It’s true we haven’t been the best at documenting our regular monthly meetups over the past year, but we’re working on it! In addition to new photo galleries over on the Facebooks (soon, hopefully, also to be ported over here), we have the above: 10 minutes of Rachel ‘Party Time! Hexcellent!‘ Weil’s self-intro from our most recent edition of JUEGOS RANCHEROS at the Highball.

Also, if you still can’t get enough PT!H!, there’s an awesome, lengthy interview with her over at The Mary Sue (given big-ups by none less than Jezebel), discussing her personal past history playing & interacting more directly with games, and more on what she plans to do with the Femicom Museum, the site she’s just set up to catalog both the personal and professional history of “games for girls”.

Chalk up another victory for Austin indies: ahead of her appearance at this coming Sunday’s meetup of the JUEGOS RANCHEROS, Rachel ‘Party Time! Hexcellent’ Weil has landed her own cover feature in the latest issue of the Austin Chronicle, out on news-stands all over the damn town as of this morning.

The feature covers her rise from teen hobbyist NES-rom fiddler to full on Assembly-empowered 8-bit hacker, straight up to creating TRACK & FEEL II, the 2-player “Power-Pad”-enhanced audio/visual installation piece that lets players remix 80s-8-bit-aesthetic iconography, itself the centerpiece of this Sunday’s show.

Read the full feature here, and see also author James Renovitch’s supplementary guide to creating your own original 8-bit NES works, and his link-heavy guide to all things Hexcellent.

See you all on Sunday!

[photo by John Henderson for the Chronicle]

Attention indies both local and global: submissions have been opened for the 2012 Fantastic Arcade — taking place here in Austin, TX from September 20th-27th — with an May 31st deadline already rapidly approaching.

This’ll be the third Fantastic Arcade, which has drawn indies from all across the globe to Austin — names like Vlambeer, Polytron, Derek Yu, Cactus, Messhof, Jon Blow, Molleindustria and Superbrothers — for a week of talks, demonstrations and debuts of new and otherwise unseen games and prototypes, and general carousing.

Here’s how the festival — operated by our friends, partners and generally favorite theater organization ever, Alamo Drafthouse — describes itself:

Fantastic Arcade fuses the world of independent film and independent gaming. We bring together artists and professionals who are telling stories and creating experiences in film, games and online entertainment simultaneously. At Fantastic Arcade, we showcase a curated selection of brand new independent games as well as a larger sampling of important groundbreaking independent games from the last couple of years.

Attendees are invited to play the games as well as interact with the game developers via panels and nightly parties and happy hours. We also feature both panels with independent filmmakers side by side with game developers and intimate demo sessions by independent game developers. Lastly, we feel that video games rightfully belong side by side with shorts and feature films at Fantastic Fest. The artistic merit of these games will be honored with both audience awards and a juried competition.

Selected games will proceed to the second round of submissions and will be asked to provide a playable version of the game for Fantastic Arcade festival programmers. Official selections for the Arcade will be made based on each game’s art, story, characters, gameplay and, most importantly, connection with the character of Fantastic Fest.

Submit your game to be a part of this year’s festivities by clicking here!

[photo by Indie Game: The Movie creators Blinkworks!]

Hey all — it turns out the first Sunday of February happens to be Super Bowl Sunday, so our next JUEGOS will be taking place the following SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 12th, at the usual 4:00PM time, at the usual Highball place!

We’ve got a pretty wicked one planned for February, so clear off your calendar now!

It seems like only four weeks ago that JUEGOS RANCHEROS graced the pages of the Austin Chronicle (oh, it was? oh, we were named part of 2011’s Best of Austin?), but now we’re back!

Grab a copy of the Chronicle between now and next Thursday, flip to page 44, and there we are: five whole column width’s worth of Wiley & Adam & I talking about the birth and future of the collective.

Or, you can just click here and get the full skinny (and the full color version of our goofy mugs) right now:

Even as attendance grows each month, Juegos’ goals are loftier than just regular drinks with kindred spirits. “We’ve been able to get people from big studios and people from tiny studios sitting down together eating burritos and talking about stuff, and that just seems good in the long term,” says Saltsman. “I don’t know if we’ve been able to get as many non-video-game people to come as we’d hoped initially, but we’re still working on that.”

One particularly successful meeting included playing an as-yet-unreleased game called Johann Sebastian Joust that isn’t technically a video game since no screen is necessary to play. The game is simple: Grab your motion-sensing controller, pull the trigger to signify that you are ready to play, and keep your “jousting” hand from moving too quickly or you’ll be out. Of course you will be encouraging your opponents to jostle their controllers and get eliminated. “Joust is kind of the poster child for introducing people to indie games,” Wiggins says to explain its allure. “You can see the whole game right there physically, and it immediately makes sense.” As Juegos attendees played, Joust managed to entice the tastemaking and often difficult-to-impress waitstaff at the HighBall, who were soon lining up to show their skills. Getting Austin to rethink the definition of a video game is step one in an ongoing attempt to encourage the local nongaming population to consider interactive media as something within their artistic purview.

Thanks to James Renovitch and the Chronicle for paying attention, and for helping to get the word out to hopefully at least a handful more people that haven’t yet made it out!

The next meeting of the JUEGOS RANCHEROS will be at the Highball Saturday, December 10th before returning to its regular Sunday service. Mark your calendars now!

Hey all — just a quick update that because of a charity event happening at the Highball on the first Sunday of December, we’ve moved the next JUEGOS RANCHEROS meetup to take place on SATURDAY, DECEMBER 10th.

More details and time-slot information will be coming soon, but mark your calendars now! We think this one’s going to be pretty rad.