Homestar Runner, Strong Bad and co. set to invade the Nintendo Wii

It seems like a match made in heaven – or at the very least, a match made in Strongbadia. On April 10, 2008 the insanely popular flash cartoon, homestarrunner.com officially announced (via a Strong Bad E-mail-esque “trailer”), in conjunction with TellTale Games and Videlectrix, the upcoming Wiiware video game “Strong Bad’s Cool Game for Attractive People.”

On Dec. 6, 1999, brothers Mike and Matt Chapman (commonly referred to as “The Brothers Chaps”) officially registered the domain site name and by the beginning of 2000, the Website homestarrunner.com was born.

The Website was a flash project for the brothers that soon became one of the best known Websites on the Internet. The site has even received praise from various national publications like Wired, NPR’s All Things Considered and Entertainment Weekly.

Homestarrunner.com is unique in the sense that the site does not sell advertisement space but pays for expenses with the money made selling site related merchandise. The site’s popularity grew, in part, by word-of-mouth campaigning.

Another popularity-gaining aspect of the site was introduced in the middle of 2001, when the site’s (and Homestar Runner’s) antagonist, Strong Bad began checking and replying to actual e-mail messages sent in by fans. This feature – known simply as “Strong Bad E-mails” (Sbemails) – has proved to be the most prominent feature of the site to date.

The Strong Bad e-mail portion of the site typically takes a humorous approach to many pop cultural trends and aspects of the ’80s and ’90s.

This includes numerous references to musical trends and early video gaming culture.

Homestarrunner.com also bolsters a complete game section, with content created and developed by The Brothers Chaps under the name of their side project “gaming studio,” Videlectrix.

The games found on the site are reminiscent of many famous video game genres and series such as the side-scrolling platform game “Stinkoman,” a parody of the popular “Mega Man” series developed by Capcom.

Another popular game found on the site is “Peasant’s Quest” a parody of Sierra Entertainment’s series “King’s Quest.” “Peasant’s Quest” introduces gamers to the playable character “Rather Dashing” and features the titular “Trogdor the Burninator” (first introduced to Homestar fans in the “Dragon” SBemail) as the game’s villain.

Music from the series has also been found in “Guitar Hero II” and “Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the 80s.” These tracks are the site’s infamous “Trogdor” song as performed by Strong Bad himself as well as “Because it’s Midnite” as made famous by the site’s faux 80s hair band, Limozeen.

It comes as no surprise that the popularity of homestarrunner.com has yielded its very own (and actual) video game – the aforementioned “Strong Bad’s Cool Game for Attractive People.” The game is being developed as a “point and click” adventure game which will be released in subsequent episodes. “SBCG4AP” will likely be similar to TellTales previous episodic “Sam and Max” series.

The game is set to be released June 2008 and will be available through Nintendo’s “WiiWare” service as well as downloadable content for PCs.

C. COLT CRANE
BizTech Writer

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