Web (And Gaming) Icon Strong Bad Returns With New E-mail After Three Years

After three years of mysteriously absent email-checking, Strong Bad has lastly smashed his boxing-gloved fists onto the keyboard as soon as extra, returning with a brand-new message for his loyal followers. And in true Strong Bad vogue, it is about robots–again–and this time they apparently need to focus on their favourite sauces. His comeback looks like stepping again into Free Country, USA itself: chaotic, ridiculous, and one way or the other nonetheless deeply vital to a technology. It additionally affords the proper alternative to revisit the period when Strong Bad and the remainder of the Homestar Runner solid broke out of browser home windows and into full-fledged video video games.

The most defining gaming second for the franchise got here with the Telltale recreation Strong Bad’s Cool Game for Attractive People, a five-episode point-and-click journey launched all through 2008. The recreation performed like an interactive Homestar Runner cartoon, inbuilt shut collaboration with the Brothers Chaps, who equipped writing, design enter, and voice work. Guiding Strong Bad by way of his newest harebrained schemes–from band competitions to clumsy makes an attempt at political takeover–gave followers a brand new option to revel within the character’s larger-than-life persona, all whereas exploring acquainted territory just like the House of Strong and Bubs’ Concession Stand.

A big a part of the sport’s appeal got here from its faithfulness to the unique Flash cartoons. While it adopted Telltale’s conventional journey formulation, the world was loaded with oddball interactions, surreal conversations, and puzzles that functioned much less on logic and extra on the inner guidelines of Homestar Runner’s absurdity. Each episode got here full of further options, akin to weird arcade minigames, collectible Teen Girl Squad playing cards, and hidden Easter eggs that rewarded longtime followers who had virtually memorized the outdated web site.

The success of that collection helped cement the Homestar Runner universe as a surprisingly adaptable panorama for video games. Beyond the Telltale collaboration, the franchise had already experimented with interactive experiences by way of its personal iconic internet games–Peasant’s Quest, Stinkoman 20X6, and TROGDOR!–and later by way of the revival of Trogdor!! The Board Game and its digital model. Even when Strong Bad wasn’t hogging the highlight, his angle, snark, and tendency to go off the rails remained woven into the material of those tasks. With his newest return to the inbox, he is as soon as once more reminding the world that Free Country, USA is just an electronic mail away.