Last year our annual fundraiser drew in a crowd of about 300 people before hitting capacity, this year we have room for more than 500.

The event is open to anyone 16 or older and kicks off at 6 p.m., running until midnight. If you are 21 or older, don't forget your ID so you can get a wristband to purchase drinks.

We're asking for a minimum donation of $10 to get in and get a door prize ticket. We will be giving away a huge amount of swag including more than 70 T-Shirts, a custom straight jacket, a Guitar Hero drum seat, a popcorn machine and Divinity Dragon knives.

There will also be a silent auction for a number of items including a copy of Uncharted 2: Among Thieves Fortune Hunter's Edition, which comes with a CD of the game's soundtrack and a copy of the Brady Games guide; a 3L etched bottle of 8BitVintners wine, rare Marvel Vs. Capcom 2 mixtape vinyls, a collector's edition Chun-Li statue, a Capcom hoodie signed by Niitsuma and limited edition Brutal Legend Statue.

Once again Gabe of Death of the Arcade will be running the free Rock Band and DJ Hero gameplay up on Cervantes' mammoth stage. Since we have two set-ups, we'll be able to cycle through people much faster.

On the second floor, Greg of Colorado Cutthroat will be running a free console arcade which will include a chance to play Tekken 6, Street Fighter IV, BlazBlu, Smash Bros. Brawl, Soul Calibur 4, Halo 3 and Modern Warfare 2 on a number of set-ups.

It sounds like this year is going to be quite a blast, so mark your calendars now! Did I mention that Cervantes has a gi-normous disco ball? Because it totally does!!

In a nutshell: The event will be at Cervantes Masterpiece Ballroom in downtown Denver on Nov. 19. Doors open at 6 p.m. and close at midnight. Sixteen and older to get in and a minimum $10 donation. Be there and have fun... for a good cause.

If you can't make it you can always donate directly to Child's Play.

We're still having the Kotaku party but we  decided to move venues after the owner of the Trump Room club called us at 1 a.m. Monday and demanded six times our agree upon fee.

Fuck that. 

We passed and instead called up Mother at 2 a.m. and switched our party to that venue. This is the same place we had out party two years ago.  

So join us tonight from 8 p.m. to 11 p.m. At Mothers. We'll be posting the directions and more details a bit later today. 

Though technically more of an open beta launch party, NCsoft's soirée held atop Seattle's landmark Space Needle was full of good food, a bit of excitement, and a bit of science. The excitement came when someone who works for Kotaku but wasn't attending the show on official business walked away with a Razer gaming keyboard during the raffle. I won't say who it was, but I completely envy her.

The science came by way of the two drink tickets I received at the door. It takes a heavy application of scientific principles generally formant following high school in order to figure out how best to get drunk using only two drinks. Thanks to my extremely low alcohol tolerance and the doctorate in beverage science that I do not possess, I succeeded readily.

On the way out of the party I was handed a lovely nylon gift bag, which would have been cool enough on its own, but this one had stuff in it! Glorious stuff.

Behold the bag.

Oh look, another Aion preorder disc. One can never have too many.

The best of the bunch right here. This is an iron-finished version of the Aiva figure that is being included in the collector's edition of Aion when it's released later this month. It's covered in a plastic bag, but it's still lovely.

Aion gives the Space Needle wings! Hooray for t-shirts!

PB&J Gamer Grub. It's actually not that bad, though my taste buds can hardly be trusted at this point. Perhaps they should rebrand it as 'You'll Eat Anything When You're Slightly Drunk".
<img src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/kotaku/2009/09/010.jpg" width="563" height="1000"
Remember the limited WildStorm Aion comic book we mentioned earlier this week? Here it is.

And a Mana Potion energy shot. This is exactly what you do not need before returning to your hotel to go to sleep.

Resident Evil 5 PC will have a big presence at this year's Penny Arcade Expo, and fans that stop by Capcom's booth (#670) to check out the game on Friday have a chance at attending Saturday night's launch party at the Showbox at the Market in downtown Seattle. Each day, Capcom will be giving out 250 wristbands that grant access to the venue. What can 500 Resident Evil fans expect at the event?

"Tri-Cell Corporation and Intel celebrate the launch of RE5 PC. As the exclusive guest of CEO Excella Gionne you will be treated to a night of games, fun and horror. Make sure to pick up your Tri-Cell employee badge at the event and don't forget your RE5 snow globe when you leave. As a show of appreciation Tri-Cell and Intel will be raffling off 5 Core i7 CPU's and copies of RE5 PC. Let's make this Tri-Cell's best year EVER!!"

Of course Tricell Corporation is the fiction pharmaceutical firm featured in the game, so aside from food, drinks, and a raffle, expect plenty of LARPing.

Besides the bizarre reason behind the party, it sounds like a good time. The folks will be setting up for some street fighter play, give-aways and "plenty of booze to dull the pain."

Take pictures for us if you go.

Yes, the Kotaku crew is once again heading to the lovely and historic Golden Gopher in downtown Los Angeles for a night of drinks, chit chat, and hangover research on Sunday, May 31st, the night before a slew of E3 press conferences and appointments kick off.

This year, we'll be doing things a little different, adding some musical accompaniment, giveaways and more. Of course, we'll have an open bar (for a limited time!), all sponsored by your good friends at Meat Bun. That's right. Me and my cohorts are going to buy you a drink. And you'll even get first crack at our new stuff!

The bar opens at 8 PM, so make sure you're on time and of drinking age if you'd like to spend Sunday night happy hour with us. Yes, that means this is a 21 and over event. So age with a vengeance!

Mind you, most of the images are just colored blocks with various colorful characters interacting with them, but the last one in the gallery completely nails it. It's hard to believe they managed to slip in that sort of action into an E—rated title. Things are definitely looking up for the Boom Blox franchise.

Co-producers Takeuchi and Kawata will be on hand with the motion capture and voice actors who played Chris, Sheva and Josh in the game. There will also be stage shows and Resident Evil activities throughout the night.

There will be limited space at the event so you better get there pretty early. The event kicks off about 8 p.m. and runs through midnight. If you want to pick up a copy of the game you'll need to stop by the Powell Street GameStop ahead of time and pay for it. They'll give you a proof of purchase wrist band.

Could this be when Capcom plans to announce a new Code Veronica update for the Wii? Even if that's the case what could the other game be?

Resident Evil 5 Launch Party!

Announced at the Consumer Electronics Show earlier this year, Nyko's Wand is a replacement for the standard Wii remote that uses electronic triggers instead of mechanical ones to transmit data to attached devices. What exactly does that mean? It means your nunchuck can rumble.

The Wired Kama is a wired version of Nyko's wireless nunchuck controller which, unlike the standard Nintendo nunchuck, can vibrate along with the Wand in games that support vibration feedback. It's only a small difference from the shipping standard, but as Sony's original Sixaxis controller for the PlayStation 3 taught us, a little rumble goes a long way.

Along with the Wired Kama, Nyko has also announced the Pistol Grip, a light gun controller for the Wand that forgoes the clunky mechanical parts of the Wii Zapper accessory in favor of electronics that map the trigger and hammer of the gun to the Wand's A and B buttons, which should result in a more solid light-gun experience, for those of you looking for such.

Both the Wired Kama and the Pistol Grip will ship packed in with the Nyko Wand in June of this year, with a suggested retail price of $49.99. Not a bad price to pay for a little innovation.

As with last year's, this year's will feature a bevy of beautiful door prizes made up of the schwag sent my way from companies over the year. Also we've got a number of pretty amazing donations that we'll be handing out to lucky winners.

Among the list? A still-in-the-box retail Xbox 360, a Gears of War Zune and these, these magnificent LEGO creations. These amazing LEGO designs come from Cliff and company over at NetDevil who, between bouts of designing LEGO Universe, managed to find time to create 8-bit art for charity.

Bald Bull and Sonic on the jump. I'll be posting a mega picture of all of the giveaway goodies early next week, so stay tuned.

If you plan on coming to any of the events, hit the details up here.

As I'm sure you're all aware Valve threw a little party during last week's big show (We weren't invited. I blame our butchering of their song.) and during the tail end of it they brought up Jonathan Coulton to play a set. At the end of his last song he invited the Rock Band folks up on the stage to play Still Alive on their game, a really neat way to announce that the song was coming to the game.

After they finished the crowd went crazy, a Harmonix developer told me the next day. The crowd was so excited, in fact, that one of them burst from the masses and jumped onto the stage. Walking up to the 360 that was home to the song, he plucked out a memory card, plugged it in and started fiddling. At which point one of their larger of the Harmonix guys walked over and asked him if he needed help with something.

"I'm just grabbing Still Alive, everyone needs to be able to play this," he said, if my source's memory serves.

The developer plucked the controller from the rotund man's hands and deftly deleted the song, which he had already managed to grab, from the card. Better luck next time.

The Harmonix guys thought it was even stranger that he later bragged to Harmonix co-founder Alex Rigopulos about it. Personally, I think it's super weird that he happened to have a Memory Card on him.

This year, we heard a really funny joke involving a possible 2008 game release. So funny it made out sides hurt! That fantasyland release day joke was?

Video Game Party Decor [SGA Creative's Flickr gallery]
[via The Tanooki]

I hope to livestream from the Funde Razor party tonight here in Denver. Couple of problems with that though. First, I had to write this post a good eight hours before it was set to go live. Second I have no idea if I get cell reception inside the Walnut Room. Third I really can't double check once things get going. So if there's just a big blank screen up there, sorry. Otherwise hit the jump and feel free to comment about the Funde Razor shenanigans.

OK, I'm outta here. I have to run down to Denver to pick up some bits and pieces for the big event tonight at the Walnut Room, then hop by the Rocky Mountain News, where they've been "holding" one of my Rock Band guitars, and then finally get over to the bar to set stuff up and test out the game.

Hope to see some of you there. For those of you planning on attending in Denver, it runs from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. and you'll need to be 21 or older to get in. The cover is a $10 minimum donation.

The ticket gets you, besides a warm fuzzy feeling inside, a door prize ticket. I'm bringing a mountain of swag with me to the fund raiser to give away including the Manhunt 2 straitjacket, one of those Wii bags from E3 06, a Metal Gear Solid multi-tool knife, a Lair lighter, a Valut Boy Fallout 3 bobble head, Zelda hourglass and more shirts than I want to even think about. We will also have a Limited Edition copy of Rock Band for the 360 on hand to giveaway and, of course, that life-sized companion cube.

If you're planning to attend the Brooklyn Funde Razor hit up the official site for the details.

Wii party invites at Evites [Evites]

Who has the biggest brain? The new mental fitness game bases on the original best-selling Nintendo DS title. Players are mentally and physically challenged in five different categories: Analyze, Compute, Identify, Memorize and Think. The player who collects the most tokens by answering questions correctly wins. Speed and accuracy count - not smarts - when answering questions at the Big Brain Academy.

University Games Big Brain Academy Game [Amazon Product Page via bits bytes pixels & sprites]

The party was set for 7:30 and as I arrived I was greeted by the ship's captain and soon after, a waitress bearing a tray of drinks all in Gametap's colors of orange, green and blue. I chose one of the orange concoctions and made my way to the upper decks. There was a terrific spread of food and a DJ spinning some fun tunes and after stuffing my face I went outside to enjoy being on the water. After about an hour at the dock, the ship finally set sail for an two hour cruise around San Diego Bay. It was great fun and being on the open water was quite a relaxing break from the crush of the Comic Con floor.

Gametap certainly knows how top throw a soiree and I look forward to seeing how their service progresses over the next year. With new games every week including rarities like Neo Geo titles as well as getting some games the same day they hit retail, they will be quite a force to be reckoned with, especially for those who prefer PC gaming to the expensive world of consoles.