In case you missed the concert Friday night at PAX 2008, or just want a quick refresher, we've created a highlights reel for the Freezepop show. What you'll see is clips from their opener ("Brainpower" of Rock Band fame), a shiny sea of cell, phone and DS lights, a rather unique "Star Spangled Banner" performance and their closer, a cover of Europe's "Final Countdown." Stay tuned later today for video from the night's headliner Jonathan Coulton.

Last night we attended the first PAX 2008 concert, featuring The OneUps, Freezepop, and Jonathan Coulton headlining. There are a multitude of great moments (highlight reel to come later this weekend), but one thing that stuck out was Coulton's performance of "Flickr" and special song "Not This One," both songs featuring video accompaniment aided by sound guy Bart Brad. Check out the live performance, embedded above.

Despite what you may think from the picture, it wasn't the tower of pink plushies that attracted us to the Pink Godzilla store booth. More so, it was that they have mint condition classic games (including the Earthbound and Chrono Trigger) and consoles like the 2nd Anniversary Xbox One from Japan. We're willing to bet that entire wall of games will be sold out by Sunday.

While discussion on Warhammer Online is conspicuously lacking, Mythic Entertainment designer Paul Barnett and producers Jeff Hickman and Josh Drescher managed to to venture into some strange, hilarious and very NSFW territory on BigDownload's BigCast PAX special. Listen to the podcast (again, it's NSFW) here.

Looking for group? PAX 2008 has you covered. While you're killing time or waiting for your number to be called in the console freeplay, you can chill out in here, play some tabletop games with your fellow gamers, and run around with a big LFG bubble over your head.

We stopped by for a bit, and these rooms are actually a fun place to hang out, and you can easily run into a pickup game of whatever catches your fancy. It's a great way to meet people from all over the country (including one dude we met who came all the way from the UK to PAX it), and they're also near the nice, clean bathrooms. At least, they are clean on day one. We pray they remain that way.

Outside the North entrance to the PAX08 showfloor, we found two Lord of the Rings Online advertisements written in ... some code. "It must be French," we thought, admittedly forgetting our origins. Can someone translate this for us? Update: Original headline claimed this was Elvish when, in fact, it is Dwarven. Oops.

Call it dumb luck, but we caught that ever-elusive striped shirt aficionado taking a break from the PAX 2008 showfloor to play some Team Fortress 2 (we'd love to say he was playing as the appropriately-elusive spy, but we think it was actually Heavy class). Also spotted amongst the masses of giant modded PCs, a lone MacBook Pro. Check out some more crazy sightings from the BYOC (that's "Bring Your Own Computer") room.

Rock Band is going charitable, with a special PAX Pack for next week's DLC. All three bands are performing at this weekend's Penny Arcade Expo, and all money for the tracks go towards Child's Play charity.

PAX Pack 1 (240 / $3)

• "Skullcrusher Mountain" - Jonathan Coulton
• "Livin' on the Corner of Dude and Catastrophe" - MC Frontalot
• "Shhh…." - Darkest of the Hillside Thickets

All songs are master recordings and "Shhh" is a previously unreleased track. The songs will be available for download next Tuesday and Thursday for Xbox 360 and PS3, respectively.

[Note: Image a Jonathan Coulton lyrical word cloud.]

Already registered via Xbox Live to vote in November's general election? Here's a different vote to rock: EA is letting players have a say in which two existing Battlefield: Bad Company multiplayer maps will be tweaked to become Conquest battlegrounds when the free Conquest Map Pack deploys this fall.

The six maps are up for vote at EA's Bad Company site, and include Acta Non Verba, Crossing Over, Par for the Course, Ghost Town, Welcome to Bad Company, and Crash and Grab. Developer DICE will pick the two top vote-getters on September 2. The golf course themed Par for the Course is currently way out in front, but, hey, you might change that. DICE is working on two more Conquest maps to join the fan favorites.

By the way, we've checked, and your vote really will count. You know, unlike a certain Spider-Man: Web of Shadows poll Activision conducted last month.

The first day of 2008's Penny Arcade Expo is coming to an end and we're shuffling over to catch The OneUps, Freezepop and Jonathan Coulton perform in the main hall. Check out all the awesome costumes and fashion statements we bumped into today.

Let's destroy your dreams now: Our friend KennyL did not talk about BioShock 2. Instead, Ken Levine kicked off Penny Arcade Expo by talking about his journey from from sex-intrigued comic nerd to Hollywood scribe and back to geekdom (which may in fact be the future plot of BioShock 2, but that is as of now unconfirmed). Regardless, Levine's keynote was a hysterical, vulgar and self-deprecating tribute to puberty and gaming.

Levine broke up into three acts, each different parts of his life. In part one, Levine described how he discoverd the adult with science fiction, from his dream to sleep with The Scarlet Witch to his dream to sleep with Jessica-5 from Logan's Run (both the comic book character and the film version's actress). "I wanted to smoke cigarettes and listen to Deep Purple," he said. "I didn't want to go to bed [thinking about Battlestar Galactica], but I did."

Act 2 was on the discovery of tribes, and how how his Dungeons & Dragons group moved onto girls. "The truth is, my tribal brothers were simply ahead of me in the game." In Act 3, in which our friend is a failed movie scribe, Levine ends up at Looking Glass Studios (System Shock). The rest, as you know, is history.

In his near-final last words, Levine offers a thanks to Tycho and Gabe, "We are united by a common element. Its not the color of our skin or our ideology or where we come from. No it's that we're a giant bunch of fucking nerds," he said to a roaring applause. Listen to it yourself:

In an interview with Bethesda executive producer Todd Howard we discussed Fallout 3's lack of a MOD support and this generation of consoles. While Howard admits the team wants to add support for user generated content he confesses adding the feature -- which was included in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion -- is a daunting task for a team eager to complete the epic adventure.

"We don't [have MOD support at launch], we want to but we have our hands so full with getting the game out and getting tools out there that work well for people and with the game is a pretty big undertaking," Howard told Joystiq.


[MP3] Download this interview in MP3 format