Two big events are making their way to downtown’s riverfront science center. Game-Port- an interactive gaming playground, and NASA’s Chandra X Observatory, will be opening at Sci-Port Discovery Center on Sunday, June 13. Mark that day!

Who doesn’t love a great game…and who doesn’t wonder about the mysteries of space? Combining the two will make for an exciting and imaginative summer.

Game-Port will look at the evolution of games and digital gaming; from historic board games like Candy Land, Checkers, and Backgammon to classic and newer digital games that can be played with a giant custom-made retro-inspired game controller. The classic early 1970’s Pong game has been reimagined into a game called “Port Pong” that will feature an overhead playing “table” where participants will stand in a portal and use their hands as the pong paddles to volley the electric pong “ball” back and forth to each other. Game-Port will also feature a few digital game-inspired Putt-Putt golf greens, a Sci-Port Amusement Gallery featuring some classic pinball games and early video games, a Mousetrap-inspired pneumatic chair lift, a giant Simon Says, an Angry Birds-influenced game, and a special area called “Game Guts” that will feature the inner workings of classic game systems over the last thirty years.  This exhibit, providing an interactive gaming playground for people of all ages, has been developed and designed by local “imagineers” Ryan McCutcheon, Bonné Summers and Luke Lee.

One fun event to log on your calendar is the Pokemon GO Scavenger Hunt and Pub Crawl scheduled for Saturday, June 19.  Celebrating the 25th year of the release of Pokémon, the Shreveport Downtown Development Authority will be creating a downtown family friendly Pokémon GO scavenger hunt along with an “over 21” afternoon-into-evening Pokémon GO Pub Crawl – June 19th.

In addition to the Game-Port summer exhibit, Sci-Port was selected to receive the Chandra X-Ray Observatory from NASA which will be on display until Fall 2021. This flagship-class space telescope was launched aboard NASA’s Space Shuttle Columbia on July 23, 1999.  Chandra is one of the Great Observatories, which includes the Hubble Space Telescope, Compton Gamma Ray Observatory (1991-2000), and the Spitzer Space Telescope (2003-2020) and is named after the Nobel Prize-winning Indian-American astrophysicist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar. Chandra, returning data since the month after it launched, includes the first X-ray emission seen from the supermassive black hole, Sagittarius A* (located in  the center of our Milky Way System).

Initial funding support for Game-Port includes the Caddo Parish Commission and the Shreveport Bossier Convention and Tourist Bureau.

Game-Port Tickets   $5 for Sci-Port Members and $8 for Non-members.

Online Game-Port Tickets: bit.ly/sciportgameport.

Adventures of Intrigue Tickets $5 for Sci-Port Members and $8 for Non-Members

Regular Sci-Port Admission Price – $15.00   Do It All Pass – $25 per person (20% savings)

Chandra X Observatory – included in regular admission price.