I just might be a little (ok, VERY) jealous that ASTRO’s own Brett and Jordan got to go halfway across the world to check out the Tokyo Game Show this past weekend.

While I didn’t get to go, Brett and Jordan were awesome enough to email us some pictures of the event so check them out!

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Gotta love PAX. There truly isn’t any other gaming event that can bring EVERY type of gamer together. Whether you play Dungeons and Dragons, can’t get enough of Call of Duty 4, or fall asleep face-first into your Nintendo DS every night, there’s a place for you at the Penny Arcade Expo. This year, ASTRO Gaming came to PAX in style, bringing our kick-ass booth, amazing ASTRO crew in tow, and plenty of ways to rock out with the A40 Audio System.

First, I want to say thanks to our great friends at Bungie and Microsoft who were awesome enough to hook us up with the upcoming new Halo 3 Mythic Maps. For the first time, we had a chance to play the Midship remake (now known as Heretic) and the brand new Citadel. Go check out our last blog post for some shots of the setup and more details!

You’ve heard of the OMEGATHON, right? You know, the three-day elimination tournament where twenty randomly picked “Omeganauts” (picked from those who pre-order their PAX passes) duke it out on random PC, console, or tabletop games? This year, the Omeganauts ripped through rounds of Mario Kart Wii, Bookworm Adventures, Halo 3: ODST, The Beatles: Rock Band, Connect Four, and for the championship, an epic final match of Skee-Ball! Congratulations to Valwryn for winning first place and Fallout for taking second! Man, now we need to go practice our skee-ball…

You wouldn’t think of PAX as the place for tons of concerts, but rest assured, there’s no shortage of impressive (and slightly nerd-core) music acts. In attendance were Freezepop, the high-energy electronic band which you may remember from Guitar Hero 2 and Rock Band. Other PAX favorites include MC Frontalot, the best in nerdcore/geek rap (and the 541st best rapper in the world), and the infamous Jonathan Coulton whose mystical folk music can sooth even the most angsty of nerds.

Don’t forget all the awesome PAX after parties. Gotta say, it’s pretty sweet when a company party includes free drinks (if you’re legal), food, and limited edition swag. We could tell you all about what went down at the Bungie party, the Microsoft party, or maybe the insane CCP/EVE Online party… but we’d have to kill you. Okay, one hint: midgets!

Lastly, despite all the fun and games, unfortunately some attendees came to PAX carrying the swine flu (otherwise known as its PAX variant: H1Nerd1). If you attended the event and are feeling any flu like symptoms, please see your doctor immediately. If you flew or took the train home, please check this list of flights/trains to see if you may be at risk. For more information on H1N1, please check the King County Department of Health website.

Did you miss PAX this year? Never fear, there’s also PAX East coming to Boston this March and we just might have to stop by. Otherwise, the regular ol’ PAX will always be there every year in Seattle and so will we.

Just remember to wash your hands. Kthxbye.

– the ASTRO Crew

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PAX: Day 2, still alive. While the thousands of gamers storm the entrances of the Washington State Trade & Convention Center, the ASTRO crew is still rockin’ and miraculously still standing. Click below to read more!

Before we get a chance to actually try out all of the kick-ass upcoming games on display here, we got our gorgeous friends at Bungie to hook us up!

Exclusively at PAX 2009, the ASTRO Gaming booth is now demoing the new Mythic Maps for ,Halo 3, Heretic and Citadel. Everyone remembers and loves Midship, right? Now known as Heretic, you can relive all those nostalgic memories of sticking kids with grenades from Halo 2 in this faithful remake.

The new Citadel map, don’t know too much about it just because I’ve been locked behind a counter the entire time, but you can stop by for another few hours and give it a shot!

Stay tuned for a full recap (with pics!) on all the stuff we got to play and see.

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Despite the sweltering Dallas heat, hundreds of teams descended upon the Hilton Anatole to see who was going to be crowned the best at Halo 3, Gears of War 2, and World of Warcraft. Click below to read more!

Seeds meant barely anything as the #1 seeded and highly popular team Str8 Rippin finished in 4th place after being dropped to the losers bracket by Carbon and eliminated by Instinct. Walshy, the fan favorite pro that recently settled into Carbon, carried the 8th seeded Carbon team all the way through to the championship finals.

In an epic all-out final match against the new Carbon, Triggers Down ignored the audience’s constant cheering for Carbon and snatched the MLG Dallas championship with a winning score of 6-4.

Congrats also go out to AmazYn for taking the Gears of War 2 championship! Other favored Gears teams MbN The Business walked away with 2nd place and NOX Raw Talent took 3rd.

Lastly, congratulations to eMazing Gaming for taking 1st place in WoW 3v3. 2nd place went out to x6tense and 3rd to Complexity.

Any pro will tell you the key to success is communication and the ASTRO A40 Audio System is the pro-gamers best solution for crystal clear audio and voice communication. Try an ASTRO A40 Headset at one of the MLG events or consumer shows like the Penny Arcade Festival (PAX!) so you can see what the hype is all about.

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As Josh pointed out, yes, I’m here in Dallas, TX rockin’ out at QuakeCon! For 13 years, QuakeCon has stood proudly over the corpses of other LAN events in the US because it’s fun, absolutely ginormous, and FREE. QuakeCon brings more to than your typical LAN party: the parent company, id Software, stuffs a big-ass vendor hall to the rafters with all of our favorite hardware manufacturers (like Antec, Patriot, Intel, AMD/ATI, NVIDIA, etc), and serves up incredible tournaments with thousands of dollars up for grabs. Keep reading, there’s more!

id Software’s technical genius-rocket-scientist director John Carmack highlights the event with his annual talk. In case you don’t know who this veritable programming bad-ass is, John Carmack towers behind landmark games like Wolfenstein 3D, Commander Keen, DOOM, and Quake. Basically, we worship the ground he walks on. But genius me, I flew in right as his talk was ending and I missed it. Next year, right?

Love to LAN? The BYOC (Bring-Your-Own-Computer) section bursts out of control with 2,132 low-pinging LAN attendees ready to Rail Gun your face off. What sucks is when Team Fortress 2 gets an update last night and you have to share half of a T1 with thousands of other gamers also trying to update. I was wondering why everyone was trying to tether their 3G phones all day today…

Naturally, being Quake Con, the event focus rests with id games, like Quake Live, Rage, and Wolfenstein. This year, the tournaments will all be Quake Live with prizes for Masters 1v1, Open 1v1, and CTF. The prizes are $14K for 1st place in the Masters, $1.5K for the Open, and $12K for CTF. Not a bad time to be a pro-gamer, right?

So in case you missed all the cool stuff that happened already, here are a few links so you can catch up:

QuakeCon News
Kotaku — id Working on Three Lines of iPhone Games, One Potentially Rage-Themed
Kotaku — The John Carmack Keynote: Liveblogging QuakeCon
Kotaku — An Apocalyptic Look At id’s Rage
Kotaku — Wolfenstein: The Launch Trailer

Stay tuned for a recap on the tournaments and all the other awesome stuff going on this coming Monday!

Thanks to QuakeCon photographers entone and prognar for the awesome shots!

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Every year, tens of thousands of hardcore comic, movie, and video game fans descend upon San Diego’s Comic-Con. Despite being pushed, shoved, and stepped on, there is more than enough awesome to make up for it.

Comic-Con breaks down into two main attractions: star-studded panels and overwhelmingly jammed booths. The convention floor is flooded with hundreds of booths crammed with art, posters, toys, and more. The massive Capcom booth is a great example: they rocked a raised tournament stage, mini-store, and had dozens of Xbox 360s showing off the eyeball-smacking Lost Planet 2 and Dark Void. Some of ASTRO’s favorite gaming comics (Penny Arcade, Red vs Blue, and PurePwnage) arrived with pantloads of exclusive swag and signed anything fans put in front of them (and we mean anything). Comic-Con is also where you’ll find hard-to-get stuff like the Penny Arcade CTS figurine. You know… to match your CTS A40s…hint, hint.

The long lines for Left 4 Dead 2, Brutal Legend, and Lost Planet 2 were totally worth it, and the terrible smell only added to the ambience of “Swamp Fever” — one of the many new maps you’ll find on the upcoming Left 4 Dead 2. This experience also solidified my entirely rational fear of scary, stinky swamps. After a little Battlefield: Bad Company 2 and Brutal Legend, I had to go try Capcom’s Dark Void. Two great things about Dark Void: jetpacks and controls that don’t suck. I think I startled the developer when I hugged him.

Comic-Con is nothing if not an orgy of fan-service: I scored the Futurama Complete DVD Collection, the exclusive Mass Effect 2 and Dead Space comics, and some sweet Bioshock 2 toys. The photos of me rolling around with everything in the hotel bed are not for children. [or adults! eww.--ed.]

Let me put it this way: if you are truly a hardcore gaming, comic, or movie fan put Comic-Con 2010 on your calendar–then circle the day with a pink puffy paint pen and bedazzle it–or it will sell out before you can score tickets.

See you there next year!

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This past weekend, I spent my time blowing $#% up left and right at PDXLAN 14 in Portland, Oregon. PDXLAN is one of the west coast’s best choices for hardcore PC gamers. Since 2002, PDXLAN has built Portland’s LAN gaming community, always making the LAN experience as fun as possible.

What I love about PDXLAN:

The People: With only 500 seats, PDXLAN sells out faster than most concerts several months in advance leaving people begging for tickets on the forums.

The attendees rock. Everyone there is chill and just wants to have good time playing their favorite games. If you need help with something, players are more than happy to take the time and get you up and running.

The Contests: Need a break from gaming? Every day, there are little contests for you to enjoy and win prizes. They range from late-night Peggle tournaments, case-mod contests, Michael Jackson Thriller dance contests, water balloon fights, dodgeball, musical chairs, and more. I mean, how can you say no to dodgeball?

The Prizes: PDXLAN gives away thousands of dollars in prizes with each event. You could walk away with fully tricked out systems or new RAM. Pro tip: stay for the final raffle on Monday afternoon. Lots of attendees go home with something awesome (other than a pantload of new t-shirts).

The Food: I dare you to tell me a free BAWLS root bear ice cream float isn’t awesome. Tastes great and will get you super twitchy/caffeinated! Tons of delivery options if you want pizza, wings, whatever. If you want something nicer, go to D-Dish (www.d-dish.com), a website that you can order anything from a full service restaurant and it gets delivered right to the event hall. Oh, and midnight doughnut runs at Voodoo Doughnuts kick ass. Best doughnuts ever.

The Gaming: Everyone’s playing something at all times. Team Fortress 2 seems to still be king of LAN gaming, but classics like Counter-strike, Battlefield 2, and Starcraft still rock the party. One of my personal favorites, Trackmania took over after midnight every night.

The Network: A smoking fast network makes for a successful LAN and the PDX guys know exactly how to set one up. They even rocked full internet access so we could check Facebook in between TF2 rounds. File servers were everywhere and chock-full of drivers and utilities (and other… stuff) in case you have to format your PC at a LAN. Again.

What I Didn’t Like: It’s not in the Bay Area/San Francisco.

To learn more about PDXLAN and sign-up for an awesome gaming event, check out their website at http://www.pdxlan.com/

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T-Squared and his ’08 National Champion Str8 Rippin squad have not only
retaken the top of the MLG Pro Circuit hill, but they’ve done so with so
much authority that they will have the entire league going back to the
drawing board. By dropping a mere single game to Triggers Down (in what was
arguably TD’s specialty: CTF on Narrows), Str8 looks poised to take the
mantle of MLG’s perennial favorite, Final Boss, during their virtually
unbeatable Halo 1 and 2 seasons in year’s past. Did someone say ‘Dynasty’?

Despite what a lopsided 6-1 final may indicate, there are arguably more
individually skilled players in the other top five seeded Championship
Bracket teams, and each match-up offers nail-biting game play–but Str8′s
teamwork is second to none. Their level of coordination and team awareness
just wouldn’t be possible without the top-notch communication technology
brought by the A40 Audio System.

With zero lag and crystal clear audio, the A40 Audio System stands head and
shoulders above the competition and defines professional grade. If you
haven’t yet tried a set of A40′s at a friend’s house or at an MLG event, be
sure to take advantage of the ASTRO Gaming 15 day no-questions-asked money
back guarantee and hear for yourself why the A40 Audio System is the
professionals’ choice.

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San Francisco, California’s annual Game Developer Conference brings together
the world’s best and brightest makers of what we love most – games!

So Astro Gaming decided to celebrate by hosting the first annual GDC
afterparty at Astro Studios. To set things off correctly, we had local hero
DJ Mike Relm (and one of our favoriteAstro fans) on tap to lay down a
gob-smacking audio/video show. Mike has recently returned from a two-year
world tour with the Blue Man Group.

Besides great music, it wouldn’t be an Astro Gaming party without games, a
couple of adult beverages, and a great crowd of our favorite industry
friends — check out the pictures on the
http://www.astrogaming.com/news/events/ page to see shots of the party
with our friends from Intel, ATi, Penny Arcade, and GamesRadar.

See you next year (that is, if you make the list)!

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