[This post is re-blogged from Venus Patrol sister-organization JUEGOS RANCHEROS, our local Austin indie game collective.]

It was one of the first best surprises and then a central fixture of the past two Fantastic Arcades, and now we’re bringing it back to debut a night of never-before-seen new scenes & music: join us next Thursday, March 6th, at 7:00PM at Austin’s North Door, as JUEGOS RANCHEROS presents Fernando Ramallo and David Kanaga’s interactive musical landscape generator Panoramical.

[ RSVP FOR THIS EVENT AND INVITE YOUR FRIENDS ON FACEBOOK BY CLICKING HERE! ]

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After a long weekend spent with a couple hundred games, the first selection of games coming to this year’s Fantastic Arcade — the indie game spinoff of the Alamo Drafthouse’s Fantastic Fest film festival — have just been announced, as curated by the founding members of Austin indie collective JUEGOS RANCHEROS (aka Wiley Wiggins, Adam Saltsman & I).

The full list of spotlight games, each of which will be given the full arcade-cabinet overhaul and put on public display for all Fantastic Fest & Arcade-goers from September 19th to 22nd, follows below — with some new, unseen video of some of this year’s entries, as well as games that will be part of Arcade’s daily tournaments.

At top, Beau Blyth’s super highly anticipated Samurai Gunn, which first blipped on radars when we debuted it for tournament play at least year’s Fantastic Arcade, will be returning for open play during the entire week.

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With just two weeks to go until the full Game Developers Conference madness officially kicks in, Wild Rumpus & Venus Patrol have just released the first wave of lineup announcements for our 2013 party, with both some familiar faces and some brand new additions.

Sound Shapes co-creator & star I Am Robot And Proud will be performing a live set including his own brand-new reactive visuals (get a little sneak peek of that here), and Super Hexagon‘s own Chipzel (above) will be part of a lineup that also includes Dyad/Proteus musician David Kanaga, and Gun Godz & Luftrausers‘ Kozilek.

Also returning will be Anticon superstar Dose One, now with his Themselves, 13&God & Subtle bandmate Jel (see why he’s the “MPC emperor” in the video above). After the performances, Fez‘s Phil Fish & former Uncharted designer Rich Lemarchand will be playing out the night with their usual fantastic dance set as Phillipe Lemarchand.

On the games side, not only will we be debuting the previously mentioned new game from Keita Takahashi (which we are now also teasing as a game about “love, hygiene, monsters, and finding discarded erotic magazines in the woods”), but showcasing Super Space ____, the ever-amazing Samurai Gunn, and a new mashed-up version of Panoramical & SoundSelf (above), the latter just announced from Capsule & Antichamber sound artist Robin Arnott.

If you’ll be around the Bay Area on March 27th & haven’t yet purchased tickets, we’ve just opened up another round which can be purchased by clicking right over here. We’ll have more info coming soon as the date draws even more dangerously near!

Here’s the major lede buried in this video showcase of all the games coming November 24th to VERSUS — the live music/game/amazingness mega-show being hosted at Rotterdam, Netherlands venue WORM: a brand new look at what creator Mark ‘Messhof‘ Essen has been cooking up under deep cover for the past couple years with his still-commercially-unavailable swordfighting cult-hit Nidhogg.

While the main thrust (no pun) seems to be the same, you’ll see new arenas and updated versions of the one you’re used to, new dynamics, and a new sorta kooky-eyed version of the game’s titular wyrm starting at around the 10 second mark.

Not to be too far upstaged, the event will also be bringing a number of the games much ballyhooed about around here, including Fernando Ramallo & David Kanaga’s Panoramical, minimalist racing game Chalo Chalo, Beau Blyth’s Samurai Gunn (also sporting a freshly updated tile set), and Super Space ______, a “couch co-op arcade shooter about competition, cooperation, communication and the democracy of physics”.

You can find much more about the lineup and event specifics via WORM, which having watched this trailer I’m now deeply despairing about missing.

Fernando Ramallo — developer of the recently-featured MIDI-controlled soundscape Panoramical — and Vlambeer’s Rami Ismail have just announced Fuck This Jam, a black-hearted week-long worldwide game jam that asks devs to “make a game in a genre you hate”.

The duo add their hope that “through utter ignorance for conventions and hate for the established rules of a genre, beautiful things will happen”, which may seem naive and slightly cynical, until you remember that the last time someone tried to tackle a genre they despised — namely Bit Pilot creator Zach Gage — the resulting Spelltower near instantly became an iPhone & iPad smash success.

The jam’s also notable for being the second application of the Beautiful Mess Organizer, the web platform Brett Chalupa originally developed for our Adventure Time Game Making Frenzy, hopefully eking its way toward worldwide game jam standard.

The jam will start November 9th and end November 17th — interested parties can sign up for more information at the official Fuck This Jam site.

Not officially part of the Fantastic Arcade selection, but already one of the games I’m most excited to see here this year, visiting developer Fernando Ramallo has just announced Panoramical, a new “musical landscape” created in conjunction with David Kanaga, the composer behind Ed Key’s Proteus and PS3 puzzle-racer Dyad.

Interestingly, rather than traditional keyboard or game-controller inputs, Panoramical is manipulated with the knobs & sliders of a standard MIDI controller (Ramallo’s announcement post shows the Korg nanoKONTROL above) — quite possibly in answer to the tweet below from this past spring, from UK indie Stephen ‘Increpare‘ Lavelle.

To better acquaint yourself with Ramallo’s work, I highly suggest having a look at You Must Hold On To Your Mother’s Hand, a brief but genuinely unsettling first-person game created a few months back for the “Peter Molydeux”-inspired MolyJam.

The game will officially be debuting, says Ramallo, at this year’s Indiecade, but I’ll hopefully have cornered the creators into giving me a private show as soon as humanly possible. [via Fernando makes games]