Have you heard the news? Fantastic Arcade will be returning to Austin, November 17th-19th, in a brand new location and with dozens of brand new games!

Long-time Fantastic Arcade fans will probably notice right away that that’s a little different than before, so we’ve put together this FAQ-type post to help explain what’s new and different this year, and what’s the same as it’s always been.

Fantastic Arcade is now a standalone festival, affiliated with but not actually a part of Fantastic Fest.

While we here at JUEGOS RANCHEROS have been in charge of curation and scheduling of Fantastic Arcade for the past several years, we have now completely taken over all operations of the festival, and are running it separately from Fantastic Fest, the genre film festival it was originally created to run alongside.

Fantastic Arcade will now take place at the new Alamo Drafthouse Mueller location.

While Fantastic Arcade has traditionally been held at the South Lamar Alamo Drafthouse, we’re now moving to the Drafthouse’s newest theater, Alamo Drafthouse Mueller.

If you haven’t been to the Mueller Alamo yet, you’re in for a treat. The theater seats are massive, plush, and recline like La-Z-Boys, and there’s a built-in boardwalk carnival-type bar, the Barrel O Fun. In other words, it’ll be a lot like previous years, just nicer.

The arcade space of Fantastic Arcade is still free of charge and open to the public.

Just like all previous years, the centerpiece of Fantastic Arcade will remain free and open for everyone: a suite of laptops with tons of amazing games on each one, and a fleet of mini arcade cabinets, again featuring a new crop of games created exclusively to premiere at Fantastic Arcade.

Where before we only had a smaller space inside South Lamar’s Highball lounge, now we’ll be taking over the entirety of the Barrel O Fun with games, all of which will be playable for the entire duration of Fantastic Arcade.

Attending the talks, developer commentary sessions and nightly tournaments now costs $50 for a 3-day pass, or $10 for a single-day pass.

Here’s the biggest change: just like previous years, we’ll also have three full days of talks, panels, commentary and tournaments inside one of Mueller’s swank theaters, with full bar and food service throughout. Unlike previous years, because of our new independence, we need to charge a ticket price to help cover our costs, and to guarantee you a seat in the theater.

For $50, you’ll be covered for all three days of the festival, and you can purchase that ticket starting right now. Tickets are obviously limited to the amount of seats we have available, so act fast!

If there is room left over, we’ll be selling individual day passes for $10 at the theater itself for those that can’t make it all three days.

The 3-day pass also includes a downloadable bundle of games premiering at the festival.

Just like last year, we’ll be premiering new games at the festival in special custom arcade cabinets, and just like last year, all of those games will be available in a special bundle. This bundle is included in the 3-day pass, so all of those games are yours to keep.

The downloadable bundle will also be available separately.

If you aren’t able to attend the festival or can’t purchase the 3-day pass, we’ll also be selling the bundle separately, like we did last year.

We’ll have lots more news about the new Fantastic Arcade over the coming months, including the developers building new games for the festival, and all of the other exciting guests and tournaments that’ll be part of this year’s show. All of us here are looking forward to seeing you there!

Hey developers: ready to join us again this year for another round of Fantastic Arcade? You now have until August 13th to submit your game for consideration as one of this year’s showcase games!

[ CLICK HERE TO SUBMIT YOUR GAME FOR FANTASTIC ARCADE 2017! ]

The 2017 edition of Fantastic Arcade will be taking place at Austin’s Alamo Drafthouse Mueller, the newest and swankiest of the theaters, from November 17th through the 19th. 3-day passes for the festival itself are available now, which includes a downloadable bundle of games premiering at the show!

You can read about all the changes to this year’s festival right over here.

Shortly after the August 13th deadline, the JUEGOS RANCHEROS board will begin the selection process to determine which games from among your submissions will be showcased during Fantastic Arcade.

All of the games selected will be accessible to both festival attendees and the general public, for free, in a casual atmosphere of camaraderie and love for games, at the Mueller theater’s new Barrel O Fun event center (which you can see above).

If you’d like to submit a game, you can do so now by accessing this form before August 13th. We look forward to playing all of your submissions, and to seeing you all in November for this year’s Arcade!

Looking to finish your year with a tax-deductible charitable donation? As a 501(c)(3) non-profit, we can accept cash donations to help us continue to foster Austin’s independent and artful games culture.

We’ve got big plans for 2017, and your support is crucial to meeting those goals!

You can click here to make a tax-deductible donation, or use the button on our website’s sidebar. If you have any questions about supporting JUEGOS RANCHEROS, please don’t hesitate to get in touch!

Looking forward to seeing you all throughout the coming year!

We survived another Fantastic Arcade! And after a long weekend recovering, we’re here with archived video of nearly all the talks, tournaments, and other presentations given throughout the week of our seventh-annual festival.

All week long we’ll be presenting a day-by-day breakdown of all of the videos (find day one here, day two here, and day three here), today with last Thursday’s talks. Below the fold you’ll find full video covering DIARIES OF A SPACEPORT JANITOR, THE NORWOOD SUITE, and LITTLE BUG.

You’ll also find the creators of PROTEUS showing off their new games: THE FOREST OF SLEEP, and an absolutely unmissable presentation of OIK OS BOOK I, destined to go down in legend as one of the top Fantastic Arcade talks.

You’ll also find a brief history of FMV games, culminating in the creation of a brand new FMV game filmed right here at Fantastic Fest! And finally, our head-to-head MULTIBOWL championship showdown & our post-Arcade awards ceremony!

Like our videos and want to support Fantastic Arcade & JUEGOS RANCHEROS? Buy our bundle of new games from the creators of DOWNWELL & KATAMARI DAMACY! All proceeds go toward our efforts to commission new amazing games & bring what we do to you!

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We survived another Fantastic Arcade! And after a long weekend recovering, we’re here with archived video of nearly all the talks, tournaments, and other presentations given throughout the week of our seventh-annual festival.

All week long we’ll be presenting a day-by-day breakdown of all of the videos (find day one here and day two here), today with last Wednesday’s talks. Below the fold you’ll find full video covering the creation of games on “weird hardware”, an amazing exhibition of the “haunted” Nintendo Entertainment System, and sci-fi drone sim DUSKERS.

You’ll also see Nathalie Lawhead create an entire new game — live! — and go in-depth with DOWNWELL creator Moppin, before the world’s first (?) head-to-head DOWNWELL tournament, capped off with our second-annual ARENA GODS tournament!

Like our videos and want to support Fantastic Arcade & JUEGOS RANCHEROS? Buy our bundle of new games from the creators of DOWNWELL & KATAMARI DAMACY! All proceeds go toward our efforts to commission new amazing games & bring what we do to you!

(more…)

We survived another Fantastic Arcade! And after a long weekend recovering, we’re here with archived video of nearly all the talks, tournaments, and other presentations given throughout the week of our seventh-annual festival.

All week long we’ll be presenting a day-by-day breakdown of all of the videos, starting today with last Monday’s talks. Below the fold you’ll find full video covering HIDDEN FOLKS, Dutch indie collective Sokpop, BURRITO GALAXY 65 and WEST OF LOATHING.

You’ll also find our preliminary tournament of MULTIBOWL, the rapid-fire head-to-head trip back through arcade and console history!

Like our videos and want to support Fantastic Arcade & JUEGOS RANCHEROS? Buy our bundle of new games from the creators of DOWNWELL & KATAMARI DAMACY! All proceeds go toward our efforts to commission new amazing games & bring what we do to you!

(more…)