Wikipedia describes Homestar Runner as “a mix of surreal humour, self-parody, and references to standard tradition, specifically video video games, traditional tv, and standard 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 acquired a demo of a tune that John Linnell from They May Be Giants recorded for a Sturdy Dangerous 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 had been big. And there was this image of Joss Whedon in a Sturdy Dangerous shirt from round that point that somebody despatched us that we could not imagine. Years later, a photograph of Geddy Lee from Rush sporting a Sturdy Dangerous hat on stage circulated which equally freaked us out. We do not know if he knew what Sturdy Dangerous 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 location has solely been updating sporadically — and a few anxious that the top of Flash additionally meant the top of the Flash-based cartoon and its website 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 folks 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 may end up in acquainted territory due to the Ruffle Mission. It emulates Flash in such a means that every one browsers and units can lastly play our cartoons and even some video games…. Your favourite easter eggs are nonetheless hidden and now you may even select to observe a YouTube model if there’s 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 someday. And any cartoons with video components in them (Puppet Jams, dying metallic) will simply present you an empy field the place the video needs to be. However hold in there and someday all the pieces will probably be identical to it was that summer season once 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 yr’s new content material, which incorporates:
And previous movies at the moment are additionally being uploaded on the location’s official YouTube channel.
