Wikipedia describes Homestar Runner as “a mix of surreal humour, self-parody, and references to widespread tradition, specifically video video games, traditional tv, and widespread music.” However after launching in 2000, the web-based cartoon grew to become a cultural phenomenon, co-creator Mike Chapman remembered in 2017:
On the identical day we obtained a demo of a tune that John Linnell from They May Be Giants recorded for a Sturdy Unhealthy E-mail and a full-size working Tom Servo puppet from Jim Mallon from Thriller Science Theater 3000…. The Homestar references within the Buffy and Angel finales ceaselessly in the past had been enormous. And there was this image of Joss Whedon in a Sturdy Unhealthy shirt from round that point that somebody despatched us that we could not consider. Years later, a photograph of Geddy Lee from Rush sporting a Sturdy Unhealthy hat on stage circulated which equally freaked us out. We do not know if he knew what Sturdy Unhealthy was, however our dumb animal character was on his head whereas he in all probability shredded ‘Working Man’ so I am going to take it!
After a mutli-year hiatus beginning round 2009, the positioning has solely been updating sporadically — and a few nervous that the top of Flash additionally meant the top of the Flash-based cartoon and its site altogether. However on the day Flash Participant was formally discontinued — December thirty first, 2020 — a “post-Flash replace” appeared at HomestarRunner.com:
What occurred our web site? Flash is lastly dead-dead-dead so one thing drastic needed to be carried out so individuals might nonetheless watch their favourite cartoons and sbemails with super-compressed mp3 audio and hidden clicky-clicky easter eggs…!
[O]nce you click on “come on in,” you will end up in acquainted territory due to the Ruffle Mission. It emulates Flash in such a method that each one browsers and units can lastly play our cartoons and even some video games…. Your favourite easter eggs are nonetheless hidden and now you’ll be able to even select to look at a YouTube model if there may be one.
Take note, Ruffle continues to be in growth so not all the pieces works completely. Video games made after, say 2007, will in all probability be fairly janky however Ruffle plans on ulitmately supporting these too in the future. And any cartoons with video parts in them (Puppet Jams, demise metallic) will simply present you an empy field the place the video needs to be. However cling in there and in the future all the pieces shall be identical to it was that summer season once we received free cable in some way and Grandma nonetheless lived within the spare bed room. And since then, new content material has quietly been showing at HomestarRunner.com. (Most not too long ago, Thursday the positioning added a teaser for an upcoming Halloween video.)
The Homestar Runner wiki is monitoring this 12 months’s new content material, which incorporates:
And previous movies are actually additionally being uploaded on the positioning’s official YouTube channel.
