Goodbye TUAW and Joystiq

I regret to inform you that two of my favorite news sites, TUAW (The Unofficial Apple Weblog) and Joystiq, are shutting down. Thanks for nothing, AOL.

But you know what they say: change is good. Having mentioned that, I’m glad to see at least Joystiq live on in some sort of way at engadget.com/gaming.

I still had so many TUAW and Joystiq posts to show you. I’ve been stacking them in my bookmarks but never got around to link them here and write down some of my thoughts along with them. Now, with both sites vanishing, I don’t know how long their old posts will stay up. I feel like suddenly time is running out. That’s why I will dump all links to those posts I still wanted to direct your attention to here and maybe write something about them later.

It’s an odd thought that anything on the internet could vanish at all. We take it for granted that sites will exist forever and ever, but all it takes is a corporation to decide to shut down a website or a server. Hopefully though, we will always have archive.org and its WayBackMachine. In fact, I just tried it and both the TUAW and Joystiq websites are well preserved. Good job!

Anyway, check out all these interesting tidbits. I tried to group them more or less topically and list them more or less chronologically.

TUAW

Why 9:41 AM is always the time displayed on iPhones and iPads
Why is time on Apple Watch promotional ads set to 10:09?

LaCie XtremKey USB 3.0: the flash drive you want for the zombie apocalypse

iPhone 5s fingerprint sensor gets completely misunderstood

Go, You Chicken Fat, Go!: The story of the Youth Fitness Song

Legendary ad man Lee Clow talks about Steve Jobs’ love of branding and more
Steve Jobs sobbed in the wake of Antennagate
Video: Every Steve Jobs “boom” in under four minutes
Funny moments with Steve Jobs

Jony Ive talks about the link between design and engineering, the need for failure, and more

This Apple 3.0 poster is a must-have for every Apple fan

Apps teachers use to tame the classroom and teach their students
Educational bloggers chime in with their favorite back-to-school apps
Best educational apps for middle schoolers
Best educational apps for high school students

How to make OS X Mavericks re-run the Setup Assistant

Joystiq

Speedrunners make Super Mario World reprogram itself to play Pong, Snake

Sonic the Hedgehog box art illustrator Greg Martin passes away

Travel to the Nebula of NES Games in this handy chart

‘Project Unity’ is 15 fully-functional consoles in one giant box
RetroN 5 and the uncomfortable tension between old and new
All-in-one retrogaming console RetroN 5 now available for pre-order
RetroN 5 retro console delayed to December 10
RetroArch authors: RetroN 5’s emulators, code violate licenses

Study: Dance games help bladder control, urinary incontinence

PBS’ Game/Show asks, ‘What is a Gamer?’
Co-Opinion: How sporty are eSports?
Capcom officially uploads I Am Street Fighter documentary to YouTube
Editor’s Note: We Are Always Fighting
StarCraft 2 and the quest for the highest APM

What happened to all of the women coders in 1984
Nightline investigates GamerGate, online harassment

Advertisement

Touch My Katamari is just the most random ever

If you never played a Katamari game before, you will find these videos strange, but strangely entertaining.
If you played any Katamari game before, then you will still find these videos strange.

I don’t own a PS Vita, so I can’t vouch for how good or how bad this game is, but see for yourself:

塊魂　ノ・ビ～タ　オープニング (Kamatari Damacy Vita Opening)

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Touch My Katamari (Goro the Slacker, Ep 1)

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Touch My Katamari (Prologue)

As always, thank you joystiq.com for letting me find all these precious videos,… I guess.

A random collection of some weird gaming-related stuff

Well, this is odd: Microsoft put games in your code so you can game while you code games

On the other hand, here’s a cute video (found via this joystiq post):

Pac-Man: The Musical

David Hasselhof lays an egg in an ad for Burnout Crash.. wait, what? (via yet another joystiq post)

David Hasselhoff in a Chicken Suit
..and apparantly, it goes on: Hasselhoff as a cheerleader | as some kind of crossover between Son Goku and Ryu

Can it get any weirder? Yes it can: www.serioussam.com/joinmental

Team Fortress 2: "Meet the…"-Videos

Ever since my friend FeazeR pushed me to get recommended Portal to me by purchasing The Orange Box through Steam (back in 2008), I have been playing Team Fortress 2 here and then (let me check… whoa! 41 hours still!). And since it became free to play last year, you all should be playing it RIGHT NOW. Not because it’s free, but because it’s a great game! There’s a lot of free games out there, but only very few are actually good. I’ve seen people spend more time and money for other games, and I’m like: ?!*”ç%!

The best thing about it is not even the game itself, but the marketing. I’m talking about Valves videos “Meet the Spy“, “Meet the Heavy“, “Meet the Sniper“, “Meet the Engineer“, “Meet the Demoman“, “Meet the Soldier“, “Meet the Scout” and their latest and greatest addition “Meet the Medic“. They’re all available to watch on Valves Team Fortress 2 website. You should definitely check them out.

All we have to do now is wait for the “Meet the Pyro” video as some of you may have already realized jumping out of their seats waving their index finger wanting to correct me in an orderly geeky nerdy fashion that I am obviously missing not just that one last video, but also the fact that there are even more videos not just by Valve but also by the community related to Team Fortress 2. Thank you, I got it. You can sit down now.

Because I think “Meet the Medic” is like I said the latest and greatest of them all (and because most of the time I play as Medic, who by the way isn’t even licensed to practice medicine, did you know?), I’ve embedded it for you below. Make sure to make it fullscreen and a decent volume and enjoy!

Team Fortress 2: Meet the Medic

StarCraft II

So, I’ve been playing StarCraft ever since my friend Yves introduced me to it sometime in 2000 or 2001. We both had the same iBook model (12-inch, the first white one, 500 MHz G3), and StarCraft had this glorious feature called “Spawning” where you could install (spawn) it on as many computers as you wanted using the same serial number, and then play a LAN game together. The spawned installations didn’t require a CD to start, but were limited to play only multiplayer games hosted by the “mother installation” with the same serial number. Good enough for us!

I didn’t realize how popular this game had already become, not to mention how popular it will remain! And I didn’t think I would learn to love it just as much as other people do, because I knew I wasn’t good with RTS games, but boy was I wrong!

Then, in 2007, StarCraft II was announced. And it seemed to take forever for Blizzard to release it. But hey, they could take as long as they pleased, because no matter the development time and money of StarCraft II, it would be selling like cold refreshing lemonade on a hot summers day, once released.

Joystiq.com has reported on leaked details and progress along the way, starting with the announcement in 2007 and ending (well, never really ending, but you can’t report on details and progress once the game is out, can you?) in 2010. I would have linked to all these posts during those three years, but never got around to doing so. Anyway, thanks Joystiq.com!

So, did I buy it when it came out? You bet I did. And it was good (compared to another game that had been in development for over 12 years and isn’t nearly as good, I just bought that one to tell my kids one day: “Yes, I owned it”, and to support the folks who finally got it done and made it become reality).

I bought it, but… (and I deserve many slaps in the face for this) only played about 5 rounds of it. And only the first single player mission. Yeah.

Many circumstances and lack of motivation and nostalgia for the original prevented me from getting into StarCraft II. But hey, maybe now during my vacation I can finally find some time for it. Anyway, if you are looking for a great game in this slow-release-month, go get it! You don’t even have to leave your chair, it’s available as digital download.

LAN-Party: CAD 19

This weekend, there will be no This Week in Awesome post, because I am at the CTRL-ALT-DELETE LAN-Party until Sunday afternoon.

I have not been to a LAN-Party in ages. It feels so good to revive the good old non-stop gaming weekends, where you can forget about all your worries and just have fun for 48 hours straight (minus the sleep of course). I got here 4 hours ago and yes, I intend to sleep about 6 hours every night/morning, because I have a to drive back home again on Sunday, and an accident caused by falling asleep behind the wheel is the last thing I need.

If you like to read some of my old posts about my LAN-Party travels in German, feel free to scroll back many pages. I’m not going to link to them, because I just realized that all the posted photos are missing.

This photo was taken not at the current CAD, nor at any previous CAD, but I think is good representation of my peak when I visited many LAN-Parties and took about every electronic gaming thing I had with me.

That’s all for now. Have a nice weekend! More info on the last installement of the CAD, this LAN-Party series which has given us such incredible fun and community over the years, can be found at www.ctrl-alt-delete.info

Last Week in Awesome: Left 4 Dead: The Sacrifice

I hinted at it in last weeks post already, and now I will actually bore tell you about it: The new campaign “The Sacrifice” available for Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2. And because it’s something that happened the week before, I present to you the first ever Last Week in Awesome post.

For those of you who don’t know what L4D is: this post will not interest you! Or maybe it will. Get the game on Steam for Mac or PC and start playing already.

Yes, you read correctly, L4D2 is now available on the Mac. All you need is a decent Mac, Steam installed and a few dollars (or €uros). Free if you already own the PC version. And that’s probably the most awesome thing about it. Because I have already been playing L4D2 on my bootcamp partition, at no extra cost (minus the wait time until the download was complete) I was able to start kicking zombie ass right away. Thank you, Valve! You’re awesome.

The Sacrifice joins the official campaigns in L4D and L4D2 at no extra cost as well (except if you’re playing it on XBOX 360, but hey, seriously, first person shooters are built for mouse and keyboard. Joypad? No thank you. The only first person shooter I accept and appreciate on a console is Halo, and that’s because it’s epic. The scenery, the music, the story, simply epic! Written for the big screen! Though it was first announced for the Mac… I’m getting off topic. Back to the main story.)

All I’m saying is that L4D and it’s latest add-on The Sacrifice are simply awesome (and addicting). I suggest you grab it if you haven’t already done so. I’m not gonna go into detail here, because if you read this far, you either love by my blind glorification or have already played The Sacrifice so many times, that you’ve already unlocked all 5 new achievements.

Oh, I almost forgot! You must read the four-part comic leading up the The Sacrifice, it’s a piece of art. Check it out at l4d.com/comic or get it on your iPhone (explained here how to get it). Ah yes and follow their blog. And watch the trailer shown below (I hope you wake up from nightmares in the middle of the night!)

L4D The Sacrifice Trailer