Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People
Coming to you live from San Francisco, on a Top Secret Mission for RPS, I'm excited enough to struggle with typing out a post on my EEE (sausge fingers vs. tiny tech) to tell you that there's to be an episodic game featuring Strong Bad. Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People.
If you're as enthused a fan of Home*Runner as I, this should please you greatly. However, there are a few howevers. You decide if they're a problem, It's being made by Telltale, which means if you love the recent Sam & Max games, you'll be rightly delighted. Then there are other views. It's also a 3D point and click adventure, which makes obvious sense at first, but might it go against the ethos of the Strong Bad gag? It's is a Flash-rendered cartoon (beautifully so, it should be noted), but one that relishes in nerd-gags based on aging computers. When Strong Bad writes videogames, which he regularly does, they're pixellated 2D references to the 80s, whether side-scrolling platform, vector-based shooters, or best of all, text adventures. Not chirpy, 3D inventory-puzzles. But, check the videos out, and perhaps this is all realised. The 3D is still weird and wrong (I don't want to see inside Homestar's mouth when he talks!), but it does look like the original design. And it does seem to be embracing the retro-geek-chic. Oh, the confusion.
The other significant issue is that this is being sold as a WiiWare game that's, "also on PC". So the boasted Wii-specific design doesn't seem in our favour.
But there are plenty of reasons to be interested, not least because, hey, it's a Strong Bad game! Telltale promise that the Brothers Chaps are working on the script, and obviously Matt Chapman will be voicing all the characters. If the Chaps ensure the humour stays true to the site's, and it doesn't get drowned beneath tedious inventory puzzle bollocks that Telltale have succinctly demonstrated they just don't have the flair for, there's good reason to think this will be a decent laugh. Telltale make a pretty game, and their passion for the genre is undeniable.
I'd say my most favourite thing would be the Bros. Chaps' wonderful spoof videogame label, Videlectrix, getting legitimised by being the name under which they're co-developing.
(This has reminded me that I keep meaning to write a post about the various Videlectrix games, which I will entirely do when I get back from the Secret Mission.)
There's a bunch of videos and so forth, co-created by the Brothers Chaps, on the Telltale site, which are helpfully not available for embedding. So over there you go.