It's getting harder to tell the students from the pros. Looking over the shoulders of the students (and occasional civilians) who converged on the Spring 2007 Game Design Showcase in Upson Hall May 9 to try out games created in this semester's classes, you might think you were in a commercial arcade. Some impressions:

Animated characters hop and skip across the screen, jumping over obstacles, encountering and bashing enemies -- and occasionally getting bashed, producing the dreaded "Game over" message. Or sometimes the more direct "You're dead!"

On some screens the action is two-dimensional. On others you look down on the field of play. In Deadwing, one of the most sophisticated games, you pilot a spaceship through incredibly detailed Star Wars-style graphics. The level of sophistication grows with experience: The simplest games come out of CS 300, the beginning game-design course. Deadwing comes out of CS 400, a course students can take repeatedly to continually improve their projects.

Some beginners' games make up for their simplicity with creativity and whimsy, as if the students know their games will never be in stores, so they let their imaginations run wild. A poster proclaims, "Throw your enemies at each other, through walls and right into your babies' mouths!" A game called Music Monsters turns the computer keyboard into a piano keyboard (one octave complete with sharps and flats), and the music played on it confers powers on the character sent out to explore an alien planet.

As usual, students do things they are not supposed to be able to do, such as making games for the Nintendo DS handheld game device. "Nintendo doesn't like you to do that," a student explains while using a stylus on the Nintendo's touch screen to control the flight of a spaceship, "but making cards that let you do it is a small industry in itself."

Looking over his shoulder is Keith Epstein of Ithaca-based Kionix Inc., which makes motion sensors used in games, one of several company representatives attending. One day some of these students will be pros.