Fundraising For Hollywood Science Fiction Museum

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When my friend and I went to the Las Vegas for the Star Trek Convention last summer, we met Houston Huddleston, founder and CEO of New Starship, who saved the Enterprise-D bridge from the dustbin of history and took it on tour to various science fiction conventions. He just started a Kickstarter project to raise the initial seed money to build the Hollywood Science Fiction Museum in 2018. A permanent home for the Star Trek bridge that will also feature ships, robots, cars, and memorabilia from many other science fiction movies and TV shows. The contribution goodies range from an official museum certificate ($1 USD) to hosting a wedding on the bridge ($2,000 USD) to an exclusive five-day video shoot on the bridge ($10,000 USD).

Updated 15 June 2014: With a shout out by George Takei on Twitter, the Kickstarter project is now fully funded.

Kickstarter: The MegaTokyo Visual Novel Game

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My favorite webcomic, Megatokyo, has a Kickstarter project to create a Megatokyo visual novel game for the PC, Mac and Linux. A visual novel game is the Japanese version of the old “Choose Your Own Adventure” books, where you interact with the characters and decide what happens next in the story.

Megatokyo is about two American fanboys of manga, anime and video games, who are stuck in Tokyo after flying to Japan on a whim and can’t afford to go home. Piro is the normal guy looking for love in all the wrong places. Largo is the weird guy battling giant monsters and being a substitute teacher at a local school. A typical day for them can be quite strange, especially if an unscheduled zombie hoard is trashing Tokyo.

The response from fans was phenomenal. With an initial funding goal of $20,000 USD and stretch goals to $75,000 USD, the project has $250,000+ USD in pledges. I’ve pledged at the $35 USD level to receive all the digital downloads when they become available. If you’re interested in being the first to get this game, there’s still time left to make a pledge. The expected release date for the first part of the game is February 2014.

Updated 21 July 2013 @ 10:15PM Update: After all was said and done, almost 5,000 fans gave slightly under $300,000 USD. Check out the post on my writing blog.