Gamers enjoy Fantastic Arcade

While Fantastic Fest has been around for years, this was the first year with the newest addition: Fantastic Arcade. This part of the festival showcased dozens of indie games, Machinima, nerdcore music and anything and everything surrounding the video game community.

The first Fantastic Arcade was kicked off with a show by the popular nerdcore rapper MC Frontalot. MC Frontalot has single-handedly invented the nerdcore genre, rapping about various topics such as video games and mathematics. His show was amazing and was followed by an ‘80s dance party at The Highball.

Among the dozens of games available for free play at Fantastic Arcade, a few really jumped out. They might not have been the best in innovative design, but they still brought a smile.

The first would be Enviro-Bear 2000 by Justin Smith. The game only has one mission: hibernation. You control a bear, and you drive a car. You can only control his one available arm with the mouse. So you can either turn the wheel, push the gas, go into reverse, drive, or eat bountiful fish, but you have to do them at different times, which makes for a great decision-making process. The graphics on this game are atrocious, but the simplicity of this independent game was enjoyable.

Best game award for this writer goes to Canabalt. This game is easy to pick up, easy to learn, but hard to master. A side-scrolling "film-noir" type game, you are a finely dressed man trying to outrun your city being destroyed only by jumping. Jumps must be timed perfectly to escape the falling city. Fantastic Arcade held a "highest score" tournament for this game at The Highball. Many cheers and "oohs!" were heard as each contestant braved the Canabalt world to attempted greatness.

The Alamo Drafthouse and The Highball were recreated into a Left for Dead 2 campaign map. Left for Dead is the popular Valve Corporation game that pits humans against zombies in the fight for survival. It was very impressive how authentic and real it looked to the actual physical location of Fantastic Fest and Fantastic Arcade. It was strange and awesome to play the video game where the game virtual setting is where the players were actually sitting in real life.

The creators of the popular internet Halo Machinima series Red Vs. Blue were at Fantastic Arcade to premiere their new movie Red Vs. Blue Revolution as well as showcase the best of Machinima on the web. Machinima is the art of using the graphics and physics of a particular video game to create original stories and films.

Many hilarious and seriously awesome machinima were shown using games like Halo 3, Half Life 2, Portal, Team Fortress 2 and Dragon Age. Many Machinima can be found online by searching for "Machinima" on YouTube.

The festival ended with the concert Datapop 4.0. This dance party featured music using the beeps and boops from hacked Nintendo Gameboys, among other video game consoles, and showcased some great 8-bit bands: Rainbowdragoneyes, glomag, and IAYD. This event might have ended Fantastic Arcade this year, but the games it provided will live on forever.