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When Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik of webcomic Penny Arcade hosted the first Penny Arcade Expo, or PAX, in Seattle in August 2004, they couldn't know that the 3,300 attendees was just a taste of things to come. But PAX has grown consistently in the nearly a decade since, and this celebration of gaming and gamers — be they video, computer, card, board, or role-playing — is now held every spring in Boston and fall in Seattle, attracting up to 70,000 fans from around the world.

The third annual PAX East was held in Boston over the weekend of April 6. Kicking off with a keynote speech by Prince of Persia creator Jordan Mechner, the show offered an extensive expo hall in which publishers showed off their upcoming hits for 2012; dozens of panels, speeches, and workshops for gamers interested in learning more about the industry; competitions and tournaments; a bean bag-filled handheld gaming lounge; arcades of both coin-ops and Kickstarter-funded indie games; and more.

For highlights from the show, check out the below image galleries of PAX East 2012.

PAX East 2012

Photos from the third annual Penny Arcade Expo East, held at the BCEC in Boston, Apr 6-8, 2012.

42 Photos

PAX East 2012 Cosplay

Cosplayers, or gamers dressed in costume, at the third annual Penny Arcade Expo East, held at the BCEC in Boston, Apr 6-8, 2012.

15 Photos

Making appearances at PAX East 2012 were Robert Boyd of Zeboyd Games (Breath of Death VII, Cthulhu Saves the World, Penny Arcade: On The Rainslick Precipice of Darkness), Margaret Weis (Dragonlance), Kathleen DeVere (LoadingReadyRun, Desert Bus for Hope), coin-ops from the American Classic Arcade Museum at Funspot, Lolth the Spider Queen of Wizards of the Coast's Dungeons & Dragons setting of the Forgotten Realms, Gearbox Software's Borderlands 2, Square's Theatrhythm Final Fantasy, and more. Cosplayers included Sheik, Pyramid Head, Solid Snake, Master Chief, Chrono, and a Shy Guy.

Tomorrow is the first day of PAX East — so let's close the books on a previous video game event!

Last month, I had the pleasure of attending GameFest, the opening weekend of The Art of Video Games exhibition at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC. I pitched PCWorld, inheritors to the former GamePro magazine, to cover the story, which normally would've been an uphill battle. Fortunately, I had a connection: I'm already an employee of their parent company. They were happy to run my feature story, "Smithsonian Art Of Video Games Exhibit Opens With Gaming Festival", for which the editor asked I focus on two panels that examined the history and future of gaming.

In addition to text for PCWorld, I also published a GameFest photo gallery with Computerworld. What follows are the remainder of the still photography assets I grabbed during my weekend at the Smithsonian. Enjoy!

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Tomorrow marks the commencement of GameFest, a three-day festival celebrating the opening of a new Smithsonian exhibition: The Art of Video Games. A year ago at this time, the public was invited to vote on what games should be featured in this exhibit. Now, in 2012, we are invited to attend a grand gala that features Nolan Bushnell, Hideo Kojima, Billy Mitchell, and more. Check out the trailer, released today and featuring a chiptune soundtrack by 8 Bit Weapon:

From the event's Web site:

The Art of Video Games is one of the first exhibitions to explore the forty-year evolution of video games as an artistic medium, with a focus on striking visual effects and the creative use of new technologies. It features some of the most influential artists and designers during five eras of game technology, from early pioneers to contemporary designers. The exhibition focuses on the interplay of graphics, technology and storytelling through some of the best games for twenty gaming systems ranging from the Atari VCS to the PlayStation 3. Eighty games, selected with the help of the public, demonstrate the evolution of the medium. The games are presented through still images and video footage. In addition, the galleries will include video interviews with twenty developers and artists, large prints of in-game screen shots, and historic game consoles … Five featured games, one from each era, show how players interact with diverse virtual worlds, highlighting innovative techniques that set the standard for many subsequent games. The playable games are Pac-Man, Super Mario Bros., The Secret of Monkey Island, Myst, and Flower.

See you there!

The United States' 2012 presidential election is already heating up, with Republicans engaging in some snarky debates. We're likely to see even more vitriol as candidates make and decry campaign promises over hot-button topics — all while ignoring the issues that matter to that oft-overlooked voting demographic: gamers.

Fortunately, one nominee as stepped forward to fill that void. Backed by the powerful Rooster Teeth organization, Chic Cramney is asking for your support and vote for president.

Last month, I finished Portal 2. I agreed with Zero Punctuation's observation about too many of the puzzles between about getting from Point A to Point B, rather than the more obvious puzzle rooms of the original Portal (though the sequel has some of those, to be sure).

But the game is still one of the best of 2011, due not only to its humor but also its soundtrack. Sixty-four different tunes accompany Chell in her journey through the bowels of Aperture Science — and as of today, they're all available as free downloads.

The soundtrack includes the closing (not credits) song, "Cara Mia Addio", also known as the turret opera, which employs Ellen McLain (GLaDOS)'s bad high school Italian for its lyrics. Independent artists have recorded an a cappella rendition of the tune that's available on iTunes:

Jonathan Coulton's "Want You Gone" is also part of this free download — but before you hear the song in-game, you have to defeat the final boss. This encounter's own moments of hilarity can't be fully appreciated in the heat of battle, so enjoy this playlist of three YouTube videos that captures the dialogue of the personality spheres:

I may've griped about Portal 2 being an expensive sequel to an affordable game, but the freebies like the soundtrack go a long way toward setting things right.

(Hat tip to Dave McClelland and GermanSeabass)

What little gaming I've had time for lately was marked by a significant moment in my console library's history: I popped my Xbox 360's cherry.

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Despite the lack of backward compatibility with the original Xbox, I asked for and received my 360 as a gift for Christmas 2008 and immediately proceeded to load it with downloadable goodness. Although I'd predicted purchasing plenty of retail games for the console, I never weaned myself off the ease and affordability of XBLA. I could enjoy a game like Shadow Complex for as long as I would any disc-based game, but for a fraction of the price. Even though I was cutting retailers (such as formerly myself) from the equation, there were just too many reasons, from the day I got my Xbox through 2010 and today, to stay home.

Batman: Arkham Asylum and Portal 2 were the games that got me off the couch. The former has a great demo that reminded me of the stealth aspects of the fantastic Metal Gear Solid series, and the latter is the sequel to one of my favorite 360 games thus far. Accustomed as I was to paying $1–15 for an Xbox 360 game, I waited for the prices on each to fall, paying $20 and $35, respectively.

I've not yet played Batman, but Portal 2 is proving fun … though slightly less so than I hoped. The story is somewhat predictable so far, and many of the puzzles seem oriented toward figuring out what to do instead of how. I'd rather be given an objective to decipher than placed into an empty room with no clear goal. In that respect, more of Portal 2 is like the final stages of its predecessor, when Chell has broken out of the test rooms and is navigating the tunnels of the facility. I didn't like that part, either.

But both games are successfully imbued with liberal amounts of humor. I'm looking forward to the end game sequence and the closing credits song, but in the meantime, even little gestures like the defective turrets' dialogue are uplifting:

What will be the third game I'll buy for the 360? There are none currently on my radar, which perhaps bespeaks of my fall from "hardcore" status. But There's plenty to enjoy in the meantime.

Rooster Teeth has made it an annual tradition of giving PAX East attendees a glimpse into the future by unveiling the next season of hit machinima series Red vs. Blue. Last year, they showed the first four episodes of Season 8, which Bernie Burns appreciated me calling "the most impressive single episode of the show I've ever seen."

Their 2011 preview wasn't quite as impressive, as they showed only a trailer, not a full episode or four. But Season 9 nonetheless promises to be as awesome as Season 8, as fans can now see for themselves, with today's online release of said trailer. It starts off seeming to pick up where last season left off, but soon, things start seeming amiss…

What do you think? Is Rooster Teeth going in the right direction by taking Red vs. Blue backward?

At PAX East, the line to try the Nintendo 3DS handheld wrapped around Nintendo's meager booth. With so much else to see at the convention, waiting hours to try a system that would be commercially available in mere weeks seemed a poor investment.

When I got home, rather than pre-order the 3DS in anticipation of its March 27 release, I dusted off Nintendo's previous 3D system. The Virtual Boy, released in 1995, was Nintendo's only 32-bit system and the supposed successor to the overwhelming success of the Game Boy line. But its lack of portability, weak software library, screenshot-free nature, and antisocial design combined to make it a faster failure than even the Sega Dreamcast: the Virtual Boy was discontinued 15 years ago this month, on March 2, 1996.

But it wasn't until three weeks later, on March 22 — today — that the system's official death knell sounded with the release of its final game, 3D Tetris. It and two other Virtual Boy games, Waterworld and Nester's Funky Bowling, were exclusive to the United States, while eight other games were never ported from Japan. No one country enjoyed all 22 games, but several of those released in the USA were actually quite a bit of fun.

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My favorite is Mario Clash, a variation on the original Mario Bros. game that has Mario romping through the sewers, jumping on turtles. Mario Clash's 40 levels challenge players to knock enemies off ledges in multiple dimensions, sometimes requiring throwing shells "into" and "out of" the screen to hit fiends on the Z-axis. It's the first game I played after getting home from PAX, and it lasted me a good hour.

Other interesting applications of the Virtual Boy's 3D technology (which was invented in Massachusetts, not far from PAX East) include Teleroboxer, a boxing game with an intuitive control scheme that uses both D-pads; and Vertical Force, a shmup in which the ship can descend and ascend. Of course, several of the games weren't worth the plastic they were printed on, as the Angry Video Game Nerd can tell you.

The Virtual Boy failed to replace its handheld predecessor, though according to Shigeru Miyamoto, the black-and-red system was misperceived: it was intended as a toy, not a console. In that respect, it's a fun and amusing diversion, well worth the $30 for which rental stores liquidated their rental units, with games at $10 a pop. But as a gaming system, it lives on as an inside joke, the occasional cameo, and a potential portent of the challenges to face Nintendo's next handheld.