* Plays old games no one has heard of * Geeks out and gushes about these games * Does not let nostalgia cloud his judgement and criticizes the game when necessary * Has entertaining commentary that does not rely on swearing and gamer rage Strong Bad is truly the greatest let's player of all time
@@greenwave819 I'm sorry, I don't understand. Are you insinuating that Vampire's Castle (and by extension, Thy DungeonMan) are not real games? I have played thy DungeonMan, and I assure you it is one of the games I have ever played!
The scroll that offered a single vague hint and had no use whatsoever as a transportable item just had to redundantly be called a "parchment scroll" so the "par" could later conflict with the "parapets" in the environment, leading to confusing interactions. This is the kind of hardcore old school design decision modern games can't compete with.
Strong Bad Let's Plays... this is the greatest concept. I love that Cheat even went to the trouble of illustrating the text-only playthrough. For watchability's sake that's a brilliant idea.
I'd love if someone actually DID do graphic plate additions to the old text games. Same game play, but with the visuals? Sign me up. I'd make my kid play them and he'd lose his mind. No hand-eye co-ordination needed? You mean I have to actually THINK and not react??
3:57 The nostalgic excitement in Stlong Bad's voice is palpable. Those moments of "Yes! This is that thing I haven't seen in decades but has never left my subconscious!" are some of the best moments in life.
20:41 - "GO BOAT" [I don't know that word] "GO BOAT" [You are in the boat] A text adventure that's hard of hearing and needs you to repeat things until it understands. What an ingenious gameplay mechanic.
It reminds me of a certain programming language. "INTERCAL has many other features designed to make it even more aesthetically unpleasing to the programmer: it uses statements such as "READ OUT", "IGNORE", "FORGET", and modifiers such as "PLEASE". This last keyword provides two reasons for the program's rejection by the compiler: if "PLEASE" does not appear often enough, the program is considered insufficiently polite, and the error message says this; if it appears too often, the program could be rejected as excessively polite. Although this feature existed in the original INTERCAL compiler, it was undocumented."
It's an early version of the fear mechanic in later survival horror games where the controls get wonky from your characters' fear. It's not a bug. It's a feature.
At the start of high school, I was the only one who got the teacher saying "Bueller... Bueller..." when calling roll, and by senior year, everyone understood the joke.
Most of my high school classmates didn't get my Homestar references either. The only ones that did were the kids in the autistic class. Nearly all of them got the references, lol.
Imagine emailing a cartoon website in 2002 and they still remember you 20 years later. This one's for you, Trevor. Cool game, reminds me of Hugo's House of Horrors which I played over and over as a kid.
"A Key is in it's mouth!" Oh, if you want it to be possessive, it's just I-T-S. But if it's supposed to be a contraction, then it's I-T-apostrophe-S. Scalawag.
I genuinely love that they went out of their way to make their own graphics and music for this game. That's a level of dedication you don't see too often
Very good mock up graphix by The Cheat. He should be a professional text adventure graphix adder; there's literally hundreds of games just waiting to be graphix'd...he'd make millions!
The "the computer only looks at the first three letters" bit always baffled me. Back in my Youth, I had a "how to program text adventures" book that offered this method, and I was like "No thanks, I want my players to be able to "LOCK CHEST" AND "LOCATE CHEESE" (if necessary)."
It was a common technique to write text adventures with a simple parser, especially when you only had maybe 128KB of memory and you needed to track what was in every single room.
@@MNGoldenEagle Understood, but even with just 32k of Boolean variables, you could cover a lot of ground. (Granted, if you wanted to make a game of any considerable length, you'd have to call other programs* and hope your variables survived the trip. Now I'm having 80's programming flashbacks. XD) (* - Unless you had a professional team w/ proficiency with assembly language and other fun stuff. Which I'm guessing the Vampire's Castle people did not have, nor did I.)
I have vague recollections of a text adventure that only looked at the first five letters. I don't remember this being in the instructions, but I realised it because I misspelt a word after the fifth letter, and it still recognised it. It had a briefcase in it, so if I got the briefcase, and then typed "drop briefs" it said "OK". Only the first three letters though? That's got to be an exaggeration.
@@jamesc3505 No, that was totally common, especially if the program was expected to run in 16K of RAM. Almost all the Scott Adams (not the Dilbert guy) Adventures only looked at the first 3 letters.
@@samuelcolvin4994 I think it's the vampire making the noise... the chaps are just geniuses at sound design/invention. Remember the siccamore douglas... Who even thinks of something like that, man? They do.
“I would beg to differ, but I know there’s no winning this argument” “I’m gonna just start putting ‘friggin’ in between everything” Yep Strong Bad has definitely been on the internet for a looong time lol
Aww, don't you know what the vampire was dreaming during his last moments? "Dear Strong Bad, I was wondering if you could teach me how to be as awesome as you. I am a vampire and-" Oh, Trevor. I pine for you!
This is the secret twist to the sad tale of Trevor The Vampire: We all know that he was killed halfway through emailing Strong Bad... Now we know it was Strong Bad who killed him!😲
@@freakfoxvevo7915 He wouldn't even have to: Sbemails aren't live. Strong Bad could have staked Trevor while he was writing his email, sent it for him, and then gone home and answered it. Perfect way to make sure no one suspected him... ... I'm spending way too much time thinking about this, huh?
All these years later, and "You can't get Ye Flask" is still hilarious. Also, now I want an entire game doodled up by the Cheat. Doesn't have to be big and epic, can just be something like this.
How did thirty minutes pass by in the blink of an eye!? Strong Bad's natural charisma really pulls you into the game. Well done with the visual representation The Cheat! It really brought life to a text only adventure!
Honestly this is one of the most rewatchable H*R videos in recent memory for me, for the reasons you describe. I've even played it in the car just to listen! They really hit it on the head with this one.
The background music is subtle but perfect. With the Cheat graphics, this text adventure feels more like a 90's point and click, and the music is what you'd get in one of those.
Guys, this is so incredibly great. I was completely delighted the whole time. Thank you for taking the time to make this. Also, it makes total sense that the game only knew the first three letters of Ratt.
CONGRATULATIONS ON FINALLY GETTING YE FLASK! Oh man... the amount of frustration of my child self playing Thy Dungeonman and not understanding how to get ye flask... but now I see where it comes from. I've watched HomeStarRunner since childhood when my dad found your website and seeing you keep going now made me cry with joy.
I wish I could talk abrat it more, but the dang youtube has all the comments blocked because they think I'ma somehow grab kids through the computer and take 'em to the Puddin' Patch or tossed into Coach Z's whale costume.
This will go on my Halloween watch list for years to come. When Strong Bad looked at the timepiece and it was 11:59 I screamed so loud it woke my parents up.
20:57 Fun fact: first instance of fast travel was in Colossal Cave Adventure, first text adventure ever made. In it you have magic words (e g. Xyzzy) that allow you to teleport between locations.
Can't believe I'm just now realizing there were even more jokes and obscure references I missed 15+ years ago. Seriously, as someone fascinated by old video games, this series has been delightful
This is beyond amazing. Drawings of text adventure-ry! Wait, howcome sometimes it likes 'ye' but sometimes not? This game seems to secretly be a Homsar dialogue generator. *aAaAaAaA, ah left the cheese in the arm'ry.* The Oar on the Floor, m'lo'e'er o'clo'er
I think it's played for laughs here, but some old text based games would just ignore any text it didn't expect or understand when trying to parse the input. So that behaviour is completely plausible, though it shouldn't make a difference between a sentence woth or without ye working, unless ot somehow forced it past another glitch.
I have this one in my vintage collection now. I don't think we ever had it in the first run, but I found it last year while surfing for vintage Halloween text adventures to play during October. So glad you were able to make the connection back to it. I love it when I'm able to close those loops that begin in early memories.
Watching this series has been like reconnecting with an old friend from middle school and you both hit it off just as well as you did when you were younger. This series is incredible, love the work you do!!!
I gotta level with you... This _might_ be the most eminently re-watchable video of all. At least, like, in the last ten years. I think It's bc it's loaded with Strong Bad humor but is also a 30-min continuous story. The other Disk 4 toons are compilation games.
A) Please do more like this. Doesn't necessarily have to be just Strong Bad. but we all know he's a total winner at this. B) After 6 views I think Bbok is my absolute favorite sound and graphic in the whole thing. C) The BGM. I need it!
This is the best content on the internet gloves down. Basically since the internet has been capable of sharing videos the brothers chaps have been uploading consistently funny and high quality content, in some of the most creative of fashions, still making callbacks that take me back decades that crack me up like the writer "Edgar Allen Sportsinterviews" and his many other novels. When so much has changed in the world since they started, its nice to see them still taking the time to make things they enjoy and doing it with the same classic charm and unique comedic style that proves to be timeless. Never stop doing what you love.
"I like vampires...maybe it's Trevor!" I know it shouldn't shock me that the people who made HSR also make HSR references, but I love the idea of Matt and Mike going through their day-to-day-lives with random quotes from the series in their heads just like the rest of us
Next year will be 20 years since I graduated from high school and it's crazy to me how a new generation of kiddos will get to enjoy the majesty of the Cheat I mean Homestarrunner and friends 😃 For Project Graduation (an all night games and stuff for the seniors where we had teams) in 2003, my team was Team Trogdor 😆😁 Thank you guys for making some of my favorite internet memories 🥰🥰🥰
I _LOVE_ this background music. And I wish The Cheat would illustrate other text adventures like Zork! This was amazing. I think my favorite part was that "KHOOLK!" sound the vampire makes when he awakes and sucks your blood. :D Here it is for my own repeated amusement and yours: 21:28
So there's I was, minding my own business... And then the homestarrunner notification popped up. So, as you do, I had to drop everything I was doing to come see this. Groceries are still at the the store, and I think my son is lost in the produce section.
As happy as I am to see stuff getting uploaded I'm more happy to see people flocking to it, over a thousand views in less than 10 mins on a late sunday night
This is the best Homestar related content in a long time. I was watching Homestar when I was 9 years old and I'm 29 now so it's refreshing to watch this stuff.
I love the whole concept of this video; a Let's Play of a text-based game with drawn visuals and gags. I don't think I've ever seen that done before! I wanna see more Disc 4 of 12 episodes like this. Heck, I wanna see other letsplayers do this; it'd be fun! I think my favorite part was the "guest appearance" of Ratt, with the chiptune rendition of "Round and Round" being the icing on that particular cake. This actually introduced me to the band and now I'm listening to some of their songs; nice!
This is one of the most entertaining videos I've seen on youtube in the past 6 months. Has definitely made my day. I'm so happy this is a series cause now I get to go back and watch the older ones too!
I was enjoying the video already, but Homestar popping up and then sliding slowly off the screen broke me. EDIT: OMG, Homestar coming back still sliding broke me again.
This was great. What a historic find! To celebrate the release of Return to Monkey Island, I nominate The Secret of Monkey Island for the next D4o12 video. (Disk was featured in Sbemail 189, "pet show.")
