Save your game in here in July

Nintendo fans who've always dreamt of becoming their favourite 8- and 16-bit characters may have their wishes granted soon, as a hotel in Alabama is preparing to combine a theme park with cosplay in July.

The Radisson hotel in Huntsville, AL will play host to the strictly unofficial "attraction experience" during PersaCon, a cosplay convention taking place between 15th and 17th July. With a theme of "The Classics", the reception desk will function as a save point, complete with Final Fantasy-style tent, question mark blocks will appear to float mysteriously and musicians will play iconic video game tunes throughout the day too.

Interested parties should book into the Radisson (or RadissINN, as it's being temporarily rechristened for the Nintendo-themed activities) during the 15th and 17th July. You can find more details below, courtesy of organiser Stephanie Chateau:

I'm an ex-theme park employee who got burnt out helping theme stuff I'm not interested in. I'd jump at the chance to work for a Nintendo themed park but there is none in existance. I vented this to some friends who are all cosplayers and artists like myself and we all agreed a Nintendo theme park attraction would be amazing. Then we got a crazy idea. LET’S MAKE ONE. Just for fun. We've been building props of stuff from classic Nintendo NES/SNES games for a convention that we pitched the idea to and is letting us run the entertainment however we want. The hotel staff even told us basically they don't care what we do as long as it draws tourism because Huntsville and their hotel biz has been pretty dry.

They've o.k.'d us attaching paper mache boo's to the cieling that creep down on people with clear fishing wire, floating question mark blocks, one guy is trying to rig a race car toy to look like a spiked shell from Mario Kart is actually zooming around the hotel and another guy is trying to rig a tricycle to look like Wario on his Go-Kart to do laps around the con with. We got a bunch of local musicians to play video game tunes live at the event so when people walk around they hear the game music, see the props hanging everywhere, and can sign up for a game where they actually search for stuff like Triforce pieces, heart containers, win "potions" they can actually drink. ect. At night the hotel will fall under a curse and con attendees will have to find Dracula's 5 body parts like in "Simon's Quest".

We basically are trying to make a theme park like attraction experience inside a hotel for the weekend of July 15th-17th at the Raddison (which we are calling the RaddisINN and putting a real pup tent and save spot next to the desk NES/SNES Final Fantasy style) for the convention Persacon. (www.persacon.com) I hope this kind of thing would be of relevant interest to gamers, especially nostalgic ones like me and my crew that are building this crazy thing just because the theme is "The Classics" and hey... why not? It's the ultimate tribute. That or we’re just nuts. Whichever.