WHAT: the latest and greatest social!

WHO: special guest of honour jph wacheski, the man/machine hybrid behind iteration games will be bringing the razzle-dazzle — and possibly a little soft-shoe too.

WHENCE: the sweltering climes of our very own Ontario.

WHOM: Metanet will be hosting — will we have anything to show?? Please attend for the exciting conclusion of this cliff-hanger!

WHY: because jph has a bajillion cool games to show off; also, both Shigeru Miyamoto and Cliff Bleszinski failed to return our emails in a timely manner.

WHEN: 7:00pm, Thursday, August 26th 2010; twas the night before Fan Expo — or, twill be at any rate.

WHERE: Unit Bar, 1198 Queen St. West, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, Earth.

WHITHER: the supreme dominance of Toronto in all things electronic and entertaining!

THIS JUST IN: METANET SOFTWARE ORGANIZES EPIC INTRA-CONTINENTAL MISSION!

In an unprecedented reversal of conventional game-developer migration patterns, Alex Austin (Cryptic Sea‘s designer/programmer, aka “the one without tattoos and a goatee”) will be coming all the way from California (Santa Cruz) to Ontario (Toronto).

Yes, you read that right — it’s the never-fabled SW-to-NE crossing!  It’ll be just like “Gold Rush”, but with more than 4 colours, and backwards! Hopefully Alex will remember to LOOK SCHEDULE and BUY MOSQUITO NET!

We know, it’s crazy. And it’s happening August 27th 2009 at Unit Bar, 1198 Queen St W. (7-10pm)

Here’s Unit Bar on Google Maps.

And here are pics of some of the many other Alex Austins who will probably not be attending, courtesy of Google Images. Though to be fair, if any of them had been making their own games for over a decade, we would have invited them too.

(NOTE: you may have a hard time finding Unit partly because the window is full of junk, making it look like yet another semi-abandoned gallery space on West-West-West-Queen-West-West, and mostly because the only “signage” is the word Unit scrawled in chalk on a wall next to the doorway — perpendicular to the sidewalk! So, be extra vigilant when trying to locate it… it really does exist!)

Alex will be showing off (as usual), and talking about some of the exciting and wonderful stuff they’ve been cooking up down south, when they’re not too busy having rollerskating-pizza-karaoke-birthday-parties with Jon Blow. Also we (Metanet) will hopefully have something super-exciting to show. Or at least something exciting — frankly, at this point we’re just shooting for “something”!

Come one, come all.

p.s – Little Known Fact: Toru Iwatani originally came up with the idea for Gish when he observed a pizza missing a slice. Then he forgot all about it and made Pac-Man instead; it wasn’t until twenty years later that Alex and Edmund re-discovered the idea and turned it into a game!

p.p.s – If you’re wondering how the shape and/or colour of a pizza could possibly suggest Gish, it’s because you’ve never seen Japanese pizza — they put really disgusting stuff like mayo and bonito flakes on there, at the same time! A double-cheeze smothered with tar and a couple of eyeballs isn’t really much of a stretch.