Once upon a time the types of people on the Internet skewed much smaller in number, and you could be reasonably assured that if you made, say, a Monty Python or a Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy joke in forum company, nearly everyone reading it would get it, and probably also find it funny. Those days are long past, and in some ways it’s for the better, but the near certainly that people would just know what you mean did make it easier to find accord with folk you met online.
One of those universal early net touchstones was the Flash cartoon site Homestar Runner, and its true star Strong Bad. His name and look inspired by the early NES game Tag Team Wrestling, yes everyone knew about Strong Bad, and waited with bated breath for the weekly cartoon where he answered viewer email.
Email is much less of a thing now than it had been then, and the site updates much more sporadically these days, but Homestar and Strong Bad are still kicking for now, lovingly maintained by their creators the Brothers Chaps, Mike and Mark Chapman. The Chaps chaps have done other work since then: they once made a website (with a couple of cartoons) for the pizza chain Mellow Mushroom, collaborated with Telltale Games to make an excellent series of adventures, they created the Youtube series Two More Eggs (and we’re almost done following all of their Eggpo subseries here on SSB), they contributed to the Aquabats show back on pastel horse network The Hub, they wrote for incredibly awesome Disney Channel cartoon Gravity Falls, and more recently made a board game based on their breakout pretend man dragon Trogdor and a few computer games like Dangeresque: The Roomisode Triungulate.
Now we come to their most recent electrowork, an add-on pack for VR putt-putt sim Walkabout Mini Golf called the Homestar Runner Distraction Pack, that features 18 H*R-themed holes and a whole lot of in-jokes.
But if you are like me, and not only have you never heard of Walkabout Mini Golf before, but don’t even have a VR headset, this might seem like a great pile of interesting content that you have no hope of ever seeing.
Well I can’t say that it’ll cease your longing for all that forbidden golf, but they did release a 53-minute promo play of the game, with WMG creator Lucas Martell playing with Matt Chapman and Strong Bad himself, as represented by a floating head.
No, not that floating head. You get that reference, right? ‘Course you do, this is the internet.
