Time to geek out. I believe if you click “play” above, you’ll be the first people other than those present at PAX to witness this momentous event. A truly epic Excitebike battle.

Not only that, but after the victor was celebrated and ushered away to what passes for a green room at PAX, Gabe and Tycho themselves settled down for a Penny Arcade-style duel. And we got that on video too — click below for the epilogue to this year’s PAX omegathon.

Another year, another PAX Omegathon. After a year of theories and a whole lot “ZOMG Do you know what the final round is?” murmur, the final round game iiiiiis: VS Excitebike!

We’ll have tons of pics and happenings as soon it’s all wrapped up.
Update: Uploading. Joey Geko, the underdog whose name they drew randomly at the door at the beginning of PAX, has triumphed. He wins a trip to the Tokyo Game Show and five grand (!).

Just a couple more pics for you guys before we enter the belly of the beast again. These TF2 cosplayers were all over the place, but I didn’t see any Heavies. Well, there were some heavies all right, but to be precise I didn’t see anybody dressed as a heavy from TF2.

Click twice for the big version. Yes, I know the TF2 guys are in there twice. That’s just the way they roll.

If an explanation is required for the picture, hopefully it will be furnished soon (by me).
Click the picture once for bigger, and then click it again for even bigger.

I mentioned it in an earlier post, but as it all went down while I was in the middle of swappin’ out cameras, I missed getting this little gem on video. Fortunately, ye olde Tube of Yous has come through.

To explain what you’re seeing: About halfway through his set, Coulton pushed an iDVD-built video menu to the concert hall’s projection screens. It had two items: one labeled “Play this one”, one labeled “Not this one”. After a few rounds of playful banter between Coulton and a sound guy whos name he simply couldn’t remember, they managed to tag-team the audience into chanting for the not-to-be-played video (The camera used in that video up above didn’t quite pick up just how loud the chant was – people were pretty riled up). “Sound Guy” clicks the no-no video, aaaaaand it’s a rickroll.

There were a few thousand people in that concert hall. Could this be the largest simultaneous Rickroll in the history of the intarwebs?

You hear that rumble? Thats an army of geeks, gettin’ down so damn hard that the very walls around us were beginning to crumble.

Okay, fine – it’s just a nasty bit of clipping caused by the compact-car sized subwoofers lining the edges of the stage. They were inescapable. Wherever we stood, it was like the subs were in our camera. Sounded amazing in person; on film, not quite as nice.

Read on for impressions of the set and a shot of the crowd showing off their gadget collection.

Freezepop tore the friggin’ house down, covering all the crowd favorites. At one point, the band asked for the stage lights to be dimmed so as to let the crowd show the love using the displays of any gadgets they had on hand, lighters-during-a-power-ballad style. While that in itself isn’t too rare of an occurence at concerts, there’s a key difference here: where as the average concert goer generally rocks one, maaaybe two gadgets a time, PAX attendees carry more like 5. Just about every attendee had both hands illuminated. Add in the fact that about 50% of the hands were filled with the DS with its double-hitter display setup, and it was a sea of swaying lights unlike anything I’ve ever seen.

Pictures don’t do the gadget-driven light show justice, but take a gander anyways:

I had the best spot in the house, standing on a nice sturdy chair staring down the 10x zoom lens of an HD camera from about 15 feet from the stage. Then the battery died on the camera and security kicked me off my chair, simultaneously.

After egging the audience into rickrolling themselves, Jonathan brought Felicia Day (who, by the way, we’ll be spending a few minutes with tomorrow afternoon for a quick Q&A) of The Guild and Dr. Horribles Sing-Along Blog to be the voice of GlaDOS. Too friggin’ awesome.

Update: Second (and, yes, quite a bit better) video after the jump:

I know you were all wondering what this moment looked like. The jealous, huddled masses were sitting outside while we flimsily credentialed press got to lick the first public playables of Spore, Mirror’s Edge, and so on up and down. Frankly I expected a little more violence. Not that it would have made for a better convention, but it certainly would be quite a video.

They told us to stop filming but we’re naughty and we’re putting it up anyway. It’s a public convention and this is a public build that most people have already seen the demo of anyway, right? No harm, no foul. This is the same demo they showed me at E3 (same build, even) and the demo videos are good, but we thought you might want a little idiotic commentary to help wash down the postapocalyptic angst.

I think it’s actually more accurate to say that I failed to Zerg my opponent correctly.

The game looks great, it controls just like the original to be honest, and the graphics are smooth and very detailed. I have this feeling that my old Protoss tactics are going to be of little use in this updated game. Although you’ll be happy to learn that many of your favorite units and buildings are still around and function more or less the same.

Updated with better video. You like that sound? The Blizzard booth is kitty corner from the Rock Band 2 stage, and you know they aren’t going to turn it down.

As mentioned earlier, Bungie had one level from their upcoming “Mythic” map pack on display at PAX 08. Called “Assembly”, it’s a very Midship-esque Covenant themed map. I gave it a quick run through earlier today, trying to get as much of the level on video as possible while attempting to avoid firefights — not an easy task. Beside the sneak peak, Bungie had little else to say about the map pack.

We’re here in my hometown covering the hell out of PAX.

This was the waiting room, which was later full to capacity. These poor souls all had to wait while Greg and I checked out Starcraft 2, Mirror’s Edge, Fallout 3, Rock Band 2, and about a billion other awesome games that are playable there. We’ll have videos coming up as soon as they are encoded and uploaded, so stay tuned!

Live from the floor of PAX 08: Bungie is demoing a new Halo 3 map called Assembly; the picture above shows the title “Halo 3 Mythic,” which the Bungie guy said was just a placeholder name for the map pack. He said he “doesn’t know how it’s going to manifest itself to the public,” whatever that means.

More on this as we get it.

Good morning sunshines! It’s day one of PAX ‘08, and Devin Coldewey and I are badged up and on the scene.

Today’s looking to be a crazy day, with just about every big league name in the gaming industry making an appearance. Bungie, Harmonix, Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo, Rockstar, Valve, EA — the list goes on and on. Then it goes on some more. There’s the PAX Keynote with 2k Boston’s own Big Daddy, Ken Levine. Gears of War 2, Project Origin, and countless other games will be on display today — not to mention Fallout 3 tomorrow. It’s a big smorgasbord of fun, packed into a hall with 45,000+ hardcore and totally pumped-out-of-their-minds gamers

We’ll be through the doors at noon – expect the goods to start pouring in from there on out. Drop us a comment if there is anything you’re particularly dying to see.

Two more pre-pax shots after the jump.

The line of folks who already grabbed their badges, as of around 6 hours before doors open to the public.

The badge is cool and all, but holycrap-ghostbusters-lanyard.

As a side note, I’m stoked to be getting my Orange Box in the next couple days. I know I’m a year behind, but I don’t care. I’m looking forward to Portal the most.

August 12, 2008 – Valve, creators of best-selling game franchises (such as Half-Life and Counter-Strike) and leading technologies (such as Steam and Source), today announced a series of live demonstrations of Left 4 Dead at upcoming industry events the world over.

Left 4 Dead is the new survival co-op action game from Valve that blends the social entertainment experience of multiplayer games such as Counter-Strike and Team Fortress with the dramatic, narrative experience made popular in single player action game classics such as the Half-Life series of games.

The PC version of the game will be playable by the press and public at a series of upcoming events including Leipzig Games Convention, (Germany), Festival du Jeu Video (France), and PC Gamer Showdown (UK). The worldwide debut of the Xbox 360 version will be at the upcoming Penny Arcade Expo (PAX) in Seattle, WA. Members of the development team will be on hand at each event to provide information and give away some Left 4 Dead memorabilia.

“The shared experience of Left 4 Dead is unlike that of any other action game,” said Gabe Newell, president and co-founder of Valve. “That’s what we’ve experienced playing the game, and from showing the game to the press and our partners. It sounds cliché, but in many ways you have to play this one to truly appreciate what we’re attempting. So, to give gamers a chance to sample this new type of experience first hand, we’re taking Left 4 Dead on the road.”

Left 4 Dead is due for release on the PC and Xbox 360 this November, and earned numerous awards at this year’s Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles, CA, including 1up.com, Gamespot.com and Maximum PC’s Best PC Game, as well as Best Multiplayer Game from Kotaku, IGN, G4TV, the official E3 Judges, and more.

For more information, please visit www.l4d.com