This weekend, I caught the first ever Arcadia fest, a videogame show open to the public here in Montreal.

Overall, it wasn’t bad for a first effort, but here’s what I think should be improved for next year:

- 99.9% of the games I saw are already out. I’ve seen most of them, own some of them, have tried lots of them. Why would I pay to see them again? Also, they should have used demo versions of the game, which are usually pre-configured, do not contain lengthy cut scenes, are edited to give a good cross-section idea of the gameplay, and limit use by any one player to about 15-20 minutes.

- Next-gen content was almost non-existent, which I think is a capital sin, two weeks before the first next-gen console is launched. Saw one XBOX 360 behind a pane of glass. Big whoop. When I saw Kameo at E3, it had 1000 enemies on the screen, each with its own individual AI. However, because it wasn’t the demo version this time around, the epicness of the game was really not shown off. It looked worse than just current-gen. What I saw of it actually looked like a Gamecube game.

- The whole thing was kinda small. I don’t know how much people had to pay for just one day, but I know the price for the whole weekend was 25$, and I had about 90 minutes of stuff to look at. The XBOX booth at E3 was about the size of the entire Arcadia fest.

On the positive side:

- They had a beautifully designed “Flashback zone”, complete with vintage consoles like Telstar, Intellivision, Atari, Colecovision, LeisureVision, all in these mocked up seventies living rooms. My father and I had lots of fun in there, laughing at the blocky graphics and clunky controls.

- Lots of local content. I think over 50% of the games shown were made in Canada (and no, that doesn’t mean they were lame).

- The design was a success, with the whole thing, from the brochures to the booths, looking quite cool and consistent. The booths weren’t cheaply done, and the show managed to have a bit of an E3 feel to it.

I’ll definitely attend again next year, and maybe even get involved in the organization.

Photo: Paolo