So THAT'S their plan: Wii U to allow Gamecube controllers

Super Smash Bros. Melee really spawned a generation fighting game fanatics on the Gamecube. The Wii had backwards compatibility with the Gamecube and was frequently used to play the same game with the same controller, and Super Smash Bros. Brawl supported the Gamecube controller. No such controller exists on the Wii U. A Smash Bros. player, without a Gamecube controller, might feel lost Continue reading “So THAT'S their plan: Wii U to allow Gamecube controllers”

Solved: Where is the Start Menu FOLDER in Windows 8 (adding shortcuts, folders, etc…)

What I wanted to do was move a shortcut icon from my Desktop to my Steam folder deep in my Start Menu (under “Apps by name”). I had installed a game from Steam and it created the desktop icon, when I had intended to have it just install to the Start Menu. This one took a little digging. After using Windows 8 since the initial RTM nearly two years ago, I couldn’t believe I had never tried to do this before! Luckily, it isn’t very difficult, when you know where to look. Here’s the breakdown:

In the Windows 7 (and prior) Start Menu, if you wanted to add a shortcut to a folder, all you had to do was drag the icon there. Or, to make it a little easier, you could right click the folder, click Explore, and then have a larger Window to drag the icon in to. In older versions of Windows , it would have been simply located at a specific path (I will use my username NuAngel in the examples):
Vista/7: C:usersNuAngelStart Menu
XP: C:Documents and SettingsNuAngelStart Menu

Now, however, trying to navigate to that folder is impossible, and it doesn’t automatically redirect you to the new location. It turns out, your Start Menu is now under your AppData folder. Look here (of course, replacing NuAngel with your username):
C:UsersNuAngelAppDataRoamingMicrosoftWindowsStart MenuPrograms

That folder is your personal Start Menu. If what you’re looking for isn’t there, it might be under what would basically be considered the “All Users” Start Menu, which can be found here:
C:ProgramDataMicrosoftWindowsStart MenuPrograms

Once there, I could navigate to the “Steam” subfolder, cut and paste the shortcut from my desktop, and it appeared within my Start Menu!

Microsoft Surface Pro 3 specs, pricing, and details


Microsoft just wrapped up their Surface event, and they announced the Surface Pro 3. Me? I’m a geek. So here is the stuff that matters!

General Surface Pro 3 specs:

Amazon.com slaps video game bloggers in the face

According to Amazon.com’s new associates agreement, changes are coming, effective next week, May 15th 2014. The people affected the most? People just like me. If you blog about video games and want to earn a living through advertising, it’s time to look somewhere else. Amazon has slashed their already lowest Fixed Advertising Fee Rates on “Video Game Console Products” from 4% to a meager 1%. Clearly, video game bloggers with successful ad models were a threat to Amazon’s success. (That, to be abundantly clear, was sarcasm).

The painful thing to note is that nothing else has changed in their Fixed Advertising Fee Rates. Associates for all other products don’t see a fee-change, but it seems obvious to me that video game bloggers have been able to make a dent in Amazon.com’s income by successfully alerting people to bargains they want to take advantage of via Amazon.com and linking them to the site. With literally 25% of the incentive compared to before, how many bloggers are going to continue plastering Amazon links on their website? I certainly won’t actively work as hard to embed a couple of referral links into an article anymore, and I hope more bloggers are onboard with me. I currently have a side-bar ad for Amazon, which will be gone with the site’s next re-design.

If there are enough sales happening that Amazon.com wants to cut the amount of money they pay out, that means there must be a lot of successful referral linking. Would you rather pay out that 4%, or simply not have any of those sales? To drop an Amazon.com Associate’s share to 1%, while all other products remain 4% or higher is down right insulting, and I hope to see a new revenue-sharing-savvy online retailer step up to take their place, soon.