The first day of South Africa’s largest videogame, technology and geek culture expo, rAge 2009, officially began at exactly 10:00 AM on Friday morning on the 2nd of October at the Coca Cola Dome in Northgate, Johannesburg, opening the floodgates for a sea of gamers to gawk at all of the latest games, peripherals and PC hardware.

Unofficially, for a different breed of gamers, rAge 2009 began much earlier as a horde of PC enthusiasts carted their gaming rigs of all shapes and sizes in any way they could, waiting in an enormous queue and itching to get inside the significant LAN facilities to hookup their machines and challenge one another in the virtual battlefield… or copy, collect and swap a considerable amount of anime.

Once inside the Coca Cola Dome, however, gamers were greeted with a nebula of lights and flashing screens displaying all manner of hot and upcoming titles, from Brutal Legend and The Saboteur, to Assassin’s Creed II and Splinter Cell Conviction, as well as Tekken 6, Forza 3, Guitar Hero 5 and, perhaps the crown jewel of the show, Uncharted 2.

While the halls of rAge 2009 were a tad empty on the first day of the show, many more gamers and curiosity seekers have shown up on Day 2 in order to take in the alluring sights and siren sounds of the 7th iteration of the event.

Check El33tonline later to check out our wrap-up of rAge 2009 Day 2.