Last Friday, I visited the 2006 edition of the Arcadia Festival, located in Montreal, Quebec. The event's purpose is mostly about video games, with a side take on related technologies. Apparently, this is the only such happening located in Canada, so I decided to drop by and see what it was all about. Such opportunities don't happen every day! The location was large enough to easily accomodate everyone, and some extra booths could have been setup without bothering any of the existing ones. Being in it's second year, the Arcadia Festival still has some room to grow, but this one was well planned and holds a lot of potential for the future. The crowd was large enough to keep all staffers busy, but nothing to create long waiting lines. That was probably due to the fact that I went on Friday afternoon, instead of during the weekend.



The event entrance

I took up the included pictures myself. You can click on them to get larger versions. Some didn't come up as well as I hoped because of the strange lightning going on inside the building: the background was mostly black, with several colorful spots used to lighten up things through a light fog added for effect. I'm still learning how that new camera works, too.

Three of the big video games makers were present: Nintendo, Microsoft (for the Xbox) and Ubisoft all made strong showings. Rockstar was also present with it's latest few titles in playable form. Several people decried the absence of Sony, who could have used this opportunity to plug the PS3 a few mere days before launch.



The DS demo stations | The Wii playing Twilight Princess!

Nintendo's booth was especially well done and the most popular one, with several playable DS games along with, yes, the Wii. This was the first public appearance of the console in Canada, and the company made sure that people could have a chance to try it out. Several consoles featured different games, including Rayman Raving Rabbids, Excite Truck, Wario Ware: Smooth Moves, Wii Sports and obviously the Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess! The waiting lines for the various games, at the time of my visit, averaged around 15 minutes so it was easily to line in and give it a shot if you were interested. The DS stations were plentiful and without much wait time, holding games such as Metroid Prime: Hunters, Star Fox Command, Open Season, New Super Mario Bros. and several others. A DS Download Station was supposed to be available, but it wasn't in working order when I tried to connect to it.

I lined up to see the Nintendo Wii closer, and I tried out both Rayman and Excite Truck. The Rayman demo involved aiming at those crazy bunnies in order to throw plungers at them before they could fight back. It was very reminiscent of an arcade cabinet equipped with a gun to shoot down opponents, while the progression through the level is automatic. The controller, used to aim, was precise and didn't make you feel as if you kept missing shots because of poor control or design. The remote is surprisingly light, too, more so than N64 or GameCube controllers. The Excite Truck playtest consisted of completing two laps on a track located in a jungle area, the controller being held and used as a driving wheel. From a driver's point of view, it was very easy to learn how to turn left and right, although the truck on screen is much less nervous than a real vehicle: you can do extreme moves without ending up facing a tree after spinning around. Both playtests lasted five minutes or so each, but it was plenty of time to understand how that strange-looking remote has a lot of potential for the future.

Something that I sure didn't expect at this event was to see the following:


The promotion poster | All three games available to try out

The King himself was smiling from a distance on a large poster! It turned out that all three of the upcoming Xbox and Xbox 360 Burger King games were available to play, so I grabbed the opportunity to see if those were crappy cash-in attempts or actual decent video games. The titles turned up to be solid enough, with Sneak King being downright hilarious to play since it's the closest to the ads aired in the last year or so. Pocket Bike Rider played very much like a kart game such as Mario Kart: racing skills along with the use of power-ups are at the core of the gameplay. Big Bumpin's controls gave me some trouble, and I didn't manage to make much out of it in my few minutes of playing. What I noticed is that the game has a lot more within than simple bumping cars: several modes are included, among those being a table hockey simulation where you must send the disc in the opposing goal. The main element that I couldn't determine from all three games is replayability: is there enough variety to bring back players again and again, or is the number of levels limited enough to make things repetitive fast? That will be determined when they are released in the restaurants, November 19 in the US and November 20 in Canada.




The Ubisoft lounge | Some classic arcade machines

The other booths included Ubisoft, with Rayman Raving Rabbids, the latest Splinter Cell and a few licensed titles. Some classic arcade cabinets from the 1980's were available and set on free play, featuring titles such as Ms. Pac-Man, Punch Out!! and Pole Position II.

Sony was oddly missing from the show, not only as a company but also as their game systems: pretty much all the games available were either for the Nintendo DS, Wii, or the Xbox 360. Only Rockstar had a handful of PSPs to showcase Grand Theft Auto: Vice City stories. I played very few PSP titles before, so I'm not an expert on the system; however, I was surprised to stumble on a few loading issues when I was driving too fast: after a jump, the ground appeared right before I landed! The graphics were surprising, though, and looked nearly on par with the PS2 original with no slowdown besides the loading times.

I didn't bring back much as trinkets, although I did score a Tetris DS keychain among a few minor items.


All in all, the Arcadia Festival was worth the visit, and I'm looking forward to next year if there's a follow-up! Congrats to the organizers who managed to find a nice location and built up on their previous humble start.

Hence why I detailed the games in my report. Not everybody knows about that trio yet, and I think that the idea is too crazy/awesome not to talk about it! I don't even have a Xbox, and I'll try to get all three of them.




I was holding the camera the whole time.




The shape was done by Nintendo's designers, so it's built to be comfortable during long gaming sessions. As I said before, the aiming is accurate. Also, the wire between the nunchuck and the remote itself is long enough so that you don't feel like your hands are tied, yet it doesn't touch the floor so that you don't trip over it when waving madly around.

Funny, I know a lot of Canadians who often go to Otacon...


...Those King games cost $499? I mean, I know there's an exchange rate but this isn't Kenya where it's $700/$1... (And somehow I also doubt that they're $5 each.)

Otakon takes place in the US. I specifically said that the Arcadia Festival was the only one located in Canada.




The games cost 5$ CAN each, believe it or not. The exchange rate brings it close to the US price of 4$ US.

The games are dual disks: each holds both a Xbox and a Xbox 360 version of the title (and no, I'm not talking about backward compatibility here). Munching on the Wii controller could be funny enough, I'll give you that!