I don't have solid data, just my own year-to-year experience, but it feels like gaming cosplay has been on the rise since we first started attending Sakuracon. The Team Fortress 2 crews you've seen showcased on the gaming blogs are one of the newer ones, but Valve seemed to rule the crossover space this year: there were several Chells as well, as well as Aperture Science Technicians, their Weighted Companion Cubes in tow. These cubes were sometimes literally in tow, hoisted up on crates for easy transport. There was even a GlaDOS.

I apologize for the recent downtime. We were moving over to a new host and it seems like no matter how well you try and plan, a switch like that always ends up taking longer than you expected.

In a last ditch attempt to dissuade me from my righteous course, Gabriel tried to suggest that we would get in trouble for toasting up such unauthorized treats. Of course, the whole endeavor was designed to provoke just such an encounter: to create a situation where someone would approach us and demand that we "stop making waffles." I'm quite certain that no person has ever, in the long and shining strand of human events, had to ask this of another person.

You should probably read the comic first.

Its worst tendencies having gone dormant for months, Electronic Arts suddenly drew itself up to its full height and began a fresh round of decapitations. Over the years, we've had to hold interventions like this from time to time for the company. It is in that spirit that we open a dialogue.

It took some doing, but the result was a convocation with true drama and gravity, like the Council of Elrond. This stalwart crew put their best foot forward, but unfortunately this exposed the foot in question to magma and licking tongues of living flame. I knew my way around the boss deck a little better this time, to the delight of my deep legion. When engaged in a campaign against that which is good and true, it's nice to know you have the support of upper management.

Sakura-con is coming up in just about a week and Tycho and I will be there as usual. We'll be doing a panel on Friday at 2:30 and we'll have a bunch of our new shirts at the booth. You should swing by and say hi if you're in the area.

Early bird registration for PAX (the only man made convention viewable from space) ends on the 31st which is only ten days away. We're already getting game independent game submissions for the PAX 10 which is great considering how early it is. We'll be taking submissions until May 7th and the top 10 will be presented at PAX. For all the details and rules for submitting your game hit the PAX 10 site. Also, if you have something interesting to say to the PAX audience or you know someone who does please hit the panel/speaker submission page and drop us a line.

Earlier this week we announced the return of the Penny Arcade scholarship. This is our second year doing it and I really enjoy the process. Sifting through the candidates and choosing one is ridiculously hard but I feel like the end result is something pretty special. Basically we want you to tell us how you plan on making an impact in the game industry. We'll give the winning student a $10,000 scholarship. You can get all the details and application forms on the official site located here.

As a funny aside, I actually misspelled scholarship both times I wrote it up there. Turns out there is an "a" in it. Who knew. Anyway, that seemed sort of ironic to me.


-Gabe out

Okay.

We find ourselves at Continuity's dark door again, apologies all 'round, but when Gabe's exterminator rescheduled the comic essentially appeared out of thin air. Let me assure you on behalf of Penny Arcade and the global brands we represent (beneath the umbrella firms "Brazen" and "UltraLith Consumer Lures") that we will observe our creative impulses more keenly in the future. The problem is that continuity, in its dormant state, looks like inspiration.

Gabriel apparently has a tiny boarder, a friendly creature with tidy fur content to dwell out in the garage. That certainly wasn't my experience with the genus, a tattered pageant of misery whose psychic reverberations are still being felt. I recall with unrelenting clarity the beast we secured in a humane trap, rolling and sucking air in its madness, placed on the table in a mockery of polite dinner. It had a musky, unhallowed scent like some primeval mustard, its yellow teeth so long that it could not close its own mouth. Threading its ten fine fingers around the bars, it cried out "We crawl, we swim! We nest and gnaw! We are WE, AND WE DEVOUR!"

We have new shirts for you to buy.

The first new shirt is more of a shirt refresh really. I felt like the old Fruit Fucker design was getting a little stale. I draw him different now and I thought the shirt should reflect that.

We were recently contacted by the Make-A-Wish foundation with the news that a young man had chosen to invest his wish in us. This was no surprise. Well, a wish in Gabriel was a surprise. A wish in me, certainly - I'm an investment. Here are only a few of the things that make me such a winning opportunity:

It's a little inside baseball I guess, but at the same time the story was so delicious that we couldn't leave it be: a District Attorney in Texas is on trial for building himself a sweet rig on the county dime. The machine in question sports "two hard drives, seven fans, high-end video and audio cards, a wireless Internet connection and cables that glow under ultraviolet light."  It's a crime, yeah, but it's an awesome crime.  I make an exception for awesome crimes.

Echochrome is something every PSP owner should certainly check out, and it's easy to do so, at any rate its as easy to get on there as any other demo, which is to say that there are elements of dark sorcery. Creating a folder in a specific subdirectory with the title "NPJG90019" is the sort of thing a crazy person would do. That said, I have it on good authority that we will never survive unless we occasionally indulge in madness.

I have some PAX news to share.

-The PAX 10 site has launched. We thought PAX would be a great place to show off some independent games. Basically the idea is that you can submit your game to us, we'll look at it along with about 50 industry experts and the 10 that we think are the best will get shown at PAX. You can get all the details here.

-We've also put out a call for speakers. If you think you have something that PAX attendees would be interested in hearing about or you have an idea for a panel let us know.

-Early bird pre-registration ends March 31st. So you need to register this month if you want to save $10 and get your 3 day pass for just $40.


In other semi PAX related news, the film Nerdcore rising will be opening this weekend. I say it's semi PAX related because it's a documentary about Nerdcore hip hop and it features PAX regular MC Frontalot. They filmed a pretty long interview with Tycho and I as well as the Front. During part of it they asked us to deconstruct the PA theme song and try and explain it for people who aren't huge nerds. They posted the result up on YouTube as a sort of teaser for the film I guess. I'll go ahead and drop it in here.

As usual I will warn you that this clip features graphic footage of us in our hideous true forms.

Before Army of Two came out, I was having trouble making sense of the reviews I had read. Invariably, the game lost a certain quantity of metaphysical "points" for its Single Player experience, and was redeemed to a great extent by its multiplayer modes, both adversarial and cooperative. I've never considered it anything other than a multiplayer game, taking the name of the game in question as a helpful suggestion.