCT Information Services |