Super Old Games n' Such (...And Coach Z)

Making a game in Flash is quite different from making a cartoon. And since I have no real experience in either (I’ve made a couple very basic Flash animations that lasted a few seconds, and that’s about it), I don’t really have any way of judging how difficult it would be to make a decent game. I’m guessing that it’s relatively difficult, or at least requires a set of skills quite distinct from animating. I say this because even though Matt and Mike have proven themselves to be pretty good animators, these early games are pretty awful. And they’ve admitted this in the past, so I’m not trying to be extremely critical of their work or anything. I think the site is still quite enjoyable without any type of games, but it was definitely a good day when Jonathan Howe decided to help them out with that.

So let’s go ahead and look at some of this stuff. Rather than link to each game individually, I’ll just provide the Old Games menu. This is actually the … fourth menu they used for games, I think. The third was the stack of board games that I showed in the last segment with Marzipan’s Answering Machine, and the first two are in the Museum. This one was around for a while until the more playable games started being released, and so this was relegated to the sub-menu for older, less interesting games. I think it serves its purpose quite well, and is a nice callback to old Tiger handhelds and Game & Watches. But enough about that, let’s just go through these in order.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/oldgames.html

Dancin’ Bubs

• Well, the music in this one isn’t half bad. I like the crappy little tuba song that sounds like it comes from Veggie Tales, and the fhqwhgads song is always fun to listen to. Oh right, new viewers would have no idea what that is. Yeah, it’ll be explained eventually. Back when this game was first released, it must have used different music (since the two Strong Bad songs weren’t made yet), but there’s no definite record of what they were.
• The first background includes two rejected characters – Homeschool Winner and Champeen. Homeschool has shown up in a couple places, including an old unused characters page, while Champeen was intended to be a new female character but was eventually dropped for whatever reason. Possibly Zelda-related.
• This is one of very few places where Bubs is shown to be a good dancer (or maybe not a good dancer, but someone who enjoys trying it). This character trait sort of vanishes over time.

Homestar Talker

• Pom Pom and Strong Bad are totally going out, but Homestar can win the stupid competition.
• Uh… what? Yeah, not sure what Homestar is talking about there. I’d like to know more about this.
• Originally, the correct phrases were “Making out with Marzipan is totally awesome” and “Homestar is nothing but a stupid loser”. I believe these were changed around the same time that the Toons and Games menus were changed from the old Chinese food and board game ones. I do distinctly remember those being the old answers, because I was telling them to my cousin over the phone, and he said they didn’t work anymore, so I checked the site again and realized that some stuff changed.
• So just in case you haven’t figured it out yet, put in the phrases that I mentioned in the first point to unlock “secrets”, ending with the hidden Strong Bad main page, which is, surprisingly, not accessible through any other means. In it, we get to see Nighttime Driving Type Game, Gavin the cockroach, and we get to hear some weird “Poot Slap” song… and Strong Bad’s old Hispanic accent.

Audition With Marzipan

• Can’t say I’ve ever been a fan of this one. I don’t believe the game actually recognizes if you follow the beat of the song, so there’s no real point in trying. Gotta love spamming the goat though.
• The “Thoughts on a Bird” song is kinda cute, I guess. I dunno, I’m really stretching for something to say about this game.

Bronco Trolleys

• Behold, the one and only time that “Homestar’s favorite snack” is ever mentioned on the entire website. One day I should actually try one of these things, but you’d have to take the peel off the orange, and it sounds like too much trouble for me.
• This may be the most mindless and irrelevant game on the whole website. It’s also particularly easy to break if you screw around with the tab and enter keys, or right clicking in general.

Strong Libs

• Eh, these have the potential to be funny sometimes. I made a madlib thing on my freewebs site, which I believe turned out fairly well, but the problem with these is that in most cases, you can put in pretty much anything you want and it will turn out as funny as any other combination of words, unless you pick really boring stuff or words that make no grammatical sense.
• Calling it now, at least one person reading this made the first Strong Mad Lib say “Justin Bieber”. Because hating on him is the cool thing to do nowadays.

Homestar Quiz

• Oops. The first question asks about a toon that I didn’t actually cover yet. Well, the answer is Dokle II. And … oops. The second question isn’t actually answered anywhere on the site, currently. However, this one I actually did link to at one point – it was in the Yearbook Characters page.
• Aaaand several other questions have answers in things we haven’t watched yet. Whatever, just guess on stuff. The best responses are probably for 5-6 correct answers, all correct, and none correct at all. If you want to go for the other ones, then go right ahead.
• Prinicpal.

Hairstyle Runner

• I don’t have anywhere near the amount of patience required to make anything interesting with this thing. So the only real enjoyment I ever got out of this was looking at the gallery. I like the one with a really tiny patch beard. The alt text of it says “smartass”, a rare instance of swearing on the website.

Fortune Cookies

• I’m not sure if this actually qualifies as a game, but it’s somewhat entertaining, so I’ll give it points for that, at least.
• The cookie on the right has a chance of linking to http://www.thoraxcorp.com, a weird side project made by Matt and Mike. I’m not sure if I’ll ever go over that site in detail, so if you feel like looking around on it, feel free.

Who Said What Now?

• Hey, if you’re still new to this series and haven’t looked around at a lot of stuff on the site, would you mind skipping this one? I don’t want it to ruin a really good joke later on.
• This thing has some funny quotes on it, but again, it’s not really much of a game. It’s the origin of such classics as “I have more than two problems”, “Each day we die a little more”, and “I’m the only girl”. There, if you skipped over this one, I just told you the funny parts.
• I have nothing else to say about this one. … Well, actually, I have quite a lot to say about this, but I will resist the urge. There’s only one more game left, let’s just get this over with.

Astro-Lite 2600

• Oh, thank God we’re done with these. As with the Hairstyle Runner, I lack the patience to make anything worthwhile with this thing. I’d rather just draw stuff in MS Paint, it’s a lot less tedious.
• The old version of this game is actually somewhat more interesting than the current one. It lets you trace some characters, and also has a flashing light feature. You can find it here: http://www.homestarrunner.com/litebrite3.html
• I liked the Lite Brite. Construction paper + plastic pegs + warmth = the smell of nostalgia. I’m sure anyone who used to play with one of those will agree with me that those had a very distinctive smell to them. Play-Doh’s got nothing on Lite Brite. 

And with that out of the way, we can focus on some decent old toons. The first new one of 2001 is a little something you may have heard of called A Jorb Well Done. Remember back when the First Time Here cartoon recommended this one and I said it was pretty decent? I still stand by that remark. There’s one scene in particular that still sorta creeps me out, but overall, it’s a solid effort, and I have some stuff I’d like to say about it, so if you haven’t checked it out yet, go do so now.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/cantsayjob.html

Coach Z has always had a pretty weird accent going on, but this is the first time he kinda fails at pronouncing words. In this toon, it seems to be a legitimate problem that he suffers from, which will not always be the case in the future. Also of note is the fact that he is actually seen coaching something (although what it is, I have no idea. Any game that gives you points for bouncing on Strong Sad has to be amazing though), which, as I mentioned in his character bio, will eventually fade away. Coach Z’s just a weird character in general.

One thing I must point out about this cartoon is the animation style. Several of the characters, Homestar being the main example, are using their modern designs. But that’s only because the cartoon was actually George Lucased later on – the cartoon was originally animated in an older style, and later on they inserted the newer models to make it seem more up-to-date. So if you’re a stickler for detail, you’ll notice that when going through the cartoons chronologically like this, the models will sort of regress back to the older style for a bit and then come back to this. I dunno, personally I think the old fat Homestar looks fine, and it probably should have just been left alone, but whatever works. Speaking of animation weirdness, the scene with Homestar and the chalkboard has Coach Z facing the wrong way. I think they were going for a black silhouette and just didn’t darken the model enough, possibly due to a dark computer monitor. Wouldn’t be the first time that faulty equipment led to mistakes (the examples I’m thinking of haven’t been looked at yet, though).

So what the crap was up with that Strong Bad scene? Never before or since have I seen Strong Bad laugh maniacally like that, and thank goodness for that. It was creepy and unnecessary. But I think the rest of the toon turned out pretty good. The ending reminds me somewhat of the “Omelette Du Fromage” episode of Dexter’s Lab, but to a much lesser extent. And it has a cameo by Tom Servo in the theater scene, which took me many years to understand and appreciate.

Speaking of creepy things, here’s a couple old pages of weird, unfinished stuff that were never actually linked to anywhere on the website. I don’t really have any good reason for bringing these up, other than Strong Bad’s little ditty from the Homestar Quiz reminding me of the Sing Along.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/singalong.swf
http://www.homestarrunner.com/needlepoint.html

Fun times. The needlepoint thing actually inspired me to make my own Homestar cross-stitch. I haven’t actually worked on the thing in a few months, but here’s a topic showing the progress I’ve made so far: http://spritestitch.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=5425

I did kind of want to cover one other toon in this segment, but the next one chronologically is kind of long, and I think I’ve already covered a pretty good amount of material today. I’ve got a pretty good amount of stuff planned for next time, so look forward to fewer poorly designed games and more classic Homestar Runner humor.