GatorAIDS

2011 was a pretty big year for GatorAIDS. First and foremost the site was forced to re-open on June 1 after I was laid off from my job with Miniclip SA. Not long thereafter we were able to bloom into a community that I am pleased to say is still more alive than ever today in this, the final year of the world as we know it. Immediately following the layoff GatorAIDS was needlessly attacked by a handful of retards from Miniclip’s community which caused us to become ineligible to use Google AdSense as well as having false DMCA violation reports to be filed to Jelsoft, who provides our forum software, resulting in our site globally being down for a few days pending an explanation of the misunderstanding.

"From Miniclip with love."

And through all of this we are still alive today as a testament to just how resilient a group of old friends can be when banded together. We came forward and put on a live performance (CFMM: In 3D). We released a book (Nintendon’t). We were featured on industry-leading gaming blogs (Bitmob). I would like to extend a personal “fuck you” to each and every person who attempted to put us down and assume that we would stay there like beaten dogs. We are more than that, and despite adverse launch conditions we laughed with one another and produced dozens of memorable articles to share with the world. We are GatorAIDS, and we are here to stay.

We’re looking forward to 2012 with open minds and eager hearts. We’ve had six months to get our things together and we’re ready to go balls-out this year. In the meantime, here’s the best of what we produced in 2011. If you’re new to GatorAIDS or looking to share our site with your friends & family this update is the place to start!

5 Things Kinect Can’t Do (That Project Natal Said It Could) (by Dracophile): In 2009 Microsoft brought to E3 a video preview of their famed “Project Natal”, a motion-sensing, voice-activated, thought-reading device that would revolutionize gaming as we know it. In 2010 this device was unleashed into the world as “Kinect”, and one year later this article was written to compare the original trailer to what the Kinect is actually capable of doing. The results, unsurprisingly, are staggering. This article was featured on the popular gaming journalism site Bitmob where it was crowned the #1 most read article of August 2011.

The 7 Freakiest Pokemon Red/Blue/Yellow Glitches (by Dracophile): In our most-shared article on Reddit Dracophile revisits the original generation of Pokemon games in a way most people never even knew existed in such depth: horrible, horrible, terrifying glitches. The mystery of MissingNo is entirely passe and played out, but how would you react to glitches capable of infecting and propagating inside of your save file? What about a glitch that periodically shifts the destination parameters of every door in the entire game? How about a glitch that can exist and not exist at the same time? The dark side of Pokemon Red/Blue is like a Hellraiser puzzle cube of doom, and we blow it wide open.

BattleBots Update: RoboGames 2011 (by Dracophile): BattleBots is a legendary relic of television history, a motorsport unlike anything the world has seen and was something that could have only existed during the Y2K boom of technological armageddon. That’s why when the series had its sixth season announced in 2010 GatorAIDS excitedly adopted the defunct “BattleBots Update” column from RFSHQ.com. When that series didn’t make it to TV, though, the column was revived for a special one-time Science Channel event called Killer Robots documenting the 2011 RoboGames tournament. This article made its way into the hands of the event organizers who responded with absolute delight and secured it a spot in our “best of” list.

Team Impact: 2% Parlor Tricks, 98% Church Sermon (by Roastmaster): What’s the best way to get someone’s attention? Break something. What’s the best way to get someone to unknowingly listen to a sermon about Our Savior Jesus Christ? Break something while quoting the Old Testament. Team Impact is a performance group that utilizes the ages-old “bait and switch” method of duping people into attending a church sermon and they do so in the most testosterone-laden and flamboyantly pseudo-homosexual way possible. Team Impact visited Roastmaster’s hometown so he did the only rational thing an Internet comedian does when faced with an awkward evening: dive in head first.

The 7 Most Retarded Collectible Coins Ever (by Dracophile): Coins. They’re money, they’re commemoratives. Most countries mint currency depicting landmarks or iconography concurrent with their cultural and domestic history, but the United States is one of the few who have a industry based solely around creating the tackiest and most predatory “commemorative collectible coins” possible and hawking them to senile old people. Remember the 9/11 pop-up coin? That and six other hate crimes are featured in this article.

I Fucking Love TrueSwords.com (by Roastmaster): When GatorAIDS was forced to start running ads from AdBrite after we were banned from Google AdSense we immediately became inundated with banner ads for a “TRUESWORDS.COM” offering “REAL METAL SWORDS” and “ANIME SWORDS”. One month into using AdBrite we had seen more TrueSwords ads than everything else combined and multiplied by five. Roastmaster finally broke and paid TrueSwords a visit to see what great products they had for sale and wrote about his findings.

Review: Sushi-Go-Round (Nintendo DS) (by Dracophile): This article was created solely as underhanded and passive-aggressive slander against a company that Dracophile formerly worked for until he was unceremoniously laid off. Miniclip produced an online game called Sushi-Go-Round and decided to port said game to the Nintendo DS. The end result was an unplayable mess of crap that spawned the creation of an article that, all things considered, did not turn out all that bad considering its inspiration.

The 6 Most Valuable Games Ever (Quantified by NBA Live 1995) (by Dracophile): The idea behind this article came from humble beginnings: what is the most valuable video game of all time? Once this was established the opposite then came into effect regarding what the most worthless game of all time is, and with some mathematical theory this game was discovered to be none other than NBA Live 1995. This article takes a look at the rarest games in the world and offers cool trivia regarding how many copies you’d need of a forgotten basketball game to “trade up” to it.

As a bonus, since they never received formal announcements of their own, here’s our best work from both 2010 and 2009, years that we were in operation but not running at full capacity.

128 Ways to Ensure You Will Never Get Laid (by Dracophile): For an article that sounds like a bulleted list of every X-Files episode this article is instead a hilarious look at some advice from the cat lovers’ publication 128 Ways to Say “I Love You” to Your Cat. From implied bestiality to child neglect this book has it all, plus a parting message meant to troll anybody who dares make fun of the book.

What Your Fursona REALLY Says About You (byRoastmaster): The first step of becoming a furry is choosing a spirit animal that represents who you are. This spirit animal will then be subjected to various fetishes and rape scenarios of your choosing, according to Roastmaster. Unknown to most furries the animal they “choose” actually speaks more about them than they may realize. Roastmaster whacks you with some pseudo-science and firsthand observations of the furry fandom in this hit article.

Nickellennium Retrospective: Dracophile’s Book of the Future (by Dracophile): On January 1st, 2000 Nickelodeon aired a special documentary titled Nickellennium, a six hour long show featuring interviews with inventors and children talking about their dreams, hopes, and ideas for the future. Nickelodeon released a slew of Nickellennium-brand content including a time-capsule book. Dracophile obtained a copy of this book, filled it out, and opens it up in this installment to 10 Years After.

The Problem with Pokemon (by Dracophile): It’s a known fact that Big Church has always hated Pokemon. They hate whatever is currently popular because it has a better ability to snag up young little Johnny Somebody and detract them from the ways of God by using flashing lights and dragons and magic, which in the eyes of Jesus is of course witchcraft, witchcraft, and witchcraft. This installment of 10 Years After takes a look at an old religious broadcast titled In Focus, the episode “The Problem with Pokemon”.

GMO2: Who’s Ready For Street Date Violations? (by Dracophile, FpS Ref1ex): Out of the entire 2010 season of GMO2 we decided to choose one episode that we felt was the best out of everything we’ve done. We took a look at things such as content, audience reached, sharing, and feedback… and looked no further than our prerelease episode of Monster Jam: Path of Destruction. It was the perfect storm of material: we had a game not yet released and we made inappropriate jokes about dead children that caused rednecks to send us violent threats.

Stupifyingly Bad Album Covers (by Dracophile): You might not realize it, but there’s a ton of music out there that isn’t in the mainstream media (we hope the sarcasm was applied liberally to that statement). Most of this indie music is experimental, niche, or forgettable, but what isn’t are the absolutely atrocious album art (and we use “art” loosely here) that accompanies each record. Some of these musical acts you may never have heard of before, or in the case of Black Sabbath maybe you have.

DragonPlay: Vaporware Lifetime Achievement Award (by Dracophile): DragonPlay, as it was announced by its dev team years before this article was written, was meant to be a kids’ MMO game similar to the wildly popular Club Penguin. By “similar to” we of course mean “direct ripoff of”. Two years after the article’s re-publication on GatorAIDS the DragonPlay dev team hunted us down and trolled the forums, earning this old article a posthumous inclusion in the Greatest Hits vault.

10 Years After: Pokemon The First Movie (by Dracophile): What happens when the fondest memories of your life age into the double digits? Well, for starters you go back and revisit them as best as you can because immediately afterward you start to experience the first feelings of what it’s like to get old. Dracophile recounts his days in middle school as a Pokemaniac in this memorable installment to 10 Years After.

Most Disorganized Website of 2009: Lockerz (by Dracophile): What do you get when you mix equal parts trendy and Web 2.0 with Chuck E. Cheese’s and referral spam? You get Lockerz, a website that encouraged users to invite friends to be a part of their “elite” secret community where you can earn points to redeem for prizes. The problem? They never once had their shit together and the only “prize” ever in stock was a copy of a crappy Star Wars game. For the Wii.

Thank you for being a part of GatorAIDS and for helping shape us into the ever-growing community we are today. Every linkback, every Facebook share, every Tweet, every forum post, each and every one of them is truly appreciated. We’re here doing what we do for each and every one of you. Thank you for supporting us in 2011 when we needed it most. We aim to become an even more active, stable, and entertaining website in 2012. The best part is even if we fail it doesn’t matter because the world’s going to blow up anyways.

We hope to see you there, and that you’ll bring your friends too!

- Dracophile

(If you’ve enjoyed everything we’ve done this year be a good sport and post this article to your Facebook wall or Twitter profile. Or Tumblr if you’re a hipster fag. Likewise, if you came here because of said social media links visit the GatorAIDS forums so we can persuade you to stay with us forever.)