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!

Our upcoming party won’t be the only time you’ll be seeing UK multiplayer game party-collective The Wild Rumpus during March’s Game Developer’s Conference: the group have just announced Rumpus Royale MMXIII, a set of daily indie game tournaments that’ll be running throughout the entire week.

Included in the tournament lineup are Bennett Foddy’s keyboard-climber QWOP, Ramiro Corbetta’s SportsFriends entry Hokra, Terry Cavanagh’s Super Hexagon and, super excitingly, Teknopants’ upcoming local favorite, Samurai Gunn.

Find more information & sign up for more detailed tournament specifics on the official Rumpus Royale MMXIII site.

There’s not much more to add than I’ve previously said over here, but, as promised, Terry Cavanagh’s super vital space-disco arcade game Super Hexagon has officially landed on PC & Mac following its iPhone debut, and can now be found on Steam at a discounted price, with a special dual-pack option so you can instantly start a leaderboard rivalry with a friend.

Well, actually, there is the good news that Cavanagh’s seen fit to include the game’s “arcade mode” as an option — which adds local leaderboard entries so you can use the build for exhibitions and your own public tournaments — and that he’s gotten away with one of the best tongue-in-cheek game descriptions on Steam, which you can spot here on your way to purchasing your copy.

Great news for all the iPhone-less: creator Terry Cavanagh has just announced that his super essential & frequently-featured arcade game Super Hexagon will be releasing for Windows & Mac on Steam next Tuesday.

The home computer builds won’t be ones you’ve potentially played at festivals and parties in the past: Cavanagh explains that he’s re-written the entire game from the ground up, with the added benefit of running “at a higher resolution than the iOS version, and runs fast and silky smooth on every machine I’ve been able to get my hands on – a very important thing for a game like this.”

Newcomers can prepare for the release with the still-available original Flash version or by picking up the iOS counterpart here — my short ode to the “27th century space-disco teen-laser-punk arcade hit” also exists back here.

Following her similar Shadow of the Colossus piece, Berlin-based designer Natalie ‘coffeemakescreative‘ Hanke pays tribute to Terry Cavanagh’s Super Hexagon with this illustration created in Hexels, a new pixel-plus type art tool soon to be released by Ken Kopecky & Ted Martens. Best viewed in super massive full-res to truly appreciate its RGB CRT-ish subtlety.

Filed under “places I sort of desperately would rather be”, this Thursday, September 27, 2012 at 7:00 PM, indie game party presenters The Wild Rumpus will be bringing their latest line-up of multiplayer games to London, featuring a fantastic party/public play selection.

Included in the mix will be Mega-GIRP (above), the four-dance-mat full-body version of Foddy’s rock-climbing finger-Twister GIRP, modded by Joust creator Doug Wilson, Noah Sasso’s low-fi & high-tension sports-brawler BaraBariBall, Michael Brough’s “multiplayer album of games” Kompendium (currently available as a free download to bone up before the show), a tournament of Terry Cavanagh’s Super Hexagon for hexagonal prizes, and much more.

Tickets for the event are £5 and available here, where you can also find more information on the complete lineup. The show will be going down at Cargo, 83 Rivington Street, Shoreditch. Take lots of photos of the prizes and the seagull on a stick (??)!

Bringing the 2012 Fantastic Arcade to a close, Dennaton’s superbly hyper-violent Hotline Miami was awarded the ‘Most Fantastic’ prize Sunday night, earning it one of the custom trophies above — a real world version of Cory Schmitz’s Fantastic Arcade cabinet, created by Austin’s own Ink It Labs with help from local art-toy studio Shinbone Creative. Terry Cavanagh’s Super Hexagon also earned the festival’s Audience Award, after a weekend of open voting by Fantastic Arcade attendees.

Elsewhere, in an extra-special guest-appearance, Ultima creator, Portalarium founder and real-actual spaceman Richard Garriott handed out the top honor to Fantastic Arcade’s jury-voted top Adventure Time Game Making Frenzy game: Adventure Minute, created by Vlambeer’s JW Nijman and Kitty Calis. Garriott’s prize? A hand-crafted crossbow made by New World Arbalest‘s David Watson, the Austin-based bowyer who served as the inspiration for Ultima series character Iolo.

The full list of Fantastic Arcade 2012 awards for all spotlight games is below the fold, along with the top three winning entries of the Adventure Time Game Making Frenzy.

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Today marks the first day of Fantastic Arcade proper — the yearly indie-game celebration run alongside the Alamo Drafthouse’s genre film festival Fantastic Fest — which means updates to Venus Patrol will become slightly spottier through to the end of the week until I can emerge with a handful of stories to tell of how the event went down.

In the meantime, a brief slideshow from the past several hours, including, above, some of the first screenshots of Hotline Highball, a custom version of Dennaton’s fantastically brutal Hotline Miami that takes place inside the actual locale of Fantastic Arcade itself, featuring the greeting you can see by festival co-organizer Wiley Wiggins, inside its own custom arcade cabinet.

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Well that didn’t take long: just a few short hours after David Brackeen’s ./SHEXAGON text-adventure mockup was posted, two readers jumped out of the woodwork with playable versions.

The first, from Casey Griggs (turn down your speakers before clicking that link), pictured above and playable online, adds extra genuine CRT effects to make the experience that much more remarkably retro.

The second, downloadable for Windows/Mac/Linux from Todd Little, plays it more aesthetically straight but adds an actual timer to the response system, giving you just a few short seconds to submit your lefts & rights before getting crushed to a pulp.

An extremely fine follow-up to yesterday’s Super Hexagon-appreciation day, as Interactive Pulp‘s David Brackeen (creator of iOS puzzlers Milpa & I Love Squares) mocks-up ./SHEXAGON, the 1982 text adventure version of the same.

If we’re lucky, we might even find some brave soul to make this a reality, as Bill Meltsner did way back in the day, with the Guitar Hero text adventure, Champion of Guitars.