What the deuce is Arcadia? Well, to keep it short, it’s a public E3 in November in Montreal, starring booths of Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft and various events console and PC related. Celebrity battles, game contests, trivia, conferances, it’s three days worth of this, and Saturday was the ‘big day’ as far as I was concerned.
Gamewise, I mostly stuck to the Nintendo Booth. Super Mario Striker is an excellent soccer game, very polished, and exceedingly fun multiplayer. Mario Kart DS is a blast in Multi (However I did not win a DK shirt, coming a tinge short of first place), and Zelda Twilight Princess is just breathtaking, a must buy for any GC owner. I will admit my attention to the other consoles was sparse at best, I honestly did not care as most stuff that could have been displayed was already released, and the remaining stuff was kind of ‘meh’.
What made this pretty awesome however was the music.
First off was Generation 8-bit, four DJs who used a 15000$ soundsystem wired through Gameboy sound chips and a modified Famicom, it’s pretty unique and impressive what they could come up with, loading their tunes on GB (Not GBA, old school GB) modified carts. In order of impressiveness, Nullsleep, Bitshifter, Bubblyfish, and last by far was David Kristian who sounded more like lounge techno and I got no idea how he got in the group, didn’t sound 8-bit at all.
The main event however was: The Minibosses. Megaman 2, Ninja Gaiden, Super Mario 2, Goonies 2, Castlevania 2, Contra, Double Dragon, Castlevania 1 and Metroid as the last track, hearing it live was simply breathtaking as you feel the bass shake your bones (I had front row spot) and deafen you with awesome tunes. I bought a shirt and a CD, too. Junkie XL apparently played after, but it was 1AM and I left.
There were a surprising amount of cosplayers too. An Advent Children Cloud, a rather hot FFX2 Yuna, Malon from Ocarina of Time, Rinoa from FF8, and a couple more I couldn’t ID. All in all, it was fairly awesome.
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- out of 5. I’m going back next year, fo sure.
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(P.S.: If you want more info on this, do a google search for Festival Arcadia, you’ll find plenty. The webpage is really cool too.)