PAX Australia: the big picture

Penny Arcade held its first PAX event outside America over the weekend, choosing Melbourne as the host city for PAX Australia. The event brought together an excited gaming community to explore and participate across halls filled with not just video games but also boardgames, tabletop miniatures, card games, LAN zones, panel discussions and pure geek culture of all kinds.

The event was pre-sold out weeks before, and the reaction suggests it will sell out even earlier next time around.

If you missed out or you just want to remember the show, here's a dozen pictures showing the wide variety of fun and games PAX Australia had to offer.

The Expo Hall featured a mix of big names from overseas and here at home, along with lots of geek merch — even off-the-rack cosplay outfits!

Wargaming.net decided that if you're going to show off World of Tanks, you should really have a tank onsite to make it clear that you mean business. With one of the two biggest stands at the show, the World of Tanks developer wasn't doing things by halves.

There was a huge area dedicated to Australian and New Zealand indie developers, all showing off their latest works. The crowds flocked around these demos showed that this is definitely the kind of place where small indie work is greatly appreciated. We'll share some highlights from this area in another gallery soon.

Ubisoft was another of the big booths at PAX Australia. A Just Dance stage had people bouncing all day.

League of Legends was another massive booth at PAX Australia, featuring a tournament with AU$40,000 up for grabs.

Across in the Big Top, the tabletop action featured a range of tables for all kinds of gameplay set in all kinds of settings: fantasy, history and distant future.

The Tech Assault area featured a portable, inflatable laser skirmish battlefield.

When you first stumble across a game of Johann Sebastian Joust, you're not quite sure what's going on. Why are they standing around holding Move controllers? Once you get the gist, it suddenly becomes quite possibly the cleverest party game you've ever experienced in your life.

Nintendo was also out in force, with a Pokemon National Championship taking place at the show. The winner would be off to Vancouver to represent Australia at this year's World Championships in August. Not to mention the wealth of StreetPass hits to be had all around the show!

Another building housed the PC area, where both a ready-to-roll PC LAN and a BYOC LAN were in place for gamers to dive in and have some fun.

Back in the Big Top, the tables were packed with gamers indulging in boardgames, card games, miniatures and, yes, more tournaments!

Thankfully, there was even a zone for sitting around on bean bags to relax, watch Adventure Time and score more StreetPass hits.