Wed, Jun 30
Barton Creek Square Mall
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A line of pimple-faced teenagers stood sentry over a row of high-resolution monitors like soldiers enraptured by war game simulations. With intent eyes, and mouths hung agape, their fingers shifted rapidly over multicolored, six-button control pads. Around the young squad, white noise drowned out the rush of heat-seeking missiles launched from F-4 Phantom fighters. In a flash, cityscapes and battleships ignited in a fury of flames, and for a heart-pounding moment, a young, dark-haired boy held the populace hostage from a blue-skied altitude. Of course, the accepted laws of man retained no jurisdiction over this particular boy’s world. His world was just a dream, a virtual reality woven through the intricate programming language of Airforce Delta, a dogfight game title showcased on the upcoming Sega Dreamcast in Barton Creek Mall.
Only the first stop on a 30-city, 60-day American tour, Austin played host last week to the iGame GamExpo, a national-level interactive tour which bills itself as a hands-on campaign focused upon the male youth demographic which, according to iGame, spends a frightening amount of its disposable income on many of the 3D-effects-driven games on display. Armed with head-spinning computer systems and a plethora of game platforms running such fare as Total Annihilation, Drakan — Order of the Flame and Playstation’s crowd-pleasing gothic adventure, Soul Reaver, the game exposition, while hit with its due of technical glitches, achieved a great degree of player satisfaction. What’s more, true to its goal, the iGame showcase transmitted a good chunk of mindshare signals from its high-tower, open-air command post just a level down from the food court. Here, big-screen televisions broadcast advertisements for many of the exposition’s corporate sponsors, which included heavy-hitters like Microsoft, 3Dfx, and Labtec. And while not all of the featured games modeled as well as Claudia Schiffer, a 101X-sponsored prize giveaway buoyed the damp spirits of those who expected to get their hands on the new killer shoot-’em-up Quake III Arena — a game title pulled at the last minute in response to pressure from the Columbine shootings. Still, despite computer crashes attributed to bad demo copies, one of the youngest visitors in attendance, 10-year-old Austinite A.J., considered the exhibition a total hit. The young game enthusiast stood glued before Wipeout, a futuristic road racer, for more than a half-hour. And did he want to buy it? “Yes!” the boy agreed. “I like racing games!” — Marcel Meyer
This article appears in July 9 • 1999 and July 9 • 1999 (Cover).