Nerds know how to party.

On Oct. 15, Austin’s finest video game fans, developers and writers gathered to celebrate the local gaming scene at the video game party GameOn hosted at Mohawk. The night was filled with games, movies, contests and music – all created in Austin. The party was hosted by The Austin Chronicle and ScreenBurn at SXSW. It featured, among other things, a “Rock Band” competition, big door prizes like SXSW wristbands and badges and a retro gaming lounge where guests could relax and play classic games like “Mario” and “Goldeneye.”

On display were demos of new and upcoming games from studios like TwistedPixel, Red Fly and Challenge Games. The Red Fly studio was giving hands-on demos of their recently released “Ghostbusters” game for the Wii and their upcoming Wii cooking simulator “Food Network: Cook or Be Cooked.” Both games took great advantage of the system’s motion-based controllers and were a blast to play. The Food Network game is even going to be released with all the recipes that you make in the game so you can test your virtual skills in a real life kitchen.

The evening ended with an entertaining performance by the local chip tunes musician. The ‘Mysterious H. Chip tunes’ music is created with synthesized sounds from a computer or video, making it sound a lot like something you would hear while playing an old Nintendo game. Behind the performer was a screen showing video game inspired and digitally created short films from the Austin Museum of Digital Art. The films accompanied The Mysterious H’s music perfectly and helped to end an exciting evening full of video games.