Rick Astley
Latest
YouTubers have been rickrolled over a billion times
Rick Astley's 'Never Gonna Give You Up' video finally cracked 1 billion YouTube views, marking a milestone for rickrolls.
Prank your friends with a Camera RickRoll
Rickrolling is almost as old as the world wide web itself, but filling someone's iOS Camera Roll with photos of the beloved Rick Astley is something I've never seen done before. This new take on the rickroll requires you to gain access to your friend's device, which might be a bit tricky, but the eventual payoff will definitely be worth it. [Photo via Brownpau]
Siri's inexplicable rickroll
TUAW received an email this afternoon from Brett M. who noted that under iOS 7, the query "What is today going to be like?" ends up displaying the WIkipedia page for "Never Gonna Give You Up". In case you missed it, that's a 1987 pop song by British singer Rick Astley that was used for rickrolling other people... As Brett mentioned, "If my query had a sly connection to one of the lyrics, I could see this, or if my query was so outrageous that I deserved to be rickrolled. But this? Very strange." If any of our readers can figure out the link between the query and the oddball response, please let us know. By the way, this does not work when asking Siri the same question under iOS 6 -- in that case, the answer is always today's weather. A TUAW hat tip to Brett M.
Rock Band Weekly: Poison, Mr. Big, Heart, Rick Astley
Tuesday is Valentine's Day, and in addition to being a day full of expectations and guilt, it's now a day where you can be rick-rolled by a damn video game in the sanctity of your own home. The "Gold Star My Heart" Pack drops Tuesday in North America and Wednesday for European PS3 users, and includes four love-centric tracks to get you into (or very quickly out of) the mood.Peep the full track list after the break, and see if you're the kind of person who'd rather be playing Rock Band 3 on Valentine's Day. (Please invite us.)
The Perfect Ten: The evolution of /dance
I recall when I was a wee... teenager and C+C Music Factory would blast through our Walkmans to demand that everybody (1) dance and (2) dance now. It was commanding, enthralling and extremely dorky, but the dance could not be denied. Dancing is in the soles of our souls as humans; we simply must boogie to a good beat. I'm not quite sure when or where dancing in MMOs became all the craze, but these days it seems as though every game (except the dour ones with bears, bears, bears) prides itself on a good set of /dance emotes. For some players, it's the perfect way to unwind after a long raid or chew up a bit of time while one waits for SgtCuddlyMonkey to return from his refreshing bio break. For others, it's a legitimate career path with a long and distinguished history of gyrating on top of mailboxes while annoyed postal recipients long for a day when a pelvis will not be gesturing at eye level. So this week, let's loosen up, let our hair down, and samba across the ballroom floor as we count down (up?) 10 incredible MMO dances.
Breakfast Topic: Never Gonna
World of Warcraft does have a decent variety of things to do. Arenas, Battlegrounds, Soloing, Professions, 5-mans, raids, the list goes on. Some may focus singlemindedly on one or two aspects of the game, while others dabble a bit in most or even all of them. All this variety also ends up meaning that some people just won't like certain aspects of the game, and will generally shy away from doing them. This can also be true of classes, of talent trees, of playstyles, and all the rest. Of course, sometimes we swear we'll never do something in game, then do it anyway.
Astley DS-10 just wants to tell you how it's feeling
The above video proves the old saying -- where there's a will, there's a Rickroll. With the release of Korg's DS-10 synthesizer software in Japan, naturally, someone has composed a track recreating Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up," the meme that launched a thousand prank Youtube links. Half of the hilarity is missing with the singer's sunglasses and dance moves absent, just as any rendition of Europe's "Final Countdown" suffers without Gob, but that's what homebrew application RickRollDS is for!%Gallery-27318%[Via NeoGAF]
Cinemassively: Kake Buk Island, Episode 1
(Please note that this machinima contains some harsh language. In addition, machinima.com is down at this moment, but you can find a higher quality stream of the video there.)In November, we spoke of a hybrid machinima movement that involved blending one engine with multiple tools in order to create a finished product. Baron Soosdon has been an early adopter of this, as he normally blends World of Warcraft with Unreal Tournament, as well as WoW Model and Map Viewers.Baron's latest project, Kake Buk Island: Episode 1 - "You Damn Beach" is a comedy adventure that is part action, part thriller, and part ... Rick Astley? The movie is about an orc that wakes up on an island and encounters two girls whose pig he must rescue from a sinister villain. While the voice acting is pretty horrible, the visual quality of the two mediums is excellent. We look forward to the sequel!If you have machinima or movie suggestions from any MMO, please send them to machinima AT massively DOT com, along with any information you might have about them.
This homebrew release is never going to let you down
Months after we'd thought this "rickroll" meme had died from overuse -- a recent survey showed that an estimated 18 million American adults have been rickrolled -- homebrew programmer Madcat1990 has brought it back, porting the popular prank to the DS.We downloaded the application and loaded it up on our DS just to see if it really worked, and, wouldn't you know it, we rickrolled ourselves. How hilarious would it be if someone tried to run a pirated game on their DS, only to find themselves greeted with Rick Astley's sensuous, soulful voice? Expect to see flashcart manufacturers put out firmware updates with rickroll protection and anti-measures soon.
World of Rick Roll
I don't know what it is about the WoW community, but every link I see I'm forced to double check its authenticity just so I don't get Rick Rolled. What is this cultural phenomenon of Rick Rolling you ask? No, it's not some sort of new drug, it's just a YouTube video of Rick Astley singing "Never gonna give you up." When you watch the video for the hundredth time it gets a tad annoying. And you do have to watch the whole video, because let's face it, if you don't the tune is just going to sit in your head for the rest of the day. Then you'll be dreaming of Rick Astley, and that's...well... just unsettling.Often times in the official forums people will post a link to some WoWWiki article or something, and instead of the link actually going where it is advertized to go, it'll go to the Rick Roll video instead.I personally am rather tired of always having to check the link to see if the video ends in uuiU, which seems to be the most common YouTube video used to Rick Roll people. There are some browser addons out there that'll stop you from being Rick Rolled, if you're so inclined to install them. But as always, be sure that you're getting these addons from a reputable source.Have you been Rick Rolled lately? Share your tales of horror.
Today's most innovative Rick Roll: Astley's hit on Audiosurf
At long last, someone has found a way to update the "RIck Roll" phenomenon in such a way that we could post about it on Joystiq. Of course, we could have tricked you with a headline like "Check out the best Audiosurf play evar!," but that'd just be cruel. Instead, we'll give you the tools for successfully Ricksurfing your friends and enemies. Proceed with caution after the break.[Thanks, Andrew!]
