Editor’s note: Trey Burke is a contributing writer for The Reflector.
Saturday night, the Princess Theater in Columbus will have its fourth annual Halloween party at 215 South Fifth St. from 9 p.m. until 1 a.m. The name of the event this year is the Haunted Nintendo, which will feature a number of retro video game sets and designs. Those attending the Haunted Nintendo are encouraged, but not required, to wear Halloween costumes.
At the event, six local students will be deejaying and working on projected visuals for the audience. The five Mississippi State University students are Trey Burke (aka Phantom Pants), Philip Vanderleest (aka GLOtron), Amy Bragg (aka Lady Genes) and Jeff Bourque (aka VJ Cypress) and a Mississippi University for Women student, Blaine Garrard (aka Geronimo). The deejays will be playing a wide variety of genres, ranging from indie dance, dubstep, electro house and nu disco.
Trey Burke, graduate student in public administration and local deejay, said this year’s event should be full of nostalgia and good times.
“We want everybody to show up in their childhood favorites,” he said.
Burke said he expects to see a lot of people costumed as Super Mario or Luigi but hopes to see some more off-the-wall costumes as well.
In years past, the event has had very elaborate sets and decorations, and it sounds like this year will be no different.
“This year we’re taking it (the event’s design) to your living room; if your living room was really scary. We’ve got mutated and blood-splattered gameboys, a giant model NES eating things and a big, old-school frame of a TV we’re projecting images on,” Burke said.
According to Will Howard, another member of the crew working on the Haunted Nintendo, they  have been working on the design and pre-production for the past few months.
“Design started in June 2011 and pre-production in September. We have poured 24 to 48 man hours a week into building props and decorations. We have several pieces that personify the theme of the party, mutant game devices and one piece that is 16 feet wide, 12 feet tall and close to 300 pounds. This piece will bring the theme of party to everyone’s eyes,” Howard said.
Howard also said the set is made to resemble the game-play of old video games.
“Additionally, just like early years’ video game platformer (video games that required players to duck, climb, jump, crawl), we have arranged for a life-sized obstacle course to be in the venue for party goers to test their abilities,” he said.
Both Howard and Burke emphasized the wide variety of musical styles at this year’s event.
“We hope to have a bigger variety of music, a more cohesive set and a lot of different genres,” Burke said.
When talking to all involved in planning the Haunted Nintendo, most mentioned their indebtedness to one of the first deejays to start playing at the Princess Theater’s Halloween show and an increasingly famous graphic design artist, Will Bryant.
 ”This will be the fourth (year). It was started by the Hooded Deer (Will Bryant). There was Halloweenz in 2008, Second Chance Zombie Dance in 2009 and Celestial Bounce to Planet Halloween in 2010. (This year) the torch has been passed to this new crew of deejays. We love Hooded Deer and Will Bryant,” Howard said.
This year, the deejays and others involved hope to keep up the positive ethos that Bryant embodied while he was in the area (Bryant designs T-shirts with hand-drawn statements on them such as “I love nice people who make cool things” and “good vibes.”)
“Just come and be positive, that’s all we really want. We really want people to have a fun experience and relive their childhood. We want people to come out and act a little bit of a fool and have a good time,” Burke said.