US - In the hope to raise enough funds to pay for a multimillion dollar International Video Game Hall of Fame museum complex, the city of Ottumwa, Iowa, is hosting a four-day festival and convention, Big Bang 2010.
The city declared itself home to the International Video Game Hall of Fame last year as a Ottumwa local invented the idea of keeping track of video-game scores in 1982.
The Big Bang organiser has introduced a Hall of Fame section to entice visitors to the convention and will feature record-breaking Donkey Kong players, a Pac-Man birthday party and bands such as ComputeHER.
The organiser says it has already raised US$75,000 for the complex, which it hopes to complete in the next five years, however, has spent part of it on the convention.
“We want to be the most complete archive of video-game history,” vice-president of the Hall of Fame’s board, Dan Canny tells the Wall Street Journal. “Maybe we had no business stepping up and doing this, but we're doing it.”
According to the Wall Street Journal, in the late 1980s, the city of 25,000 tried to promote itself as the fictional hometown of Cpl. “Radar” O'Reilly from television show M*A*S*H. It was not a success as no cast members showed for a reunion weekend.
