Hey all

For the month of November we’re having a donation drive in support of DC. We’re hoping to raise enough to pay for three things…

* Commander Tim for the space we’ll be using on his servers throughout 2010
* The purchase of our domain name for 2010
* Any extra we get will be used to pay Libsyn for our monthly bandwidth fees

I’ve done the maths and worked out a final figure that would be very good for us. If every show listener throws in a pound or a dollar then we’ll be more than sorted. There’s a Paypal donation button in the right side bar . You’ll be able to donate all year round but we won’t mention it outside of November when we’re going to be having the drive.

Many many thanks to those who have donated donated already.

We said last week we’d have on the Gamer’s with Jobs to talk about gaming with your kids, but scheduling conflicts means we’re pushing them to the week after. Instead Commander Tim will be on talking about the preservation of vintage games and what we face when some titles may end up disappearing forever.

We’ll also have our full Halo 3: ODST review. You can hear more from Tim in his show The Widget and of course on Gamehounds; a proud member of Platform Nation.

Thanks to Sean, Julian and Tim for rearranging everything at short notice.

After months of planning and tireless work from Steve Jones and Tony Here are our brand new forum.  Come along and get a more hands-on experience with the DC community. There’s also a link on the right. I’m pleased to say that since Saturday we’re growing into a sizable posse already.

We’ve decided to move Game Club back into the main show for now due to work hours and in the interests of staying focused. We may move it back into two shows at a later date but for now look for just one Digital Cowboys show a week. This weeks game that we will be talking about for a full 40 minutes is Batman: Arkham Asylum. Look for Episode 122 out Friday night.

Greetings. It has been a week of relative silence from the Digital Cowboys and I think it’s time we spoke up. We just got back from The Penny Arcade Expo or PAX in Seattle, one of the biggest fan-events in the world for folks who love gaming of all kinds. We saw so much over the past few days it’s impossible to summarize. Over the next few days and indeed weeks, the effects of this are going to become obvious. We’ve got tons of hands-on info on unreleased games, interviews with developers and PR and accounts of what it’s like to just be there with 60,000 other like-minded people.

So in the interests of streamlining, we’ll leave the questions up to you here. treat this as your own ongoing panel and ask Tony and I anything you want about PAX.

Regarding podcasts, we DID record a show on Sunday night along with the hosts of The Married Gamers and Some Other Castle, but there was a catastrophic technical foul-up and we lost the whole thing. Plans are afoot to do a long-distance, multi-host Skype session this week and bring that fantastic evening back for our deserving listeners because it really was excellent stuff and we want to share it with you.

Meantime check out Platform Nation (who were an absolute pleasure to meet with) in the next few days there should be the recording of a live podcast Tony and I hosted on Sunday afternoon at PAX with several walk-in guests and co-hosts. It was nerve-wracking stuff because we’d never recorded live (or indeed next to one another) but I think it was also a great show.It should be called PN @ PAX 09 Sunday’s Live Show Recap.

It’s great to be back, but we’re also going to miss everyone we met, some people especially.

OK now DC listeners can make with the questions.

We’re taking a leaf out of GamerDork’s book this week and dividing our show into two. The first is up at the normal time frame (Saturday morning) and is a very entertaining pre-PAX discussion with Chris O Regan of Superhappyfuntimeshow. The second is the first of a new series tentatively titled Game Club, where Tony and I talk only about what games we’ve been playing.That will be out late Tuesday.

For the first episode it’s Shadow Complex and Trials HD, which we’ve played to death respectively. We’ll also be talking about the Breakout evolution style game on the PSN: Shatter. We have a code to give away to our PS3 owning Twitter followers  so one lucky listener will get to own that for free. Simply Twitter this.

@Digitalcowboys Game Club coming soon!

We’ll pick a post at random and that person will be mentioned on the show and sent their code immediately afterward. I’ve been playing it this evening and I can tell you that it’s not at all the sort of game I’d usually buy, (frantic arcade paddle-blitzing) but for that very reason it’s really different and fun.

Get Twittering.

IMPORTANT!: You must live in the USA to be able to use this code, it won’t work on PS3 accounts from any other region.

EVEN MORE IMPORTANT!: We now have a UK code as well so get tweeting, because we’re giving away one to each side of the Atlantic.

It was my birthday today and I had a few friends round, packed into my tiny flat, playing games from dawn till dusk. We covered Street Fighter IV, Littlebigplanet, Halo, Rock Band 2, Wii Sports Resort, Mario Kart Wii, Burnout Revenge Crash Party, Scene It?: Box Office Smash and SingStar. I’ve never played so many games with so many good people.

I’d like to thank my wife Sharon, Tony and his wife Lizz, our good friend Paul, Leon (Ratso Albion) Cox of GamerDork and his other half Tanya, regular DC contributor Steven (Count Stex) Jones and his other half Linda and my friend and work colleague Will Mulvey. You made my 29th one of the best ever.

I recommend this kind of day for anyone looking for a birthday that won’t break the bank but will mean a hell of a lot. Linda even made us little cowboy cakes with hats and cacti. Now I have to do something significant with my life before I hit 30. I have one year.

http://thewidgetshow.com/
…is where you can find clue to the relaunch of The Widget. It was a very successful podcast helmed by Commander Tim back in the day (the day of 2005) and anything he’s putting effort into, I’m all ears, so I’d advise all our listeners to check this out. Apparently tommorrow at 4pm est (9pm UK time and smack bang in the middle of 1 VS. 100) something will happen once on this website, never to be repeated.

For those not a slave to the Microsoft trivia game, or who have nothing more important to do on a Friday night, check it out. I’m going to have to juggle it with the GamerDork game night so whatever it is, had better be the dog’s bollocks.

Tomorrow night, Sunday the 9th of August 2009 at I will be watching one of these two movies on R2 DVD.

It will be at…

8pm (British Summer Time)

2pm (Eastern Standard Time)

12pm (Pacific Standard Time)

Let me know by posting below which one you’d like it to be. I’ll form an Xbox Live party and invite everybody who wants to be in on it. Get there early so we can get ourselves set up in time. We’ll synch up our DVD’s and press play at the same moment. Any lag from different running speeds can be dealt with on the fly. Email me your Xbox Live name if I don’t already have you on my friends list. It’s a ghetto version of the Netflix party system but it’s all we get in England. I’m really looking forward to this.

Which is it to be?

As you may have heard on the latest show, we are proud to announce that Digital Cowboys is now affiliated with Platform Nation: a family of podcasts gathered around one website. There are some truly excellent shows involved…

The Fanboys Lunchcast

Video Game Jocks

Gamehounds

The Married Gamers

The Target Demographic

Ozbox Live

Some Other Castle

…and now us.

We’ll be meeting up with many representatives from these shows, in Seattle, when we cover PAX in a month’s time and will hopefully be collaborating in a group podcast or two. It’s great to be on a team of this caliber.