A Hi-star-y Lesson (History of Homestar Runner)

Guess what time it is! It’s time for me to write a new post! Yeah, this is actually the first time I’m having to write a new post specifically to upload to the blog ASAP, instead of simply adding to my backlog so I can put it up later. This means that the updates are probably going to slow down a bit from now on, but don’t worry, I don’t have any plans to abandon this project. But anyway, today I’ll be looking through the last section of the Museum, as well as some other non-toon, non-game pages that I’d probably never find a decent time to comment on otherwise. So let’s start off with the “Old Flash Stuff” page in the Museum.

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

If the text at the bottom is to be believed, the original website actually looked like this, with random objects littered around the screen acting as links to various things. I’ve never seen an actual screenshot of this or any kind of archived link to prove that this was in fact true, but according to my sources (aka, the HR Wiki and nothing else), the current Main Pages weren’t added until May of 2000, and the site launched on January 1st 2000, so I guess it’s probably true. Well anyway, let’s take a look at the old junk on this page.

Salt shaker: For an animation test, this isn’t bad, actually. Certainly a lot better than some other attempts that I’ve seen. Obviously it’s not that entertaining to watch, but it was never meant to be.

Remote: Eh, I think the Pom Pom one is better. And why is there a TV sitting out in the field? And why does the tree look so terrible? And why am I being so critical of old animation tests? Ignore me.

Paper Bag: I actually can’t decide if I like this one more or less than the current “Everybody, Everybody!” one. This one has even more of the “kids’ website” feel to it, and I do like the colored lights in the newer one, so I guess I’m glad they replaced it, but I’m not a huge fan of either. Fun fact: the page title of this one in an older version of the Museum (when it would open separate pages instead of integrating them all into one page) used to be “That’s Mike going ‘Beeooo!’”.

Orange: This is actually the first “toon” ever made, but it doesn’t have any voice acting, so it’s usually forgotten about and Marshmallow’s Last Stand is considered the first. This one’s called Pom Pom, Too for some inexplicable reason, and is one of the only times that Pom Pom is given a lot of attention as a main character. Like I’ve said before, he sort of started fading away after the early toons. This one’s got a few little funky things in it, like the Trivia Time dog food dish, an earlier use of the noise that The Paper makes in SBEmails, random wedding music at the end, and also one of only two places I can think of where Pom Pom’s thoughts are conveyed in actual English, the other being the old Yearbook characters page. Speaking of which, I know I showed that at one point, but I don’t think I ever specifically talked about the autographs page. Well, I’m still not going to, but here’s the link again if you’re interested.

Beach Ball: This is the most boring Games page ever. I’m glad they replaced it.

Lemon: And here we have "She Loves Me!", the first “game” made for the website, if it can really be called that. I’d consider it more of a test in learning how to make interactivity in Flash animations. The website credits this as being the first appearance of Marzipan, but it’s unclear if this was made before or after Marshmallow’s Last Stand, where she appeared in the audience. This is the first time she’s referred to by name, though. Also, this thing is really glitchy.

Pie: This is the second Games page, evidently. I think it’s pretty cool, and I like the Atari style. Apparently they thought it was too difficult to navigate, though, so they scrapped it. I think if they had programmed it so Homestar only walked while you were holding the arrow keys, it would probably work a bit better.

Lava Lamp: Here’s the successor to the intro from earlier. This one’s not too bad, and the rotating shot is pretty neat, but I do prefer the other two over this one, because it just seems kind of irrelevant. The dopey laugh at the end is pretty great though. There’s actually one other intro that was created between this and the current one, and it does exist on the website, but there’s no way to access it without a direct link. I’ll get to that in a sec, but first, there’s one more page to look at here.

Shoe: At some point after that weird “trading cards” page was made (and then never actually linked to anywhere on the site – remember that thing, with Homeschool Winner and the Unguraits on it? I’ve shown it before, but here it is again), this was put up as the first Characters page. There’s not too much to say about this one with the exception of what they say about The King of Town. Apparently he was supposed to be Marzipan’s father in the early days of the series, which might explain the princessy-looking Marzipan sketches that we saw last time. But yeah, that’s no longer the case. And I don’t think Strong Sad is officially “disowned” either, but that’s not as big of a leap.
 
Alright, that does it for the Museum material, but there’s still some old pages that aren’t linked to anywhere that I did want to look at, starting with the third website intro that I just mentioned a second ago. Check it out.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/intro2.html

Yeah, I know it’s called “Intro 2”, but yes, it is the third one made. Don’t ask. And you know what? I think this is actually the best out of the four intros. Why couldn’t this be the one featured on the website? It’s the only one to feature other characters in it, and it’s nice and colorful, with some pretty decent effects going on. What the crap? Now I’m all cheesed off. Just… look at these old Toons menus or something. Grumble…

http://www.homestarrunner.com/toonsold.swf

Both of these follow the same general format, as I’m sure you can tell from the screenshots, and they also include the same six toons. As I’ve talked about before, the first time I ever came across the website was in summer 2001, and at that point, they were already using the Chinese food menu for the Toons page, so I’ve never actually seen these in use. I’m curious to know if that first one actually existed on the site back when it was in its original “pile of crap laying in the field” format, but I don’t really have any way of finding out. All I can tell is that it must have been made after these first Toons were created (I believe A Jumping Jack Contest was the newest of the six), and I assume that by that point, the site had already evolved to have the main pages that we all know and love.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/newtoons2.swf

The second menu went through a couple different iterations, but I’m not going to bother linking to all of them because it’s not really all that interesting (if you really care, go here). But I will mention that in at least one version of it, the toon would actually play inside the TV itself. Which means you get a scaled-down version of it instead of the usual size. Cool idea, bad execution. And to go even unnecessarily further back, there was apparently another Toons menu that actually featured Pom Pom, Too. But the Flash file of it no longer exists on the website, and the only reason anyone knows it existed in the first place is because there is a page that can be accessed with some notes in the HTML. There’s really no point in linking to something that doesn’t work, but here it is anyway for the sake of completion: http://www.homestarrunner.com/toonsold.html

Moving on to some material that actually does exist on the website currently, we have the Downloads page, which nobody ever goes to because they stopped updating it about 75 years ago.

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

I’m not going to bother going through every item on this page, there’s no point. Feel free to download the various Sounds and Quotes Packs if you want. Nearly all the quotes are from stuff we’ve already watched anyway, so it’s not like you’ll be getting anything new out of it, but … yeah. I’m more interested in the graphics section. The Windows icons are pretty nice, I did actually use those back in the day. Never did use any of the AIM icons for some reason, even though I did go on AIM pretty frequently. I probably just never figured out how to use them. Looking at them again now, I must admit I’m surprised that the picture from The Secrets That I Keep is in there. It’s always been one of the more obscure pages on the website. Oh, and the walking Strong Mad has no M on his chest. ‘Kay then.

Then we have the wallpapers. The NEW! one is from an email that was uploaded in 2004, so yeah, I wasn’t kidding when I said that this page hasn’t been updated in ages. That and some of the things in the Songs menu are basically the only things that refer to anything on the site from later than like, 2001. Kinda sad, but every once in a while a new toon or SBEmail will have downloadable stuff somewhere in it, so I guess the page kind of became useless after a while. It’s got the neat little Strong Bad Clock though, which I’ve always had a soft spot for, so it’s not all useless.

And then there’s the weird Easter Egg. If you go to Balance Inquiry and click on “0.00”, you get a credit card. And then if you flip it over (click the top-left corner), you can find the PIN (seems like a bit of a security risk to put it there). Stick it in the slot, type in the PIN, and you get … an underwhelming prize. Kinda makes sense that it would be hidden like that though. And as a weird bit of trivia, the PIN (5675) is the last four digits of Homestar’s credit card number from that one SBEmail. I actually used to think that was the only way to figure out the correct number for a long time, thanks to some old fansite (it was either homestarrunner.net or the-coolest-stuff-ever, don’t remember which). So I guess that’s about it for this page, but why talk about only one useless page when we can also look at the Email page?

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

I swear that at some point, the title of this page was “It’s not just for email anymore!”, and then they changed it to the current one. I cannot remember for the life of me what was actually different about it, and the Wiki isn’t helping me on this one, so it’ll have to remain a mystery. But yeah, this is mainly just used for some contact information, but there’s a few interesting things it links to, surprisingly. First off, the letter on the bottom (which has a few obscure Thorax Corp references in it) links to the FAQ.

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

I think this page had been around for a couple years before I realized it existed. It was added in 2005, replacing this older one. I wouldn’t really bother looking through that one too much, but if you’re interested, it does have a few different quotes that can play at the beginning (it’s randomized), and Strong Bad makes some comments when you open some of the questions. The newer one (based on a Highlights for Children magazine) has a few little “activities” in it, which are kind of amusing, particularly the inclusion of the final character in the “guess whose eyes these are” thing at the end. For the record, it’s from a toon we haven’t covered yet, and the character only shows up like, twice on the entire website. Overall, I’d say these pages are worth looking at if you’re a Homestar fanatic like I am, but casual viewers probably don’t need to be bothered.

Ok, one last thing. I’d like to talk about the old Store page today also, but I’ll try to resist the urge for now. But yeah, go back to the Email page and click on the Strong Bad sticker on the side. You get… this.

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

This is the header for the old message board that was on the website. Now just to be clear, I never actually went to this board (I don’t think I was aware of it, and I’m still not sure how it was accessed back in the day), but I do know a few things about it from the Wiki. I wish I could have been part of the community back when it was running, but alas, at least I can share some of the things I’ve learned about it, such as the weird crap that Matt and Mike would post on it. Like this birthday cake that Matt made for his sister. Or a game where you get to kick a picture of a girl named Taryn who apparently posted a lot. And I assume that this weird tire cake was uploaded there originally too. Check for Easter eggs in both of those cakes, by the way. Weird flashing images ftw. And I do have to wonder where Taryn is today, and how she feels about being in a hidden page, repeatedly kicked by Strong Bad.

I know I've already filled this post with a billion links, but just a couple more, I promise. First, here's an archive of what the board looked like once upon a time. Not too much to look at, since you can't get into the actual topics at all, but at least you get to see what some people were discussing. And you can see Pablo (from the flag day email) in there too. And apparently, the bored was revamped at one point and then as soon as it reopened, traffic went crazy and it had to be shut down almost immediately. You can see the remnants of that here.

Lastly, there's the matter of the Bored Games. When you click on the "O" in "BORED" in the header, you can access three little arcade games to play. Even though this page has probably been my longest so far, I can at least take a look at them.

Armless Invaders: This one would be ok if it wasn't so easy to move the mouse outside of the game's borders and then mess up. At the start, you can type in a number to replace the 5 (for how many "chances" you have), which can lead to some weird glitches, like Homestar continually falling in the same spot, not falling at all, or simply giving you an instant Game Over.

The Cheat's Smoking Challenge: Yeah, this one's pretty boring. I tried to play it and take it somewhat seriously, but I lost interest in a couple minutes. What you see is pretty much what you get with this one.

Nighttime Driving Type Game: This one's the best of the three, but that's not saying much. You might remember this as the game Strong Bad was playing in his Main Page (accessed through Homestar Talker), which he challenged you to get a high score in. And indeed, if you manage to do it (get over 50,000 points), Strong Bad will congratulate you, but then immediately pull a Running Man and let you know that he just got a new high score that is one point higher than yours. Tough luck. This game also occasionally glitches out and lets you sit in the left lane forever, without ever getting hit. I think I've gotten it to do that before. It's the best way to see the little cutscene at the end (if you feel like this is something you can't live without).

I could talk about this stuff for days. There's still quite a bit of stuff that I've skipped over (like the old Flash-based Store, which I did want to talk about a bit, but I can't find an archive of the version I wanted to show), and there's plenty of other weird images and stuff hosted on the site, but I've gone on quite long enough, I think. So next time, I'll get back to the usual grind and see what Strong Bad's gotten up to. Hope I was able to keep everyone interested and maybe teach even the old fans some stuff they never knew about.