Many sites I used to frequent are defunct but I was surprised to find NVNEWS shutdown in 2015 when MikeC (Mike Chambers) died of a heart attack.
sudhian shut down a few years ago. i’d better check if SPCR, Evil Avatar, GamersWithJobs and Bjorn3D are still around.
It’s still around, visit it every day. Haven’t been to Evil Avatar in ages.
While us old folks are here, what other sites did you frequent? I mean Sharky-whatever (what was it?) and VoodooExtreme are long gone along with Billy “Wicked” Wilson…there used to be a ton of (PR-spewing) “review” sites for hardware.
Rage3D is still around.
VoodooExtreme, Avault, Gonegold (my forum home before it disappeared), Gamespot back when it was awesome…
Guru3D, HardForum and some other oldies I always visited are still chugging along.
Billy “Wicked” Wilson died in 2005.
FiringSquad, who I used to write for wayy back in the day, is dead as well.
Cancer? VE was my favorite website back then, followed by Avault. I still read Bill Harris’ blog today. He used to write for Gone Gold once a while.
As I recall, he passed away from liver failure after extended overuse of tylenol. People don’t realize just how dangerous acetaminophen can be, just how close the theraputic dose is to the damaging dose. Scary stuff.
I have to look it up and it’s the same as paracetamol, or, over here, the popular commercial brand is Panadol. Definitely did not know how this drug can lead to liver failure as I sometimes use it for headaches as well … something to watch out for. Poor Billy. He was a great writer and fun guy.
Yep. Acetaminophen is one of very few drugs that you can accidentally overdose on. Extra-strength tylenol is 500mb apiece and I generally took two of them, while physicians recommend never taking more than 650mg at a time. Since I don’t have chronic pain this didn’t cause any problems, but if you do that every day you can severely damage your liver.
Also its adverse affects are multiplied when combined with alcohol, and Billy did enjoy a drink once in a while.
I still hit up Evil Avatar, but I don’t like most of the community. However, they do often have a news tidbit or two I hadn’t seen elsewhere that appeals to me, so I keep going.
Avault I think is still around, and I have a little fondness for them since I wrote a few reviews for them after being selected from what I assume was a decent list of candidates that submitted writing samples. I didn’t get paid, I just got to “keep” the games I was given to review (which were shitty Wii-shovelware titles) but I took it seriously and enjoyed my hand at “professional” writing. At some point only a few months in they changed leadership and many of us “free” writers stopped getting stuff to review, though I still submitted things a few times just to see if they’d print them.
Wasn’t that started by that guy who won Carmack’s Ferrari from a Quake tournament?
HardOCP is still around and with active forums and not technically a hardware site, Bluesnews is till up. Ahh the days of .dotplans from iD and Epic.
They are one of the best communities out there. Plus Sean’s dad gaming writings are pure gold.
There is a reason that Qt3 and GWJ are gaming sites I still visit. Most have gone to garbage communities, looking at you Escapist.
But I pour one out for those lost. Crispy Gamer, Fidgit, No High Scores (@rhamorim I know you feel that). Others I’m no longer sure still exist. The first site I frequented was Game Revolution, are they still around?
Turns out yes, bought by Crave Media at some point, giving it a shiny new makeover, and booting all the old timers it seems. GR without Duke is missing the point.
Yep, Firingsquad was originally run by Thresh and his brother.
Never liked Avault. The owner was kind of a dick back in the day.
I sure do. I miss that team terribly. I still follow them on Twitter and whatnot, but most of them have moved on to other things.
But I will, every now and then, listen to the Jumping the Shark podcast again. I saved all episodes before they went away, and I treasure them. Good times.
CNET gamecenter was good back in the day.
Sharky Extreme still exists as a fairly dead forum http://www.sharkyforums.com/. I used to go there a lot for hardware advice. I remember that it was where I first found out about Outcast, which I bought the next day. I heard the guy sold the site right before the dot-com bust for millions and bought a Ferrari.
VE , Avault, Gonegold were also on my weekly/daily list. Evil Avatar and Firing Squad I didn’t get into for some reason. Gamespot was cool for a while, I remember Desslock had an ongoing column there, and it’s where I downloaded his insanely detailed Morrowind (?) guide.
Yep, Sharky sold at the exact right time then disappeared forever. He was a good guy, deserves it. Now he has a passion business custom modding Porsches.
What site did Redwood run? Shacknews?
No, he ran Redwood’s News, which merged with Stomped.com, which also shutdown in the early 2000s. Shuga Shack (later Shacknews) was run by sCary. I actually hosted it for a couple years. Shacknews is actually still around, I believe sCary sold it to his staff at one point.