Gamers, cosplayers and masses of self-proclaimed nerds flooded the Ferguson Center Saturday for the third-annual PixelCon, a gaming convention put on by UA’s ABXY Gaming Network.
PixelCon Live! kicked off Friday night, featuring student performances of video game music and remixes. This led into Saturday’s slate of live-action games, video, board and card game tournaments, panels and an assortment of free-play games throughout the Ferg.
Music filled the Ferguson Ballroom, broken only by the sporadic sounds of virtual gunfire and the “Ohs and “Ahs marking a particularly dramatic on-screen turn of events. Home to the main tournaments and free-play area, the heart of PixelCon’s action took place in the ballroom.
As the first round of tournaments, divided into sports/shooters, fighting games and Super Smash Bros., began, the lines of displays were surrounded by packs of gamers keeping tabs on the more competitive of the tournaments, scouting prospective opponents or simply taking in the whirl of sound, color and perspiration.
Amid this chaos, a familiar figure to attendants quietly observed a heated four-player game of Mario Kart. Donning a blue tunic, a craftily fashioned raccoon-shaped belt buckle, carrying a “Cooper Cane” and blacking out a horizontal strip of skin across his eyes, UA sophomore and music education major Jimmy Johnson attended PixelCon as Sony’s hero, Sly Cooper.
“It was a last minute decision to enter [the Cosplay contest,]” Johnson said. “I came as Sly, and when I got here, I looked around and decided to give it a try.”
In his second year attending PixelCon, Johnson said he stumbled upon a number of items he thought could easily be fashioned into the protagonist of the recently re-released Sly Cooper series. At the convention, Johnson also participated in the genre-spanning “Mystery Challenge,” which challenged participants with a variety of puzzle, racing, music and action games.
Also seen roaming around were the likes of Sly, a female Frank West of Capcom’s Dead Rising series, a number of creatures and characters from the long-running Final Fantasy franchise and a few wandering Pokémon trainers. Of the cosplayers, however, a particular group of men from an older generation, wearing meticulously crafted costumes with the same passion as the younger attendees, stood out.
The Alabama Ghostbusters, a fan-driven community celebrating the Ghostbusters fiction, came in their uniforms, proton packs and a variety of electronic instrumentations gathered from a mixture of online bidding and homemade ingenuity to man their booth. Brock Parker, head of the organization, referred to the group’s return to PixelCon as a “homecoming,” it being their first convention experience since 2010.
According to Parker, the group was initially brought together by their passion for the films but realized they had a greater potential. The group attends multiple charity walks across the state each year, raised $3,000 for a state-wide relief fund in the wake of the April 27 tornadoes and is an active supporter of the fight against multiple sclerosis. Alabama Ghostbusters adopted the motto of being “Geeks for Good” and spent the morning before the convention participating in Tuscaloosa Walk MS 2012.
“Being an 18-year old kid, having a proton pack was all you wanted,” Parker said. “Now, being able to build one of your own and put that towards doing good and supporting the community is great.”
Northport resident Josh Perdue and his three sons — eight-year-old Elija, seven-year-old Noah and four-year-old Luke — explored the free-play section of PixelCon after catching wind of the gaming convention. While his older boys took on challengers at a Wii, playing Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Luke tried on a variety of games with his father.
“I’m an avid gamer myself,” Perdue said. “It’s great being able to see my kids having the interest too.”
Perdue said sharing his passion for games has brought him and his boys together, whether it’s through experiencing World of Warcraft with their father or a playing quick game on the Wii. He also recalled the impact, then young, the industry of video games had on his own childhood.
“Nintendo was it,” Perdue said. “I grew up on Super Mario Brothers, and now, here I am with [Luke], playing Super Mario on the Wii. It’s a special feeling.”
