The ''Adrenaline Vault'', often shortened to ''AVault'', was an American

video game Video games, also known as computer games, are electronic games that involves interaction with a user interface or input device such as a joystick, controller, keyboard, or motion sensing device to generate visual feedback. This fee ...

website based in

Irving, Texas Irving is a city in the U.S. state of Texas. Located in Dallas County, it is also an inner ring suburb of Dallas. The city of Irving is part of the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex. According to a 2019 estimate from the United States Census Bureau, ...

, founded in 1995 and active until 2013. The site covered PC and

console gaming A video game console is an electronic device that outputs a video signal or image to display a video game that can be played with a game controller. These may be home consoles, which are generally placed in a permanent location connected to a t ...

. At various points in its lifecycle, its content included news, game and hardware reviews, previews, feature articles, hints and cheats, editorials, demo downloads, developer articles, giveaways, blogs, and forums.

History

The ''Adrenaline Vault'' was founded by Angel Munoz, who was working at the time as president of a Dallas investment banking and consulting firm. Munoz launched the ''Adrenaline Vault'' in Irving, Texas in 1995 with partner Jeff Fox; he was motivated to start an online gaming website because he was a fan of video gaming and felt that print video gaming media was compromising truthfulness to sell out to video game companies. He staffed the ''Adrenaline Vault'' with gaming hobbyists committed to honesty and independence. Publicity initially spread by word of mouth and by 2000 the ''Adrenaline Vault'' was one of the most visited gaming websites. Over time, its parent company NewWorld.com shifted focus to

esports Esports, short for electronic sports, is a form of competition using video games. Esports often takes the form of organized, multiplayer video game competitions, particularly between professional players, individually or as teams. Although orga ...

, converted the website to a blog and its popularity waned. Munoz resigned as CEO of the ''Adrenaline Vault'' in 2011 and the board of directors announced their intention to sell off the company's assets. In 2013, the ''Adrenaline Vault'' closed permanently after it was targeted by a

DDoS In computing, a denial-of-service attack (DoS attack) is a cyber-attack in which the perpetrator seeks to make a machine or network resource unavailable to its intended users by temporarily or indefinitely disrupting services of a host A ...

attack that "resulted in the complete loss of the website and its databases." Notable staff members included publisher Brian Clair, who would go on to work as a producer on ''

Sins of a Solar Empire ''Sins of a Solar Empire'' is a 2008 science fiction real-time strategy video game developed by Ironclad Games and published by Stardock Entertainment for Microsoft Windows operating systems. It is a real-time strategy (RTS) game that incorporates ...

'' and director of publishing at

Stardock Stardock Corporation is a software development company founded in 1991 and incorporated in 1993 as Stardock Systems. Stardock initially developed for the OS/2 platform, but was forced to switch to Microsoft Windows due to the collapse of the OS/ ...

, editor

Emil Pagliarulo Emil Pagliarulo is an American video game designer. Career Emil started his career writing for the website ''Adrenaline Vault''. He has been working for Bethesda Softworks since 2002. He previously worked for Looking Glass Studios and Ion Sto ...

, future video game designer at Bethesda, and staff writer Pete Hines, future Senior Vice President at Bethesda.

Page-jacking incident

In 1999, the ''Adrenaline Vault'' discovered they were victims of a page hijacking attack that redirected ''Adrenaline Vault'' search results to a pornographic website. The attack involved cloning popular websites, including

meta tag Meta elements are tags used in HTML and XHTML documents to provide structured metadata about a Web page. They are part of a web page's head section. Multiple Meta elements with different attributes can be used on the same page. Meta elements can ...

s; the cloned pages showed up on

AltaVista AltaVista was a Web search engine established in 1995. It became one of the most-used early search engines, but lost ground to Google and was purchased by Yahoo! in 2003, which retained the brand, but based all AltaVista searches on its own sear ...

web searches and automatically redirected visitors to the pornographic site. The

Federal Trade Commission The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is an independent agency of the United States government whose principal mission is the enforcement of civil (non-criminal) antitrust law and the promotion of consumer protection. The FTC shares jurisdiction ov ...

determined that the attacks were perpetrated by a Portuguese hacker and an Australian pornographic website, and obtained an injunction to stop the scam.

Reception

The ''Adrenaline Vault'' established itself as a popular and respected gaming website, with at least 3 million unique visitors per month in 1999 and an average of between 3 and 4 million visitors per month in 2000. By 2002, it was one of the largest and most comprehensive gaming websites, along with Happy Puppy,

Games Domain Games Domain was a video game website founded by Dave Stanworth and based in Birmingham, UK. In the late 1990s, it was at one time mirrored in seven countries and had a tumultuous history of being purchased by different corporations over its 11-y ...

, and ''

GameSpot ''GameSpot'' is an American video gaming website that provides news, reviews, previews, downloads, and other information on video games. The site was launched on May 1, 1996, created by Pete Deemer, Vince Broady and Jon Epstein. In addition ...

''. In 1996, the ''

Detroit Free Press The ''Detroit Free Press'' is the largest daily newspaper in Detroit, Michigan, US. The Sunday edition is titled the ''Sunday Free Press''. It is sometimes referred to as the Freep (reflected in the paper's web address, www.freep.com). It primari ...

'' selected the ''Adrenaline Vault'' as the "top-of-the-line"

webzine An online magazine is a magazine published on the Internet, through bulletin board systems and other forms of public computer networks. One of the first magazines to convert from a print magazine format to being online only was the computer magaz ...

on PC gaming, praising the site's succinct, straightforward, informative writing. In 1998,

Greg Zeschuk Gregory Zeschuk is a Canadian businessman who was a VP at Electronic Arts and General Manager at BioWare Austin until 2012. He co-founded video game developer BioWare in Edmonton in 1995 with Ray Muzyka and Augustine Yip, after all three earned ...

, president of

BioWare BioWare is a Canadian video game developer based in Edmonton, Alberta. It was founded in 1995 by newly graduated Doctor of Medicine, medical doctors Ray Muzyka, Greg Zeschuk and Augustine Yip, alongside Trent Oster, Brent Oster, and Marcel Zes ...

at the time, rated the ''Adrenaline Vault'' as one of his top five gaming websites. The ''

Houston Chronicle The ''Houston Chronicle'' is the largest daily newspaper in Houston, Texas, United States. , it is the third-largest newspaper by Sunday circulation in the United States, behind only ''The New York Times'' and the ''Los Angeles Times''. With it ...

'' rated the ''Adrenaline Vault'' the second best game site of 1997, behind ''

''. The ''

Toronto Star The ''Toronto Star'' is a Canadian English-language broadsheet daily newspaper. The newspaper is the country's largest daily newspaper by circulation. It is owned by Toronto Star Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary of Torstar Corporation and part ...

'' listed the ''Adrenaline Vault'' as one of the top ten gaming websites in 1997. In 2001, ''

Computer Gaming World ''Computer Gaming World'' (CGW) was an American computer game magazine published between 1981 and 2006. One of the few magazines of the era to survive the video game crash of 1983, it was sold to Ziff Davis in 1993. It expanded greatly through ...

'' included the ''Adrenaline Vault'' in their "Reality Check" review score compilations. In 2002, ''

The Sunday Times ''The Sunday Times'' is a British newspaper whose circulation makes it the largest in Britain's quality press market category. It was founded in 1821 as ''The New Observer''. It is published by Times Newspapers Ltd, a subsidiary of News UK, whi ...

'' called the ''Adrenaline Vault'' "one of the best of the gaming news and information sites" and named it the best games site for

broadband In telecommunications, broadband is wide bandwidth data transmission which transports multiple signals at a wide range of frequencies and Internet traffic types, that enables messages to be sent simultaneously, used in fast internet connections. ...

users due to its comprehensive, alphabetically organized collection of game demos. ''

The Sydney Morning Herald ''The Sydney Morning Herald'' (''SMH'') is a daily compact newspaper published in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, and owned by Nine. Founded in 1831 as the ''Sydney Herald'', the ''Herald'' is the oldest continuously published newspaper ...

'' considered the ''Adrenaline Vault'' "one of the most respected sources of independent and unbiased opinion", primarily on PC gaming but with "always insightful" views on console coverage. An '' APC'' review rated the ''Adrenaline Vault'' 9 out of 10, saying their team of "highly literate, knowledgeable reviewers... do a better job than their rivals such as ''Gamespot'' and CNet." In 2002, described the ''Adrenaline Vault'' as a "legendary online gaming magazine" and "one of the largest and most famous agazineson the Internet".

References

External links

*{{Webarchive, url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060706070736/http://www.avault.com, date=2006-07-06, title=Official website American gaming websites Defunct American websites Internet properties established in 1995 Internet properties disestablished in 2013 Video game news websites