The Co-Opticrew has their gear together and are ready to take flight to PAX 2009! Above you can see the motley assortment of gadgets, books, stickers, and underwear in prep for the next five days.

Can you guess who is bringing what? Here's an excerpted master list of notable items:

• Book - Sharpe's Enemy
• Digital recorder
• Digital camera (x3)
• Moleskin notebook
• iPhone (x2)
• MacBook laptop
• Nintendo DS (x3)
• Sony PSP
• Well-used Dell Latitude laptop
• Alienware M17x laptop
• Digital SLR camera
• Google G2 phone
• Flask
• Blackberry World Edition

The Co-Optimus staff is descending upon Seattle, Washington to cover the biggest gaming show in North America, and we're going to bring you all the gaming coverage you can handle right here!  Even better - we're giving away an Xbox 360 console to celebrate!

Welcome to the Co-Op Revolution.

The PAX 2008 panel for "The Power of Gaming Communities"

Chuck Husemann (Twitter: @FalconGN) of GamingNexus tipped off the global gaming community that this year's Penny Arcade Expo would feature a special guest that we all know and love.

No stranger to the stage, our very own Nick Puleo will join Chuck, Kyle Orland (@KyleOrl) of Crispy Gamer, Nick Chester (@nickchester) of Destructoid, and Phil Kollar (@pkollar) of Current Gaming for a panel discussion called "WTF is the matter with video games?"

Also appearing will be Chris Paladino (@cpaladino) of Prometheum Marketing, who will moderate the discussion with Chuck. The full Penny Arcade Expo 2009 schedule went live today.

Editor's Note:  Not reflected on the media, but Kyle will be unable to attend and Phil is no longer with Current Gaming.

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As hurricane season nears for southeast Texas, the local news outlets here are scrambling to bring advanced coverage and hurricane-related articles regarding safety and accident prevention. It's great to see Houston communities coming together...you could even call it co-op. (See what I did there?)

This year, the Houston Chronicle featured a story that set it apart from the usual crime-ridden content, and managed to put a negative spin on what was a pretty decent concerted effort by Houstonians to get the city back up and running after hurricane Ike last year.

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Co-Optimus wouldn't be what it is without the intelligent and respectful operators that toil behind the scenes. Every successful community has its framework of passionate people. However, not often does a community -- with its diverse age groups and walks of life -- benefit from a crowd of supporters like ours.

We don't often have the opportunity to give front page facetime to forum posts except in the form of a news tip. Today, we're pleased to bring you the following collaborative (and ongoing) list of gameplay hints and helpful tips for playing an effective Sacred 2 co-op campaign...

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Co-Optimus is in the news today, though not necessarily making news.  Our very own Jim "txshurricane" McLaughlin is being featured on Xbox.com in the Gamer Spotlight on Xbox.com and the Xbox Dashboard.

In it Trixie360 grills Jim on the finer points of his life like superpowers, his worst foods, his online enemies, and whether he likes long walks on the beach.  I mean, who doesn 't? 

Congrats Jim!  You've done the site proud.  Way to pimp the voice of co-op!

Source: Link

We've heard from the staff, and we've heard from the developers, but now it's time to turn to our wonderful community of co-op enthusiasts as we continue to celebrate Co-Optimus' one-year anniversary.

As Co-Optimus celebrates its first birthday and the past year's staggering number of visitors, Ars Technica joins the celebration shortly after launching their own Ars 5.0 and announcement that traffic has doubled for the esteemed geeksite.

Ben Kuchera (click to follow on Twitter) - a longtime supporter of co-op games - quotes Co-Optimus founder Nick Puleo and plugs our favorite gaming site for all to see, advocating co-op gaming as "here to stay". Amen, Brother Ben!

Nicholas Puleo, who used to write for Evil Avatar, has a more direct approach for people who don't think they can find people to play with. "Point them towards Co-Optimus," he told me via Twitter when I mentioned people complaining of a lack of co-op partners. He started a website, the aforemenionted Co-Optimus, to focus on co-op and multiplayer gaming. The site features news about games that are friendly for co-op, as well as a great podcast. "We even have matching tools so you can find people who have and play similar co-op games as you," he stressed to Ars. "There's no excuse anymore."

I won't cheapen Ben's excellent article by quoting half of it, so click here or on the "Source" link to read the entire piece.

Congratulations all around! Ars Technica can have extra sprinkles on their piece of cake.

Source: Link

One year ago today we launched Co-Optimus.com with the hope of furthering cooperative gaming.  We had three main goals.

1. Make co-op gaming information easy to find
2. Let developers know what we want in co-op gaming
3. Build a great community around co-op gaming

I think for the most part we are well on our way to achieving these goals.  Since we launched we've been visited by over 600,000 unique co-op gamers from 182 different countries and regions.  We've grown our co-op games database to 500 games, and we have a community of almost 2000 strong!  I couldn't be more proud than I am today - and I thank everyone of our readers, users, and community members!

But we aren't resting on our laurels either.  Last night we launched a new feature in our games database that integrates co-op videos into the games pages.  It's a great way to see how the co-op experience works (example here), thanks to YouTube.  Soon we hope to take this one step further - but more on that later! 

I'd just like to thank the entire staff for their hard work.  Without them this site wouldn't be what it is today. 

Tonight the staff and the community will be playing co-op on the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC.  Interested in joining up?  Follow this link to our forums.

As Co-Optimus celebrates its one year anniversary today, we thought we’d expand upon our “2008 Co-Op Year in Review” and our tenth Co-Opticast to look at just how much co-op has grown recently and what people inside the games industry think about it.

We look back at developer perspectives on co-op, staff perspectives on co-op and soon your perspective on co-op!