Weren’t able to make it to the first meeting of the JUEGOS RANCHEROS? Destructoid editors Sean Carey & Allistair Pinsof have got you covered.

The two tag-teamed for both an extensive writeup & photo-set and the video above, where you can see both an interview with Twisted Pixel CEO Michael Wilford, and a joint session with Adam Saltsman and yrs truly, set in an amazing 80s graf/hip-hop decorated karaoke booth, where I apparently was going for the world record of most “likes” used over a five-minute period.

Belated thanks to the both of them for their support, and stay tuned for more details about our upcoming second meetup at the Highball!

To kick off our inaugural event, I debuted what I hope will be a regular month-to-month feature called (for want of a better name), A Fistful of Indies: a top however-many list of the indie games both local and global worth paying attention to released over the prior month.

Each month, I’ll be publishing the list here the Monday following the event, fully annotated for your pleasure, for the convenience of both event-goers and, hopefully, the wider world of indie game enthusiasts. Here, then, is the list for May 2011:

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And so here’s the real reason JUEGOS RANCHEROS is coming together now: several weeks back we were approached by none less than the Alamo Drafthouse (aka basically the best movie theater in the entire world) to host a new monthly event at their spin-off lounge The Highball. The event would be a year-round continuation of Fantastic Arcade — the games festival they debuted last year alongside their renowned Fantastic Fest film festival. Obviously we agreed, and so, we kick this whole thing off at The Highball this Sunday, May 1st, from 4-6:30pm.

For our first event, we’ll be bringing in Twisted Pixel’s upcoming Xbox 360/Kinect game THE GUNSTRINGER. If you haven’t yet seen it, GUNSTRINGER is an un-dead, old-west puppet-theater shooter (a combination of words which should be enough to get you excited), and is not just Austin-grown, but Austin-proud. Apart from that reference to Torchy’s Tacos you weren’t sure if you just correctly heard, Twisted Pixel have also — in a brilliant fourth-wall-shattering self-referential twist — put Austinite fans in the game as the audience that watches and reacts to your puppet performance. You’ll get to see that in action this Sunday: the first public playable demo of the game since March.

Aside from GUNSTRINGER, we’ll also have a lot of other local game developers & demos on hand, not least Bob Sabiston of Flat Black Films — creator of the animation software that powered both WAKING LIFE & A SCANNER DARKLY — showing off his just-released downloadable Nintendo DS animation software package INCHWORM, and there just might be some unreleased, upcoming Nintendo 3DS* games making the rounds as well…?

So let’s see how this all goes down: Sunday, May 1st, 4-6:30PM at The Highball, 1142 S Lamar Blvd, Austin, TX 78704! Come hang out, enjoy the Highball’s Happy Hour drink specials, and celebrate the people taking games in directions you never thought possible. On Facebook? RSVP by clicking here (and invite your friends!) so we can get an idea of how many people to expect!

[*PS: if you’ve already got a 3DS: bring it! We’re all more or less starved for some StreetPasses!]

It started with a tweet.

Or really, that’s obviously not totally true: the story of JUEGOS RANCHEROS starts years back, with the arrival of a handful of developers — Adam ‘Atomic’ Saltsman & Semi Secret Software, Twisted Pixel & Renegade Kid among them — to our own Austin, TX, who would meet on occasion to talk the life and business of being an independent game maker.

Over the following few years, these infrequent meetups would become more regular, and gather, Katamari-style, even more local like-minded individuals and indie startups: people from TigerStyle, Lightbox, Arkane, Armature, Smashing Studios & Dr. Fun Fun, Red Fly, CosMind (& Blue), GL33K, Karakasa, Flat Black.

At a certain point, it became clear that a solid group had formed beneath us, and so, like the Hand Eye Society, the Mount Royals and so many other game collectives before us, we decided to make it official, and stake our claim as an actual Austin Indie Collective. And so was born, with that misguided tweet, the JUEGOS RANCHEROS.

Over the coming weeks & months, we’ll be using this space as a platform for a number of initiatives: public events, game jams, and simply as a place to introduce ourselves and show the rest of the world what exactly is going on down here in Capital City. Beyond that, we hope to inspire Austin’s wider creative community get in touch, get involved, and collaborate with us on something amazing — if that sounds good to you too, start by saying hello here or on Twitter or on Facebook!