CONTEST: Win 2000 Nintendo Points!!

Our old pals (read:me) at Splodinator.com are running an exciting contest for 2000 Nintendo Points. See video above for all the details.

What’s new at Splodinator

Ka-pow!

With the E3 rush over with, I’m free to hop back aboard the ShufflingDead pain train for the occasional update. To begin with, I wanted to catch up our wandering readers over here with the latest from Splodinator, the glorious gaming site I’ve been pounding away on for the last three months.

You might be interested in my comprehensive report of Nintendo’s upcoming system, the Wii U. If that tickles your raging fancy, then maybe all of our other E3 coverage will too.

Also worthy of your eyes: the ten most memorable moments of E3s past.

Over at Splodinator I’ve reviewed Donkey Kong Country Returns and GoldenEye 007 for Wii, as well as the movies Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within and The Wizard.

Perhaps most excitingly, the Definitive 50 SNES games video series barrels onward. Find out what took 10th place right here.

If you miss ShufflingDeadCast, the ShufflingDead.com podcast, then you’ll be happy to know we’ve rebooted the show as Radio Splode. Listen to it with your ears today!

Robots vs. Zombies: The Future of ShufflingDead

Ka-pow!

Some of you more loyal readers may be wondering “what the hell is going on with ShufflingDead? Why is the site updated 5 times a week instead of 20? Where is the Definitive 50???”

The answers to all those questions lay here, at Splodinator.com. That’s the name of the new site we’ve been developing over the past several weeks.

Put simply, Splodinator is a video game news and opinion website. It’s fun, chill, and non-crazy. We’re rebuilding the Definitive 50 there, and bringing over a few of the suitable articles from ShufflingDead history that fit the theme.

That’s not to say there isn’t new, highly awesome content at Splodinator already, either! Check out my reviews of Donkey Kong Country Returns and Yoshi’s Island DS. Early news stories include: Executive smackdown: Peter Vesterbacka vs. Satoru Iwata and Rumour: Ace Attorney Investigations 2 not getting western release.

Come on, subscribe to the RSS feed, fan the Facebook page! Join the Splodinator revolution!

So what brought this about? ShufflingDead is nearing its 10 year anniversary. That’s something I’m truly proud to say, as 10 years is a long time indeed for a website to survive. 10 years is also a long time to work on the same site, especially one so unfocused, and one you developed as a teenager. Frankly, I feel it’s time to (mostly) move on from this site. ShufflingDead will still shuffle a little, with certain features continuing, it’s just moving into semi-retirement.

What you can do for ShufflingDead

ShufflingDead is growing every day. We’re always piling on more content and more features, and our layout is superb. I’m extremely proud of what we’ve accomplished here, and I must say it would not have been possible without the support of our fans and contributors.

Having said that, I’d like to ask for a little more. No, I’m not hustling for more writers, I’ve done that plenty of times in the past, and these are much easier. The following five things can be done by every one of our fans, and doing each ensures the continued success of ShufflingDead. With your support, I believe ShufflingDead can grow in quality and popularity to the point that it one day supports itself (and its writers!).

1. Pass us around on link sharing sites – This may be surprising, but ShufflingDead’s main source of traffic isn’t links from other content sites, or even from Google, it’s from link sharing sites like Digg, Reddit, and Stumbleupon. We’ve got buttons below every post for those sites, as well as a few others, to make submitting your favourite ShufflingDead stories as easy as possible. If you’ve got your own favourite link sharing site (Fark, Slashdot, whatever) please use those. Above all the other items on this list, I’d like to sincerely urge our readers to share our content on sites like these. If you don’t have an account on any of those sites, sign up, it’s easy! We’ve had particular success with Stumbleupon, check them out.

2. Promote and follow us via social networking – This one is huge. You see those little Facebook and Twitter links under every post? They’re a great tool that lets you easily share your favourite ShufflingDead content with your friends and followers. Let them in on the enduring splendor of ShufflingDead. Oh yeah, and joining our Facebook fan page or following our Twitter account keeps you in on the ShufflingDead (uhh…) shuffle and makes sharing our stuff even easier.

3. Send us news tips – One of the toughest parts of running this site is finding a consistent stream of wacky stories to make fun of. Not only would more news tips be a great help to myself and the other writers here at ShufflingDead, but it would also benefit you, the readers, by ensuring we are covering exactly the stories you want to hear about. We’ve got a contact page to help you out with this. The link sits right along the top navigation bar of the site.

4. Don’t ad block us – The cold reality of the internet is that it’s tough to make money out here, especially doing anything legitimate. We try to run relevant, non-hideous ads here at ShufflingDead, and I’d like to ask that our readers not block those ads. Even if you would never click one of them, viewing our ads still makes us a little money! That’s cash that goes towards improving the site.

5. Comment! – The liveliest websites are also the most fun. Don’t be afraid to make use of the comment section that sits under every page here at ShufflingDead. Getting engaged with our other commenters will make your experience more fun, and encourage yet more to join.

sulci’s Photoblog: Newbs as Commander William T. Riker

sulci here. Welcome to my new photoblog at ShufflingDead. Photography is my passion, but being a part of team ShufflingDead and an ardent MMOer means I’m also on the pulse of geek culture. I’m going to use this space to post the photos I take which happen to intersect these two worlds.

You can check out much more of my photography work on my Flickr page.

First up, ShufflingDead editor-in-chief Newbs in his cosplay attempt at Commander William T. Riker of Star Trek: The Next Generation fame. We didn’t have much in the way of props (or even a decent costume) so much of what you see in these photos is the result of my Photoshop skills. The beard, however, is all real.