Wikipedia describes Homestar Runner as “a mix of surreal humour, self-parody, and references to fashionable tradition, particularly video video games, basic tv, and fashionable music.” However after launching in 2000, the web-based cartoon turned a cultural phenomenon, co-creator Mike Chapman remembered in 2017:
On the identical day we acquired a demo of a music that John Linnell from They Would possibly Be Giants recorded for a Robust 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 endlessly in the past have been enormous. And there was this image of Joss Whedon in a Robust Unhealthy shirt from round that point that somebody despatched us that we could not imagine. Years later, a photograph of Geddy Lee from Rush carrying a Robust Unhealthy hat on stage circulated which equally freaked us out. We don’t know if he knew what Robust Unhealthy was, however our dumb animal character was on his head whereas he most likely shredded ‘Working Man’ so I will take it!
After a mutli-year hiatus beginning round 2009, the location has solely been updating sporadically — and a few apprehensive that the tip of Flash additionally meant the tip 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 executed so individuals may 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 because of the Ruffle Mission. It emulates Flash in such a method that every one browsers and gadgets 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’s one.
Have in mind, Ruffle remains to be in growth so not all the things works completely. Video games made after, say 2007, will most likely be fairly janky however Ruffle plans on ulitmately supporting these too sooner or later. And any cartoons with video components in them (Puppet Jams, demise metallic) will simply present you an empy field the place the video ought to be. However grasp in there and sooner or later all the things might be similar to it was that summer season after we bought free cable one way or the other 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 location 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 location’s official YouTube channel.
