Austin Texas’ Fantastic Fest is already the premiere genre film festival in the United States (and for my money the best in the United States as well), but that isn’t enough for them. This year Fantastic Fest is expanding into the world of video games, and will be running Fantastic Arcade, a video game festival, concurrently with Fantastic Fest.
What the hell is a video game festival? Why, I have a handy press release to explain it all:
Fantastic Fest recently announced the new independent games festival, Fantastic Arcade, which will run concurrent with the first four days of Fantastic Fest, September 23-26, 2010. Designed as a games spin-off event from the main film festival, Fantastic Arcade will feature fresh, cutting-edge games designed by independent game developers and publishers.
The Highball ballroom, located next to the Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar, will be transformed into an old-school arcade featuring games the likes of which never existed in any Aladdin’s Castle. The Fantastic Arcade curators have selected some of the most fascinating new independent games and retrofitted them into vintage arcade consoles set to free-play for the duration of the event.
Other Fantastic Arcade highlights include live game demos by their authors on the big screens at Alamo Drafthouse on South Lamar, a machinima film competition judged by Red Vs. Blue creator Burnie Burns, video game art installations featuring work by Cory Arcangel, live chiptune music performances, games showcases and demos from major game publishers, game design guest speakers, screenings of popular games culture films, a Starcade game-show competition, a light saber dance party and more! Among other topics, the panels will explore the crossover and differences between the visual story-telling mediums of the film and game worlds.
Tickets for Fantastic Arcade go on sale today. Here’s how the pricing works:
1) Single Day Pass $20 – access to all Fantastic Arcade films, panels, parties, happy hour and game demos for a single day.
2) Single Day Game Demo Pass $10 – access to the game demos and arcade for a single day.
3) VIP Fantastic Arcade Pass $60 – access to everything for all 4 days plus a limited edition Fantastic Arcade T-shirt.
NOTE – $20 and $60 pass holders get priority admission to the advance screenings of Fantastic Arcade films prior to the festival. Please note that Fantastic Fest badge holders will have access to the Fantastic Arcade events, but priority access will be given to Fantastic Arcade badge holders.
Want to attend? Click here for more info and to buy tickets or passes!
8 comments
If they're using Machinarium for their banner art, it might just not be bad.
Could be interesting depending on how they do it. I do wonder how similar to PAX this would be in execution. But I'm sure if comics can afford more than one convention every single month video games can afford more game related events.
Its a shame they have to have both this and Fantastic Fest in such an obscure ass pimple part of the country. There are major cities like New York, Chicago, Atlanta, etc that these things could be held at that would make them actually visited by more than a handfull of internet reporters
austin is better than all those cities combined. fuck you , you elitist ass pimple
Princess Kate here. I thought we agreed at CHUD that we would strike the term "video games" from the vernacular and in the future refer to them as "DES's"? Anyway, I have been trying to contact the organizers at Fantastic Fest to sell them on the concept of "DES's", because "video games" sounds so low-brow.
austin can be a real drag to live in sometimes. (not sarcasm)
@Princess Kate: DES's sounds… impressive, but would you mind telling an uneducated guy like just what it means!? Really, I'm just curious, never heard that before.
Obviously it's something in the likes of calling comic books "graphic novels", because the term "comic book" makes 'normal' people think of childish nonsense.
Sorry #6 I have to agree with Teamplayer. Austin is a shitkicker town no one cares about. It may impress people in Houston but thats cause they are in Houston. Also is the Alamo Drafthouse the only place to go in all of Austin?
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