PAX Is Awesome #543: If You’re Good at Rock Band, You Might Open the Omegathon

Jerry Holkins (the writer of Penny Arcade, more commonly known as Tycho Brahe) shared a heartwarming story in his newspost today.  A story of metal, of skill, and chance encounters of the kind that can only happen at PAX itself.

And although it was not long enough to be an epic, it was epic all the same.  We’ll truncate it even further, and then get you to the videos.

Last year at the annual Child’s Play charity auction, Privateer Press, the makers of Warmachine won the right to commission a song, lyrics by Tycho, music by Harmonix, the makers of Rock Band.  The song would debut at PAX, but in the run up to the show, no one in the Penny Arcade offices could find the time to play some Rockband and actually practice it.  This was kind of a problem.

But, as these things often seem to go, Robert Khoo, PA business manager, had it covered.  As Tycho tells it:

What I didn’t know was that over the course of the show Robert had been keeping an eye on the Freeplay Stages in an effort to cobble together a crack team that could deliver this song note for note after a single runthrough. Understand that I had not seen Robert at all until twenty minutes before I was supposed to go on, and when I did see him, he brought me three young men, told me there was nothing they could not accomplish in within the confines of the rhythm genre, and then immediately left the room through a door which only a few moments prior had not existed.

To the three young men he had found, Bradley, Rylie, and Chris: you lived the dream of many a PAX attendee. You lived it hardcore.

There is, fortunately, video evidence of the deed.  The first one embedded below is from the official Privateer Press Youtube feed, but if you’d like a closer look at the band, less “filmmaker commentary” and less unexpected pans away, check out the second.  Sound quality is unfortunately a toss up between the two.

According to the terms of the original auction,  the Warmachine track will be downloadable content for your home Rock Band console, with all proceeds going to Child’s Play.

…Is it time to start the countdown to PAX East 2011 yet?

(via Penny Arcade.)