“A Few Classic charaters in a not so classic world”
Let me just repeat that title: Adventures of Dr Phil and Mario. How much cough syrup does one need to ingest to come up with an idea like this? According to the quality of A.V.’s comic here, at least two whole bottles.
After reading a bit of this, I can’t tell if this is supposed to be a troll comic or not. A.V.’s other comics have the same crappy quality as this one so we may not be certain until further reading.
On to the diagnosis!
“Sonic Tails And knuckles move into a house after it appears out of thin air!
Crazy adventures begin!”
Let’s be realistic here: would you ever read a sprite comic that relied on randumb humor as it’s main gimmick? No you wouldn’t. But this is SmackJeeves we’re talking about here, where 93% percent of its humor comics are garbage. The humor’s just about as random as this plot as well. A house that appears out of thin air? Isn’t that how InSONICnia started? Now that was a real stinker, but that was by one untalented author. Sonic the Hedgehog : Funny Files has about five of them.
How bad can they screw things up?
In its heyday from the late 1970s to the early 2000s, VHS was the king of the home media formats. It was simple, convenient, and easy to use. Then the 1980s rolled around: the decade of experimentation. A decade where people thought, “maybe we can make these video cassettes into video computer games!” And so that’s what they did. Thrice.
In this edition of BttP, we’ll be taking a look at said VHS consoles and why they all fell on their asses from the very beginning.
(In Shite Comics, I’ll be taking a look at bad sprite comics and heavily criticize them as I go. Be prepared for MS Paint abominations and comics devoid of humor.)
“this is some other sonic comic the sequel to some sonic comic”
People always say to not judge a book by its cover, but in certain cases, the cover’s so bad you want to return said book back to the bargain bin from once it came. And SmackJeeves is a prime example of cover judging: if it looks good, people will read your comic. If it looks like absolute trash, however, people are still going to read it, because they’re idiots.
Today I bring you this travesty of a sprite comic called, in no caps at all, some other sonic comic by dakota333. This comic’s so bad it only lasted for 21 issues before being abandoned 7 years ago.
(Welcome to the first entry of Back to the Past, where I’ll be taking a look at curious pieces of history. Keep in mind that this is also my first time writing an article. Apologies in advance.)
In the (possibly) mid to late 1990s, one of the biggest words used in the technology industry was “multimedia”. Moving pictures, sounds, music, etc. It was a great gimmick with various levels of success. Of course, as time passed on many of these multimedia things were forgotten by people, such as… well… “Things”, introduced by the Parable Corp. (now The Parable Group) in August 1996.
What are Things? According to Comedy Central’s website circa 1999:
Things bring new life to the Web with multimedia – animation, sound, motion, and more – all with very little download time. Things can be collected on your desktop (using the ThingCollector), used as a screen saver (with the ThingSaver) or added to your Web page. As you interact with them, Things change color, make sounds, come to life. Things start to happen.
Basically, imagine those desktop buddies that do stuff when you click on them, but could be embedded in a web page. They also came as screensavers and streaming video. And according to an ancient TechWeb article, some of them can have an expiration date, thus making the user have to go back and re-download whatever Thing expired.
Aside from your standard web page button Things, there were also plenty of licensed Things to go around. These Things included, but weren’t limited to:
Clearly there was a big market for Things. More were made as the 2000s rolled around, including MLB Things and Star Wars: Episode One Things.
Sadly, Things weren’t here to last. ThingWorld.com went offline approx. around 4/7/2003 and became a parked domain exactly five years later, which it still is to this day. If you ever want to download Things and Thing-related software, then tough luck. Internet Archive has the website saved, but not a single download available. Don’t bother searching for Things either: the name’s so generic that you’d have better luck finding the word “things” instead of “Things” themselves.
So until a massive rediscovery is held, it’s up to your imagination as to how Things worked.
When I was younger, I used to run some blogs on Blogspot thinking that that would be a cool idea. Unfortunately, I had the problem of not updating them and I dare not go back and touch them again.
Years later, I decided to join Tumblr also thinking that it would be another cool idea. Of course, that’s when I was in my “brone-drone” stage and I ran an ask blog that got about 0.2 questions asked. I replaced all evidence of that Tumblr with a new coat; this time it was just about me re-blogging other posts. But since that place has been cemented with a bad reputation of “social justice warriors” and general idiots and ignorance, I’ve quietly abandoned my microblog.
And now, a short while ago, I’ve decided to create this WordPress blog in the hopes that I will actually use it often. Reviews, critiques, looking into the past, and just other general stuff that I find interesting.
Hope to see you folks soon!
FSR's Thought Dump 