The playable proton pack, and 9 more amazing custom PC rigs from Quakecon

The above image is the very front of the line to get into Quakecon's Bring Your Own Computer hall last week. The rest of the line took around a minute to walk along. That's a long, long line. Bad for those waiting at the back, but really good for those wanting to ogle some ludicrously impressive custom machines.

And ludicrously impressive we got. Over the course of the week, my frequent trips back to that vast, barely-lit cavern of flickering neons turned up a ton of great stuff, ranging from immaculate recreations of pop culture goodness, to just plain impressive industrial light shows. My one regret is that I didn't track down the guy with the full-scale Team Fortress 2 turret. That thing was insane. As was the drivable, remote control tank. Bah, Next year...

But never mind! Click on for the rest!

We nearly hugged the guy who built this one. In fact it's so good, it deserves another pic.

And you know what? Let's have another.

Seriously, the lights cycle and the gun makes that brilliant 'nyiiiiiiiiiing!' noise when you switch it on.

His face is the monitor, and his face changes expression when he's idle. To all intents and purposes, he is the real BMO.

Even if the long postponed sequel never actually comes out, it will matter not, We have this. It's beautiful, and appears to be run on delicious Bloody Marys.

Fantastic. Could only be improved if it was followed around by a small laptop with a ribbon on its lid.

Wait, what? Who let a Mac into a PC convention?

Ah, right... Stand down.

Keep away from the furnace.

It loves you like clockwork.

Yep, those are all art beads. Yep, that must have been infuriating to make. Yep, it's rather damn brilliant. Splendid graded paintwork on the Zelda case, too.

Hey BioWare, people still care. Just sayin'...

Pro-tip: Taking photos of things that keep flashing and changing colour, when in a pitch-black room, is hard.

I'm choosing to assume that they're DJ decks from a super-cool sci-fi nightclub in the future. In my mind, they always will be, and you can't change that.