HomestarRunner.com: PAY PLUS!

From Homestar Runner Wiki

Revision as of 22:58, 7 October 2006

"Finally At Last!!!"

It's April Fool's day and—Oh no! HomestarRunner.com is now a subscription site!

Cast (in order of appearance): Homestar Runner, Senor Cardgage, Strong Bad, The Cheat, Strong Sad's head, Strong Mad, Frank Bennedetto, Sterrance, Bubs (morphed into his concession stand), Vector Strong Bad, Stinkoman, Rather Dashing (silhouetted), Eh! Steve, The Wheelchair, Ready For Primetime, Keyboard Strong Bad, The Worm, Sherlock, Mr. Shmallow (watermark), Cheerleader, So and So, What's Her Face, The Ugly One, Arrow'd Guy

Places: The Field, Strong Bad's Basement, Computer Room, Bubs' Concession Stand

Date: April 1, 2005

Page Title: Finally At Last!!!

Transcript

Page One

HomestarRunner.com PAY PLUS!
ONLY $12.95 MONTHLY!
JUST $99.95 YEARLY!
SIGN UP FOREVER!
Interactive Menus!!

• New annual fee!
  
• The same content!
  
• More banner ads!
  

Free 7 second trial!!
Join now!
Subscriptions are the latest craze!
Loggin' {a login box}
Instant access!
Take the tour!

Homestar's Seven Seconds

{Cue Homestar standing in the field. A timer counts up in the bottom left corner of the screen starting at 0.15 seconds.}

HOMESTAR RUNNER: One... two... three... four... fi-

{The timer reaches 7.15; a buzzer goes off, and "TRIAL PERIOD OVER!" pops up on the screen.}

Page Two

The Email Show!
HomestarRunner.com PAY PLUS!
ACCESS TO ALL 230+ STRONG BAD EMAILS!
WEBCAM CHAT WITH THE CREATORS OR SOMEONE ELSE!
Let's see a clip!
SHOW ME MORE, SIR!

Strong Bad "Trap Door" Sample

{Cue Strong Bad sitting in front of his computer, flanked by the Cheat, who is holding a remote control. Homestar is standing on a brown trapdoor in front of Strong Bad.}

STRONG BAD: All right, the Cheat, let 'er rip!

{The Cheat presses the button on the remote. The trapdoor opens under Homestar's feet. He falls about two feet and stops.}

HOMESTAR RUNNER: Woo! That was fun!

STRONG BAD: The Cheat, I thought we were opting for the bottomless pit. {Homestar starts a little dance with his feet, stepping back and forth gracefully.} ... Not a two-foot pit!

THE CHEAT: {The Cheat noises}

{Cut to the basement, where Strong Mad sits on the couch with Homestar's feet dancing on top of him.}

STRONG MAD: I HAVE A FUNNY HAT!

Page Three

There's more?? Why, yes.
HomestarRunner.com PAY PLUS!
GEE-AMES!
Pay for play!!
Just pennies/pixel!
Members plus, fool!
Actual screenshots!
Fake boxes
HOURS OF STREAMING VIDEO GAME FEEDS
FREE SAMPLE GAME
"Sign Up Today Man"
1 player simultaneous
CHECK MARK!
Continue Free Tour!

Sample Game

The free sample game resembles Space Invaders with Strong Bad against an army of Homestars coming out of the sky. The Cheat periodically falls from top to bottom and if he hits you, a message will appear saying "YOUR" "HEAD" (changes to SHIP a second later) "ASPLODE". Trying to play the game is difficult because the screen continually flashes the message "TRIAL VERSION", locking the game controls. The game also automatically closes itself after the 14th "TRIAL VERSION" screen, keeping you from advancing.

Page Four

HomestarRunner.com PAY PLUS!
So Much More!!

SWEET CUPPIN CAKES
A New Episode Each Week!
Meet Eh! Steve!'s Lawyer!
Win a chance to have lunch with the Worm-type character!

teenage girl show!
Revamped for the 90's.
More humor! Finer dining!
See the unaired pilot, the holiday special, and the 'everybody dies' episodes!

And also, too:
Answering Machines out the wazoo
Powered by The Cheat-athons!
Senor Cardgage Wednesdays
Mr. Shmallow's Webcam

Extra free sample here!
On the Tour?

Teen Girl Squad Sample

{Cheerleader, So and So, and The Ugly One are standing around. Cheerleader's shirt reads "sperld rott'n".}

CHEERLEADER: That stupid wheelchair kid asked me to the Friday Night Dance! But I'm going with Steven!

{Enter Eh! Steve!, wearing a football uniform with the number nine}

CHEERLEADER: {speech bubble fills with hearts} Hey, Steven!

EH! STEVE: Eh! Steve!

{Cut to Wheelchair}

WHEELCHAIR: I'll teach you to steal my date, Eh! Steve! I'm gonna come outta my shell at the Friday Night Dance and show everybody who's whooooooooooo!

{Arrow'd Guy, with fairy wings, a tutu and a wand, enters and changes the Wheelchair into a realistic drawing of a wheelchair.}

STRONG BAD: {narrating} GOOD DRAWINGED!

WHEELCHAIR: I'm a real boy!

{Cut to the "It's Over!" splash screen.}

STRONG BAD: {narrating} It's over!

Page Five

View Shopping Cart
HomestarRunner.com PAY PLUS!
Join/Sign Up Today/Now!!
$19.95/month or $499.95/week... Yearly Savings!
No More Money!!
OVER 2 BILLION!!
First Name ________
Last Name ________
Nickname ________
Nick's Name ________
Month ________
D/O/B ________
Organ Donor ________
Car Keys ________
Passcode ________

Page Six

Thank you for your order.
You will receive your package
in 6-8 weeks.

{After about 15 seconds, you are returned to Main Page 19.}

Fun Facts

Explanations

• The entire April Fool's site is a spoof of the preview pages on many pay-sites on the Internet: the trial videos, the free tour that ends with a sign-up page, the tacky design and layout, and the "streaming video game feeds" all mimic said pages.
  • The second page claims "ACCESS TO ALL 230+ STRONG BAD EMAILS!" when there were only 127 emails at the time it was posted. This spoofs how subscription sites often flagrantly misrepresent their content. However, this may be a reference to a perk of subscribing (viewing unaired Strong Bad E-mails).
  • A recent trend for Internet entertainment sites (especially game sites) is to be free for a few years, and then the owners initiate a pay-to-play policy. Perhaps this April Fool's joke was done so the Homestar Runner site would fit the trend.

Trivia

• When the page was first released, the navigation buttons at the bottom of the page weren't there, like Under Construction.
• Pressing '7' on the keyboard (or the numeric keypad) during the trial game will toggle the gray 'TRIAL VERSION' message. If it's onscreen, it will vanish. If it's not onscreen, it will appear. Holding down the 7 key rapidly toggles the message on and off. The 7 key has no effect at any other time.
• The screenshots on the first page show:
  • Senor Cardgage showing a pie chart to Homestar, dressed in his pajamas and robe from caper
  • Strong Bad with the Lappy 486 as The Cheat serves him Strong Sad's head on a platter.
  • Strong Mad on The Couch wearing Homestar's Homestarmy bowl, next to Frank Bennedetto.
• The screenshots on the second page show:
  • Strong Bad at the Tandy 400 with Sterrance (from animal) in the foreground.
  • Strong Bad destroying a city (à la Godzilla).
  • Strong Bad in front of Bubs' Concession Stand, which has gained Bubs' eyes and mouth.
• The third page has:
  • A screenshot from StrongBadZone with the quote "A SPLODE IS A LOT".
  • The boxes for the Videlectrix games Planet Alert! and Spaceshipper.
  • The sprite of Stinkoman from Stinkoman 20X6.
  • A screenshot from RhinoFeeder.
  • A screenshot from the Videlectrix game Rabbit Algebra.
• There is a background tile image, but it's only a tiny black line.
  • The line actually gradients to grey as it nears the center, but in front of a default white background, it is almost impossible to see. When the image is tiled on a black background, then the gradient forms a line that we can see.
• If Homestar made it only to five at the end of the Seven Second Trial, he was counting at the rate of one for every 1.4 seconds.
• Using a Flash decompiler, it is possible to see that The Brothers Chaps left ALL of the games menu in the 7 Second Trial Game instead of just the necessary objects.
• The label on the disk in the floppy disk container reads "hunt the wumpus".
• Except for the buttons and movie clips, all content featured on this toon are JPEGs.
• In the math problem shown in the screen shot of Rabbit Algebra, x = ±4.

Remarks

• Right clicking and selecting "play" will quickly advance you, page by page, to the very end of the presentation.
• None of the screenshots on the first two pages are from actual toons or emails. The StrongBadZone screenshot contains a quote not found in the game.
• Strong Bad is seen with the Tandy 400 in one of the screenshots, with Sterrance from the email animal even though that was a Lappy 486 era email.
• Homestar is shown standing on Strong Mad's head after falling through the trapdoor, yet in The Li'l Brudder Show, the basement was shown to have a much higher ceiling.
• Saying that a new Sweet Cuppin' Cakes episode will come out every week pokes fun at the fact that Sweet Cuppin' Cakes almost never gets any new episodes.
• If you shoot all the Homestars in the trial game, a second wave appears.
• On the first page, the right column of pictures is titled "Instant Access", but at the end, it states "You will receive your package in 6 - 8 weeks."
• The presentation refers to an "everybody dies" episode of Teen Girl Squad; however, at the time of this cartoon, Issue 8 had already included every character dying. Since then, Issue 9 and Issue 10 have too.

Goofs

• Pressing the back button while watching the "Let's see a clip!" preview on page 2 will not make the Clip close, but it does close if you go back to page 2. This does not work if you hit "Show me more, sir!" or on any other of the previews.
  • Though if you right click and click rewind while watching the other samples, it goes to the first section. It zooms in on the game.
• In the 7 second trial (which is actually 7.15 seconds long, according to counter), the counter in the corner is counting by seconds and then 60ths of seconds. If you watch it frame by frame in the swf. file, you can see the decimal counter is going at 5 60ths of a second per frame, which means the decimal goes up by 5 every frame. At the end of any second, the counter does not go from 55 to 0, it goes from 55 to 60, and then to 65, and then to 10.
• On the "The Email Show" page, in the middle of the screen, Strong Bad's eyes are a much lighter shade of green and have lost the shadow on the tops of his eyes.
• The black part of Sterrance's face mask is not present in his screen shot.

Inside References

• When your ship is destroyed in the trial game, the message "YOUR HEAD A SPLODE" appears, with "head" changing to "ship" a split-second later. This is an obvious reference to StrongBadZone and another appearance of "A Splode"
• All the sprites in the trial game come from the secret games on Strong Bad's Message Bored.
• The "cred" card shown on page five belongs to Lem Sportsinterviews, who is a member of the Superfied Credit Union. This is a reference to the credit card email and to the Downloads page.
• The Cheat uses a single-button remote control.

Real-World References

• The trial game resembles another Homestar Runner game, Armless Invaders, which in turn resembles the arcade game, Space Invaders.
• The two video game boxes with "fake boxes" captioned near them is a reference to many video game shops that use fake or empty boxes for display to prevent theft.
• "I'm a real boy!" is an obvious reference to Pinocchio, a wooden puppet who was turned "real" and made a similar remark in at least one version of the story.
• "I'll teach you to steal my date, Eh! Steve! I'm gonna come outta my shell at the Friday Night Dance and show everybody who's who!" and the #9 jersey are references to the movie Angus.
• The "Interactive Menus!!!" is a clear reference to cut rate DVDs. While most DVDs offer additional features like Director Commentaries, and "Making Of" featurettes, cheap DVDs and DVDs of movies that didn't make enough money to make such featurettes have to get by with advertising Interactive Menus as a bonus feature. This was also referenced in Marzipan's Answering Machine Version 10.2 and the back cover of Everything Else, Volume 1.

External Links

• View "PAY PLUS!"
• View the Flash file for "PAY PLUS!"
• View the component Flash files for:
  • Homestar's Seven Seconds
  • Strong Bad "Trap Door" Sample
  • Trial Game "Homestar Invaders"
  • Teen Girl Squad Sample