Talk:Floppy Disk Container

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Ding! Floppy Disk Container is a featured article, which means it showcases an important part of the Homestar Runner body of work and/or highlights the fine work of this wiki. We also might just think it's cool. If you see a way this page can be updated or improved without compromising previous work, feel free to contribute.


Contents

[edit] Needed Clarifications

Any information concerning:

Old Game - (Entered As Either Generic Title Or 'It's A Funny Old Game')

Hypou Blade - (Entered As Likely Hyper Blade, But The Reason For The Spelling Is Anyone's Guess...)

K-- Sp---- - (Entered As Kid Speedy, I'm Pretty Confident With That)

Marble Craze (A Paul Slocum Game. Another Mystery Solved)

As to whether or not the information is focused on the correct game, would be greatly appreciated. Please feel free to enter something into the discription. I've done the best I can, but if you know of something better, please feel free to edit mine and leave a link or two if possible. Thanks. ⇔Thunderbird⇔ 01:38, 2 Apr 2005 (MST)

Apparently, there is no game on The Underdogs that begins with "k" and has another word beginning with "sp". I turned up some unlikely results on Gamefaqs that I will put up when I finish searching (unless you already did this search...). Aurora Szalinski 17:40, 9 Mar 2005 (MST)

Thank you for your help, I think Kid Speedy is a safe guess. ⇔Thunderbird⇔ 01:35, 2 Apr 2005 (MST)

[edit] Needed Pictures

Any pictures of better quality than the ones we have displayed would be appreciated. Most of them are decent enough, with the exceptions of the real floppy disk container from Puppet Time, and any pictures from the DVD. Please have all pics be at least 150 x 150 pixels. Anything more is okay, but less will offset the picture sizes. Thanks. ⇔Thunderbird⇔ 01:38, 2 Apr 2005 (MST)

[edit] Needed Links

Any games that only have links to any of the four basic sources, 'Moby', 'Udogs', 'Faqs', and 'Wiki', can also be linked to additional sites. Feel free to link any games to about two or three supplementary info sites, under the generic, and spacesaving, filename of 'Here', in the sources column. ⇔Thunderbird⇔ 01:39, 2 Apr 2005 (MST)

[edit] Misc. Older Conversations

[edit] Standard Image Size

Okay, I've gone through and added a "|150px" to every screenshot. I like how this lines up everything in the first column. It also gives a bit more room for the text in the last column. However, this change will not make images bigger than the uploaded file. So do we like 150px? If so, we might want to upload slightly bigger screenshots for those few images. -- Tom 09:35, 17 Oct 2004 (MST)

Image sizes fixed. Shogun and the hundredth e-mail ones look kinda small, but there's nothing we can really do about that. I think they're good enough.

-- Thunderbird L17 18:00, 17 Oct 2004 (PST)

I snuck in there and fixed Image:Floppy_flashback.PNG and Image:Floppy SBIIJC.PNG when you weren't looking. Much better. -- Tom 18:11, 17 Oct 2004 (MST)
Oh, it looks like you replaced my version of the flashback floppy with a different one. -- Tom 18:14, 17 Oct 2004 (MST)

Sorry, I was adding images the same time you were. Could you put your flashback one back? If it's anything like Shogun it'll be better. Thanks, and sorry.

-- Thunderbird L17 18:41, 17 Oct 2004 (PST)

Okay, I'll revert it back to my version. Disregard the instructions I left you on my talk page to do the same. -- Tom 18:48, 17 Oct 2004 (MST)

[edit] Floppy Explanation Sources

Hey, you brought up a good point about the floppy summaries. Should we link to the source of each floppy summary. Most of my sources are big gaming history websites, old fansites and the like, sometimes multiple sources. But I really don't want to go back and re-find a source for each one. So should we link to all, or none? Or just a few (a solution I don't really like, I like uniformity). I would prefer to just give the history, and if anyone would like to know more they can always do their own research like I did. Or do you think that's not fair to the sources? I really don't think they'd mind...

-- Thunderbird L17 18:53, 17 Oct 2004 (PST)

I totally like linking to sources and additional information. I like Wikipedia the best, but a lot of this information can't be found there. I understand the hassle in re-finding all the places you got your information the first time, but I think it would be best for the page. If you need any help, just give me the method you used and I'll see what I can do. -- Tom 19:46, 17 Oct 2004 (MST)

Alright, most of my sources were from one of like 3 or 4 large repository sites of old 80's games info. So what I'm doing is going through each of the four sites, searching for each game, and linking the source to the page that comes up, if any. I just finished Moby, I'm going to go through another few later. Once those are all done, then we can still add a fansite or two, or other sites not uniformed. Try to keep the titles of the sites short though, or just write 'here', so as to keep the summaries column large enough. I'll just work away at it, and hopefully it'll be done by noonish.

-- Thunderbird L17 9:43, 18 Oct 2004 (PST)

Sources are done, with a basic structure of the three main sources, (if you can find another one that has about 90% of the titles or more, let me know) each with a special name. I think any additional sources, fansites, ect, should just be named 'Here'. I think it makes sense.

-- Thunderbird L17 13:41, 18 Oct 2004 (PST)

[edit] Remove redundancy

Would it be prudent to reduce the duplication of identically named floppy disks and list all the emails that use the same label in the email column? Case in point, the blank disk, tongue of the fatman, lode runner, manhunter. - Drhaggis 16:35, 25 Oct 2004 (MST)

I second this notion and I'm fairly confident our buddy and main organizer of this section Thunderbird L17 would agree with you. By removing said duplicate images and simply using the email column for several email titles, the page can be made shorter (always a plus to keep the attention of page viewers and reduce clutter slightly) and would cease to "violate" the concept of Once and Only Once.
--Teh P. 10:22, 27 Oct 2004 (MST)


I respect your motions, notions, seconds, and checkin's. However, I would have to disagree. Of course, I do not own the page, since this is a Wiki, and therefore do not hold the last word, however I would like the oppourtunity to win you over. My reasonings are simple, and as follows:

  1. First, it makes the list complete. Granted, the names and pictures and summaries and links are the same, but the location of them are different. Not a big difference, but it's there. Doubling them up would make the column different. Not a big deal, but it's there.
  2. Second, there are only four of them. It's not alot, and likely there will not be any more ever doubling up. If it happened all the time, I would agree with you.
  3. Third, two of them can't be doubled up very easily, leaving only two. Since one of these two basically NEEDS to be doubled up, only a few would be non doubled. Basically my argument, is double up all or none.
  4. Fourth, The blank floppy disk summaries are completely different. One covers the big ones, the other covers the regular ones.
  5. Fifth, Manhunter New York floppies are not in a row. They're not even in the same section, therefore destroying the sectioning of the page into e-mails and others.
  6. Sixth, the once and only once policy is not technically violated thanks to templates. A technicallity yes, but it's there.
  7. Seventh, the length of the page is only increased slightly, approxamently 6 or 7 precent, and the percentage drops after each floppy.
  8. Eighth, I just like them doubled.

Thats all the arguments I can come up with. Please read them and get back to me. I appreciate your bringing this up instead of just doubling them up yourselves, which is within your right. I hope that you can see it my way, but if you can't, then let me know and we'll discuss some more. I'll probably think up a few arguments later anyways. Thanks.

Thunderbird 21:27, 27 Oct 2004 (MST)

I Appreciate your comments and I will make sure we come to an agreement before any changes are made. You spent a lot of time on this page and it shows. I will go through each point with my comments.
  1. Completeness: Having little animal and superhero name in the same column would not reduce the completeness of the list. It would only collapse a redundant row. The images are different screen caps, but I can’t tell the difference between them.
  2. Only four: You are right, it is not a lot, and likely there will not be any more ever doubling up. It is significant as it happens a lot near the beginning of the list and it takes much scrolling to get to a unique disk.
  3. Two can't be doubled: Which two can’t be doubled? Manhunter? Because one is in an email and the other is a toon? Irrelevant. There is no real need to distinguish the emails from the toons in this case. The second column will be labelled "Appearance" or "location" instead of “email”.
  4. Blank floppy disk summaries: Both blank images are for 5.25" disk so the summary for both should be the same. The summary for the overall medium should be in the introduction of the page anyway.
  5. Manhunter not in a row: I've addressed this, making me wonder if I misinterpreted number 3.
  6. Once and only once policy: Templates have nothing to do with it. The "sources" links and descriptions are needlessly repeated.
  7. Page length: True! The page length will not decrease significantly. But it will mean less pointless scrolling.
  8. Like them doubled: Understandable. Even if we had strict article guidelines and formatting rules, each contributor would style the page differently. It is going to happen. I knew this was a pet page, so I didn’t want to ruffle feathers. - Drhaggis 23:49, 27 Oct 2004 (MST)


I've gotta say, you make a good case. Alright, how's this? I've made my case, you've made yours. And actually, I wouldn't mind shuffling the page around a bit more, organizing the toons in amongst the e-mails in order of chronology, find a few different ways of doing stuff. You make a good case. So I'll think it over, try and think of a good way of organizing it, and maybe start making changes in a day or so. Since the paper agrees with you as well, as I am sure he likely still will, then I guess the majority wins out. And actually, one thing that I did not consider, which is very possible, is that perhaps the puppet style floppy disk container will start popping up more as well, which will neccessitiate further formating changes. Thank you for your comments, and you've won me over. Provided The Paper still agrees with you. I'll look it over and be in touch. I'm also working another page at the moment, Puppet Stuff. That, Powered by The Cheat, and I think pretty much all the subheadings of the toons menu are getting explanatory pages. But this page will not be lost in the shuffle, I promise.

Thunderbird 12:55, 28 Oct 2004 (MST)

Alright, the pictures have been consolidated. Instead of segregating the occurances that weren't in Strong Bad e-mails, I simply sorted them chronologically. That took care of the Manhunter New York problem, since the e-mail and the toon were in a row. I also took the liberty of taking out the 'description' column, which was just as unneeded as mulitiple screenshots and summaries. The title is written right on the floppy disk screenshot, it's also the name of the picture for if you scroll your cursor over the pic, and it's generally the first words of the Explanation. This way the table is freed up a bit, leaving only nessicarry columns. I think the whole layout looks rather good now. If anyone thinks otherwise, feel free to let me know. It's always revertable. Thank you for your comments, and I think the new page looks much better. Thunderbird 09:07, 1 Nov 2004 (MST)

[edit] Question: Pre-Piracy Copies, Perhaps?

These disks look remarkably like the floppies used in my very own, very aged, very dusty Apple IIGS computer. In fact, I recently found a few old containers of said disks, direct from my computing childhood and actually including such titles as World Games, Thexder, Shogun, and even the original Pirates, and after I had a good eighties-child grin over this discovery, I suddenly remembered that almost all of those disks were copied (erm, borrowed?) from the immense old-time game collection of a now long-moved-away family friend.

In short, all this made me wonder: are Strong Bad's disks copies? They have the same simple lined labels as my dusty ones, and their titles are clearly written by hand, as were mine. It would make a lot of sense for him to pirate his early software, but not being familiar with the labeling practices of early games, I'm not certain. Yet it would be interesting to note, eh?

Incidentally, I no longer remember playing any of ye olde IIGS games. I do, however, recall playing Odell Lake. Oh the shame. The shame.

Queenie-C 03:13, 01 Dec 2004 (PST)

That is quite true. All of my old shareware games I bought, they always did have real lables. By the looks of them, you're right! They likely are copied. However, just writing the titles are alot easier to paste into the toons then getting actual title graphics. Long story short, they probably did that because it was easier, not as a refferance to pirating. Good observation though. It does make you wonder... ⇔Thunderbird⇔ 19:09, 2 Dec 2004 (MST)

They might be legal backup copies. In the floppy disk era, it was not uncommon to make a backup copy for daily use, in order to reduce wear and tear on the original master disk. 12 August 2005

[edit] Why no split.

I removed the split in the table that Thunderbird added. The table is still a table, and I don't quite understand how a spilt helps any. If it was simply so that people editing didn't have to scroll down so much in the edit box, I can almost understand, but it's not an acceptable reason. Additionally, the "Emails #1-99" and "Emails #100+" lines were incorrect, as these disks aren't simply from emails. -- Tom 12:08, 25 Feb 2005 (MST)

I feel so ashamed. Yea, it was because when you did edit it, you were editing such a large page. That way you could edit only half a page at a time. And I knew the titles were wrong, I didn't quite know what to call them and figured a better title would come along eventually. Sorry. Okay, I won't try that again. But I still get points for fixing the synopsis of 'colorado' from the state to the game, right? Edit: Sorry if I sounded serious. For future refference, everything I say I say with a smile.

⇔Thunderbird⇔ 18:20, 25 Feb 2005 (MST)

Hey, there's no need to feel ashamed or anything. I just wanted to explain my revert and all. No problem at all. -- Tom 19:52, 27 Feb 2005 (MST)

[edit] Floppy Disk Container Plus

What does the "Plus" mean? «Rob» 03:38, 4 Apr 2005 (MDT)

Actually, funny you should bring it up. Back when I started making this page, there was already a 'Floppy Disk Container' page, which simply had a list of the appearances, and what the title said. That was it. No extra information or anything. So I came along, and started up a new page, with screenshots, info, ect, kinda as a trial, under the page title 'Floppy Disk Contianer With Screenshots', soon after changed to simply 'Floppy Disk Container Plus'. It worked for the better, and eventually the origional page was edged out. Now all that remains there is a Redirect. It does makes way more sense to move it to Floppy Disk Container and make a redirect here instead, then slowly work through the links and try and move them all over. I've been thinking about it for a while, but I'm just a lazy procrastinator, which is a really bad combo. So are you up for the task, or do you want me to do it? ⇔Thunderbird⇔ 16:43, 8 Apr 2005 (MDT)
I went ahead and moved all the content from the Floppy Disk Container Plus article to here as well as this talk page. I even changed all the links and modified the redirect to it works properly (I hope!). Hopefully Thunderbird does not mind too much that his pride and joy has been moved. --THE PAPER 22:47, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I managed to fix it, but please use the move command in the future, as the manner in which this was done effectively deleted over 260 individual edits. -- Tom 14:37, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] TI-99/4A

I made an edit a week or two ago, correcting a mistake. Someone had said that Hunt the Wumpus was a game for the "TI-99" and "4A" calculators. I changed this to the "TI-994A home entertainment console" and someone reverted the change, saying that wasn't likely.

There was a TI-994A (or 99/4A) home entertainment console, and Hunt the Wumpus was indeed a game for it. In fact, the MobyGames link links to the TI-99/4A version. I know this because I owned one of those consoles and that game. It came out in the early 1980s.

The TI-99 doesn't seem to be a calculator, and neither does the TI-4A. The highest model at the moment is the TI-92+. Texas Instruments was also not producing graphing calculators in 1981.

I'm going to change the paragraph back and direct naysayers to read the references:

TI-99/4A: http://www.99er.net/ti.shtml http://oldcomputers.net/ti994a.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TI-99/4A

TI Calculators: http://www.ticalc.org/basics/calculators/

I think I was the one who had deleted it, and here's why: I had never heard of such a console, I couldn't find any evidence of such a console, and the MobyGames link was too vague. And looking at your links, I see why: there was no such thing as a TI-99/4A home entertainment console - the machine to which you refer was a computer, not a video game system. Sorry for changing it, but next time, make sure you actually replace the wrong information with information that is more correct. --Jay (Talk) 20:55, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Jay: I won't split hairs with you by going back and changing it again. However, I still contend that the 99/4A could be considered a home entertainment console. It came with joysticks and took cartridges that contained games. It hooked up to a television.

At least it isn't listed as a graphing calculator anymore :)

Using the Wiki link, I rewrote the article a bit, and hopefully clarified it to the satisfaction of all involved. There really isn't enough space in the article to do the history of the game justice, not to meantion all of the platforms it has been on, so I think this 'BASIC' description is good enough. Everyone happy with it? Thunderbird 23:59, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Split?

This page is way too long. It needs to be split. But now? Alphabetically? Time period? - Joshua 15:00, 3 Oct 2005 (UTC)

I think by Time Period. TotalSpaceshipGirl3

The problem with that is that some floppy disks appear in two seperate toons/emails. - Joshua 15:13, 3 Oct 2005 (UTC)
Hmm... I guess Alphabetically is good. TotalSpaceshipGirl3

This page isn't nearly long enough to split. — It's dot com 16:07, 3 Oct 2005 (UTC)

It's the second biggest page in the wiki! I suppose it doesn't have to be split, but it sure would make things easier... whatever. - Joshua 16:10, 3 Oct 2005 (UTC)
Yea, it is kind of a quandry. Personally, I think it's okay. Despite it being long, it's all on one subject. There's no real oppourtunity for it to be split. Thunderbird 16:14, 3 Oct 2005 (UTC)
I also think this page is not nearly long enough to split. -- Tom 17:34, 3 Oct 2005 (UTC)

[edit] you JERK!

I uploaded this picture a while ago, and was wondering if it could be put in here.
you JERK!
-- DBK! 16:28, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
I've often thought about this oddity, the only labled floppy that isn't a game. Though I belive that it does have a place on this page, since the precident is set with the Peasant's Quest and Where's an Egg? floppies - they don't have the container included either. The pic is large enough (at least 150x150px), but unfortunitly it is in the JPG format. We only use PNG's here, they come out better on the internet. If you'd like to re-upload the pic in PNG format, I'd be happy to whip up some sort of summary for it. Let me know. Thunderbird 06:06, 9 November 2005 (UTC)
I re-uploaded the picture as a .png, so the .jpg can be deleted. -- DBK! 20:12, 12 November 2005 (UTC)
No, it still has the same problems that occured when you changed it into a JPEG. I'll go take the snapshot again and not mess it up. - Joshua 20:17, 12 November 2005 (UTC)
Fixed! - Joshua 20:25, 12 November 2005 (UTC)
could this be a reference to the u-jerk pickups from gta? not that tbc would promote gta. at any rate, it is remeniscent csours 16:42, 14 February 2006 (UTC)
No. The reason was because The Cheat thought Strong Bad was a jerk for offering recipies on how to cook The Cheat. There's no deeper meaning. Especially with GTA, that's FAR too much of a stretch. Thunderbird 00:17, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Link Format

This link format really bothers me. The extra brackets don't need to be there and the links can be made wiki-links. Though it's a lot of links to do in one sitting for me right now. Also, I was tempted to link this in the SBemail template (same for the computer room) but i added cats instead. The main SBemail article does not seem to link to either article. --Stux 15:24, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

Actually, that was me, and it did start out as a mistake. But then when I fixed it, the columns of "little arrow graphics" denoting "outside the wiki" were slightly cut off on the top without the brackets. I'm not quite sure why, and I tried an edit summary just now, and it seems the problem has since been fixed, likely with a recent upgrade. So now, yeah, we should fix them. But before we do, what about seeing if one of the Admins will add the four sources as a "Quick Link" format, similar to Wikipedia or IMBD? Wikipedia's already there, but intentially NOT quicklinked for the sake of conformity. So what do you guys think of those ideas? Thunderbird 00:41, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Podcast background

Unreadable?

Any ideas? -- Tom 05:20, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

I think I see "of the" in the middle. Of course, that only tells us so much, but maybe it's a start. Heimstern Läufer 05:22, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
I think it's Silence of the Lambs. It will be nice to see that! User:That is Truly an Apple/sig ~~
it appears that the first word has 3 or possibly 4 letters more than the middle line to make 9 or 10 letters. i dont think it could be discoveries of the deep because the first d would stick up more, and it would be longer on the first line, but, meh, why confuse things csours 20:59, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
  • possibles:
    • discoveries of the deep
    • defenders of the earth (cmdr 64)
    • footballer of the year (cmdr 64)
    • defender of the crown (cmdr 64)
    • tongue of the fatman (not likely)
    • vengeance of the kilrathi (less likely)
    • chronicles of the sword( not likely, came out in 1996, most games in the box are much older)
    • children of the atom (possible reference to the newness of the podcast, but, again its a newer game than most in the box)
    • legend of the sword (dos and amiga, 1988)
    • guardian of the fleet (1994)
    • wargame of the century (empire) (not likely)
    • shadow of the beast (not likely)
  • palm os
    • legend of the orb
    • secret of the orb (possibly the same game)

csours 21:39, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

Wow! Excellent work there, Thesaurus Csours. It'll take me a while to sort through all those possibilities, and I can't do it right now, but I'll try and get on it ASAP. Anybody have any favorites from the list? Thunderbird 01:27, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
ive been looking at this again, messing around with the jpeg in paintstyle program and it may say 'animations of bad toons{or pies}' (toons{pies} is the word i am least sure of) any way i think the third word is either 'bad' or 'red' or something other than 'the'. csours 07:23, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
I thought I'd go a different way and see how those titles actually work in the Ahnberg Hand font (SB'S handwriting). Didn't come much further, but it's apparently "the", not "bad". Loafing 23:44, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

podcastfloppylabelpe3.png

hmmm. ima have to pick up that font and do some serious 'research'. csours 05:46, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
I tend to think that the first word starts with a "un" and i keep seeing the last word as being "town" or "light", but that's just my opinion. -Zerlock1124 00:08, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
I've been sitting as far from my screen as possible, while also tilting my laptop screen back and forth. I find that it helps to see things better. I don't think that the third word is 'the', since the red ink goes high at the end of the word. I think 'bad' is better. Also, the bottom of 'f' in 'of' seems to almost blend with the top of the first letter in the bottom word. I think 'toons' might be a good match. The first word is tough, though, but I don't see any tall letters in it, such as 'h', 't', 'b', or 'd'.
I think, personally, that the reading of the podcast background, unless somebody gets some seriously it-came-straight-from-one-of-the-brothers-chap's-mouths style info, is totally subjective and any old demi-fan could say "I think it's 'murfreesboro on not peaches'!" and it would have to be a legitamate guess. I'm not saying I dislike your ideas at all, just that it's subjective and the descriptor should solely say that it is unreadable. not to be a snob or nothin', but it's not objective enough for a wiki. Sompm 03:50, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
I got the greatest idea to find out what it is (or at least try)! If someone could load the background on the wii's internet channel, the blurring effect wouldn't work due to it only having flash player 7. Also, has anyone tried decompiling it? --{{User:Don't say jorb 101/sig}} 02:40, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

It may be just my opinion, but the bottom word looks like fighters. The top word appears to have "ff" or "tt" in it. --PartyBrd20X6 21:46, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Gold Rush was an Adventure game

I just played this recently, and it still is. :) The same goes for the use of past tense in the other game descriptions; it's just strange (and incorrect) to read. Retodon8 19:31, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wraith

I'm not sure that Wraith means Wraith: The Oblivion. Wraith: The Oblivion is a pen-and-paper RPG (D&D style), not something you could get on a floppy. Googling found two DOS games named Wraith: an adventure and a RPG

Wow, you're quite right. Between the two links you gave me, I would have to assume it is the first one, simply because the second link was released in 1995, and I don't think any of their floppies have been games any later than around 1991. The first link didn't give any clue as to it's release date, (I even downloaded the game and read the readme file), but no luck. In any case, since the entry is a Pen and Paper RPG, I'm gonna change it to your second link, with what info we have. Thanks for your help, any further help would also be appreciated. Thunderbird 17:35, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Strong Bad a Pirate?

Strong Bad is a bad guy. We know this. He says so. But he appears to want to prove it by having pirated copies of all of these games. All of the labels are hand-written so either he puts new labels on all the games or simply has copies of all of them. Anyone else think this is worth mentioning? I wasn't sure if it was so thought I'd throw it out there for discussion. Benabik 04:36, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

ABP'd! Thunderbird 04:50, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

D'oh! I did read through the page before asking that, but I read right past that part. Oh well... Benabik 17:52, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] below the root

not that strong bad is is a linux/unix user, but root is a computer word, and everything in the computer would be below the root, as when you get to root level, you cannot go higher. csours 07:37, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

Or it's the computer game, like we mention in the article. -- Tom 07:41, 14 March 2006 (UTC)
yea, i didnt mean instead of, i meant side note kind of thing.... csours 17:50, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] LucasFilm Games Vs LucasArts

a very minor nit pick but a couple of times in this article the phrase "LucasFilm (now LucasArts) Games" pops up, this seems to suggest the the current name of George Lucas' games company is LucasArts Games, which it isnt its just plain old LucasArts. So shouldnt that line read "LucasFilm Games (now LucasArts)" instead?

Quite right. You could have just changed it, but this is fine too. I'll go switch 'em around. Thanks. Thunderbird 00:35, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

i've found i sometimes need to make my argument first round here or it just gets reverted.

If you sign your posts (~~~~) you'll get better known, and that seems to lead to people trusting you more. If I'm making an edit that I think others will not agree with, I also post in Talk, like you did. And, hey, stuff gets reverted! It's how it is, no biggie, right? But good call on the above. Qermaq - (T/C) Image:Qermaqsigpic.png 21:18, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Home of the Underdogs - site moved

Per this article in Wikipedia , it appears that the-underdogs.org is no longer in service. The new URL is the-underdogs.info.

Someone with some time on their hands might want to revise the URLs for the HoTU links on this page until the .org site is revived.

Thanks for the info (no pun intended). Anyone wanna take this up? I could do it if y' don't... --DorianGray
I'm happy to do it in a day or so, if you guys don't mind waiting. I've noticed UDogs has been struggling lately, and I've been meaning to look into it and update the links. Thanks for the heads up. Thunderbird 05:24, 22 May 2006 (UTC)
Update Looks like somebody has more time on their hands. :P Thunderbird 18:40, 22 May 2006 (UTC)
Come on, man, that took like 10 seconds... even Notepad has Search & Replace these days... --phlip TC 19:31, 22 May 2006 (UTC)
The site has moved again, now to http://www.homeoftheunderdogs.net - looks like the directory has been revised as well so all the links will need to be manually updated. As of now they simply redirect to the homepage. Bleu Ninja 18:53, 19 February 2021 (UTC)

[edit] Lovecraft

Well, it just goes to show that he IS everywhere.
P.S. ha ha huh he ha hah! Na na nah ne na nah!---COLA 11:44, 12 June 2006 (UTC)


[edit] BioForge

Don't know if it's worth mentioning - the BioForge game was released on CD only, so SB wouldn't be able to actually have it on diskette, even if it was pirated (he would need more than 100 diskettes for that). This raises an alternative to the piracy theory: SB doesn't actually have games on those diskettes, but rather just sticks labels on them. Empty siggy page 14:25, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "Coloring" scene

I believe email 160 is one of the emails where the camera has a view of SB's desk, so... is there even a floppy disk container present? If so, can anybody add it in the list? (11 Dec. 2006)

Sadly, the location where the Floppy Disk Container would have been was both replaced by the colouring book and blocked by Strong Bad's husky head. So the sad fact of the matter is that The Brothers Chaps didn't bother putting an unreadable floppy in this email. (They did that once in lackey, they stuck the border on top of the container) Thunderbird 05:46, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Cakewalk

Surely "Cakewalk" from "cliffhanger" would refer to the old MIDI sequencer rather than an Atari 2600 game? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cakewalk_(sequencer) 74.101.83.189 15:16, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

The majority of the appearances refer to old computer games – usually from NES or Atari era... same as a lot of other game refs on the site, that's the era of games TBC seem to identify with... which whould make the game much more likely than the sequencer. --phlip TC 11:02, 4 September 2007 (UTC)
Well, the 1991 release of Cakewalk would put it in the right timeframe. Besides, it seems to me that this is the only game in the current list that (as a console game) was never actually released on floppies (with the exception of Marble Craze, which is special for other reasons). 65.92.17.150 15:57, 6 September 2007 (UTC)


[edit] I can count to D!

As it happens, there IS a videogame called "D".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D_%28video_game%29

I do not, in fact, know anything about it, aside from the fact that it exists. But there it is. And it was, according to the article, released on the PC, among other things. -GG Crono 22:14, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Too long, Clanky?

Clicking on the link from pizza joint to learn more about the game "D" took quite some time, as all the pics need to load. As we have more and more emails with more and more pictures, this is going to get out of hand at some point. Proposing eliminating pictures of the disk container, as it's pretty but unessential. Link to the pic instead. Thoughts? Qermaq - (T/C) Image:Qermaqsigpic.png 02:52, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

This is probably one of the most difficult pages to attempt to smallify, as there's nothing you can remove without losing something of value. It can't be broken down like, say, Weekly Fanstuff can, because there's no set dates or releases. It can't be alphabetised like Fonts, as the games aren't important by name, but by release. It'd be looked up by the toon it appeared in, not by name. I don't really have any feasible suggestions... --DorianGray 04:12, 31 March 2008 (UTC)
I suppose we could break it down by the number of the email (possibly one page for 1-50, another for 51-100, etc.) Heimstern Läufer 04:22, 31 March 2008 (UTC)
I considered and rejected breaking the page up based on the reasoning that likes should remain with likes if at all possible. The pics are the reason for slow response, so if the pics can be dispensed with, that's a better option than splitting the list arbitrarily. Qermaq - (T/C) Image:Qermaqsigpic.png 08:53, 31 March 2008 (UTC)
I don't see any problem breaking it up to smaller articles a-la Fanstuff and Sketchbook. I also don't see what's wrong to break it by years (2001-2008), or every certain number of emails (30, 50...). I think like all of the table-kind of articles, images are an important part. It may not be something spectacular, and it may seem unneeded as it's only a box with a floppy in it, but it's an image nonetheless, and it adds needed volume to the article. In short: Split it. Elcool (talk)(contribs) 11:26, 31 March 2008 (UTC)
I like E.L. Cool's idea of splitting it into (so far) 4 pages: sbemails 1-50, sbemails 51-100, sbemails 101-150, and sbemails 151-200. Trey56 00:12, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
And the ones from Arcade Game, strongbad_email.exe Discs One, Two, Three, Four, and Five, Strong Bad is in Jail Cartoon, Puppet Time, Main Page 22, HomestarRunner.com PAY PLUS!, Real-Live E-Mails, Sick Day, Podstar Runner, DNA Evidence? Where do they go? Misc.? I'm opposed to splitting. --DorianGray 03:37, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
Each of these corresponds chronologically to a set of 50 emails, and would go on the corresponding FDC subpage, I assume. There's a bit of ambiguity for only a few, such as the disks that appear on more than one strongbad_email.exe DVD, but I don't think it would be difficult to find a sensible solution for these few exceptions. Trey56 03:52, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Relentless

I tried doing Relentless, but couldn't summarize or format it properly. Could someone please help? Awexome 18:26, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

OK, I'm done. Sorry for the enormous amount of edits. Awexome 18:33, 31 March 2008 (UTC)
yeah, how about that show preview button, then you wouldn't have to be sorry... — Defender1031*Talk 18:35, 31 March 2008 (UTC)
Ugh. Awexome 04:34, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Relentless Description

The Relentless description needs cleanup. 04:34, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Homestar Ruiner Disk

The disk from Homestar Ruiner has been labeled as Peasant's Quest, although it could represent Police Quest.

Already listed. --DorianGray 10:06, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Duplicate Titles

Why is there two swashbuckler titles in the list. Shall I proceed to delete one? -Record307 Talk/Contribs 18:41, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

No way. One is from Comic Book Movie and the other is from sick day. No delete. MichaelXX2 mail_icon.gif link_icon.gif 20:28, 9 March 2009 (UTC)
But they both talk about the same freakin thing!-Record307 Talk/Contribs 22:05, 9 March 2009 (UTC)
You're right. The game does not need to be mentioned twice. I removed the second one. Homestar-Winner (talk) 20:02, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Seicross

"Seicross, Aka "Suckcross", was a Sports Action game for DOS and the NES and was released in 1988. It was made by FCI, another little-known company. The planet Colura and its peaceful inhabitants, the Petras, have been attacked by another badly-named and much more hostile tribe known as the Basrah. While most of the Petras have hidden underground, there are still a few left out in the open. It is the player's job to cruise on a bike through numerous terrains, scooping Petras up to safety. The graphics are simplistic, the music poor and repetitive, the controls are touchy, the game is basically the same thing over and over, and it doesn't have much of an ending."

Getting a bit personal, aren't we?--24.255.171.220 18:04, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Explanation of Floppy Disks

The explanation of floppy disks, in the first row, has largely gone unchanged since revisions in 2006 and is therefore quite outdated. I've updated the text and made a few judgement calls as a result, mostly leaning on wording from the Wikipedia article:

  • Compact discs are being phased out - most new computers do not have an optical drive as software and media is largely distributed online.
  • USB flash drives are still used so I have kept that text in.
  • I've chosen the wording of "cloud storage" to represent online distribution rather than the more generic "file sharing" as that is the term favored by Wikipedia.
  • The text references "8-in-one memory card readers". By now SD cards have all but become the memory card standard and many computers do include them, but in the interest of brevity I left them out. Another editor can add in if they feel it is warranted.
  • "The first floppy-less personal computers were made by NeXT" is a neat factoid but I don't really see its relevance in this case.

Overall I think the description benefits from brevity rather than becoming a history of portable media. "Floppy discs were used; now they're not as we use these instead" is sufficient rather than checking off CDs, memory cards, et al.

-- Bleu Ninja 18:06, 20 September 2019 (UTC)

I similarly made a judgement call to remove the Accurite.com link.
  • The site has been offline since 2018. I realize this is not disqualifying in and of itself, but since nothing 'specific' is referenced only in that link I think it is neater to stick to reference sites that are still online.
  • The page was very out-of-date; the copy appears to not have been updated since 1996 (notably, it referred to 3.5 inch floppies as "Today's standard"). Better to not muddle the waters with such out-of-date info.
  • Information on the page was largely irrelevant and overly technical. The majority of the text (up to 3/4 of the page) is related to detailed troubleshooting of the 'drive' hardware; this article talks about the 'disks' instead. In addition, it exclusively focuses on 3.5" rather than 5.25".

Floppy disks are legacy equipment so we don't need three sources (and especially not one as esoteric as this) breaking them down. Wikipedia provides a good high-level overview as well as historical context, while HowStuffWorks (while also somewhat dated) explains the hardware function in a much more approachable and visual way. Bleu Ninja 04:56, 14 March 2021 (UTC)

Hi Bleu Ninja, thank you very much for providing the reasoning for removing the link. While I don't think that information on floppy disks can ever become outdated (since floppies themselves are outdated) it makes sense that the article is overly technical for this wiki. I had not considered that when I brought back the link. I also somehow used the wrong date in the archive. Anyway, thanks again! --Stux 10:25, 14 March 2021 (UTC)

[edit] Cleanup Times?

After reading this article again and again (I read when I'm bored), I feel like it needs cleaning up. I was going to just go ahead and clean up the article, like I did with Minor Drinks a while back, but I've decided to set up a discussion to see what parts of the page others think should be improved beforehand. To me, the most important thing is that we have some consistency between descriptions of the games, which leads to a few subjects to discuss:

  • "Was" versus "is": A lot of the earlier descriptions begin with "X was a game...", while later ones usually start with "X is a game...". If the descriptions are to be changed to consistently use one of the two, which one? I personally want to go with "is", since "was" seems to imply these games stopped existing at some point, which is obviously not true.
  • Listing consoles: When listing what systems a game is available on, which ones should be mentioned? As many as possible, all of them, or just a few? Some descriptions only list the game being on PC, while others list nearly every specific personal computer they're on. And for actual gaming consoles, should only the big-name ones like the NES and Genesis be mentioned, or do we include the more obscure ones, like the TurboGrafx and 3DO? (Of course, this doesn't apply if they're only released on said obscure systems.)
  • Possible opinions: A lot of the descriptions have statements that seem to be simply opinions that don't mantain a neutral point of view. These statements include saying that Tongue of the Fatman has "unfortunately [...] an overtly high difficulty", that Axe of Rage "is regarded by many to be a disappointment", and of course, the apparently-infamous "Suckcross", whose former description was clearly written by someone who didn't like the game. How many of these lines should be kept or removed? I believe that if a game has a well-known and sourceable reputation, popular opinions about it can be mentioned, but they should be removed if it can't be proven that not only the person who made the description believes them.
  • 'Kipedia links: With the exception of the main game of each description, due to the sources section, should games, systems, companies, etc., have their Wikipedia articles linked to in the descriptions or not? Most of the descriptions don't have any links, but a handful do. For reoccurring terms, like systems, do we follow the rule to link every instance of something in a table, or would that result in too many links? (alternatively that rule only refers to links to this wiki's articles and I'm just a big fool)
  • IDs, image captions, and disk lables: Some of the lables drawn on the disks don't perfectly match the name of the game. Ignoring the lack of capitalization, this includes typos ("Nabunagas Ambition"), omitted parts of the titles ("Ugh-lympics"), and the title simply being too big to write as one word on the disk ("Star Flight"). Neither the IDs for the games or the captions for the disks' images seem to agree whether or not they should match the disks' lables or the games' proper titles. I'm personally torn about which would be better, and wouldn't mind either way, as long as we can agree on one in particular.

To show what these would imply for the article, please look at the recent changes I made to Seicross's description, which involves a few of these subjects. If you have any opinions on how this article can be improved, I'd be delighted to hear them! Keegster2 03:58, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

  • "Was" versus "is": "Is". Definitely "is". Generally the wiki uses historical present for describing things in-universe; I think it should also use present for things that haven't passed away.
  • Listing consoles: I'd generally lean toward listing all applicable systems. As far as PCs go, listing, say, DOS and Apple II as opposed to Windows and Macintosh can give an idea of the era in which the game was released. And a PC-88 game is definitely a different thing from a DOS game.
  • Possible opinions: While I agree that any statement about a game's reputation should be sourceable, in the case of Seicross in particular it might be worth explaining why the disk is labeled "suckcross".
  • 'Kipedia links: I do think that standard is meant to be for internal links, but if some things mentioned in the prose could be linked it could be helpful to link them. It's likely the whole reason Wikipedia links are so sparse is that no one thought to put them in, or that populating a page with Wikipedia links wasn't as common in the early wiki. The latter's also the reason the Halloween Costumes pages tended to link to random websites and IMDb rather than to Wikipedia.
  • IDs, image captions, and disk labels: My knee-jerk reaction is that IDs shouldn't be changed so that anchored links don't have to be changed, but I won't die on that hill. I have noticed that some labels beginning with digits are modified in the ID so a letter starts it instead. "fifty_K_race_walk" instead of "50_K_race_walk", "the_7th_guest" instead of "7th_guest" (correcting the title instead of spelling out the number), "threeDFX_drivers" instead of "3DFX_drivers", "four-D_boxing" instead of "4-D_boxing". I'm not sure if there's a technical issue or something preventing those from starting with a digit. As for the captions (which in these cases are hovertext), I'd say they should match what's on the label rather than the actual title of the game, and the line breaks should be indicated with spaces (which is also the reason I didn't revert this edit on the games menu article that eventually did get reverted).
DEI DAT VMdatvm center\super contra 10:44, 27 July 2021 (UTC)
Although I don't have much to say about the cleanup itself (which, overall doesn't sound like a bad idea), I do have a bit to say about updating anchor IDs. In short, they should never be updated. See below. --Stux 10:59, 27 July 2021 (UTC)
These all look like good calls to me. Personally I think all systems should be mentioned. For quite a while "PC" wasn't the catch-all it is today so it's good to mention the different types of computer; while relatively obscure consoles like the 3DO are also notable because they can give a sense of how widely-released a game was. I think only the first mention of a platform warrants a Wikipedia link, but I certainly won't stop you if you want to populate them all.
However, another thing to clean up is the "Sources" - namely the omnipresent HOTU links. Several years ago the domain completely changed and there was no migration, so all those links are broken. Worse, there's no clear way to update URLs - for instance, dead link http://hotud.org/component/content/article/43-action/20859 is now http://www.homeoftheunderdogs.net/game.php?id=1170. Personally, I think we could just remove those links altogether. As DEIDATVM mentioned, linking to third-party sites was a lot more common in the early days of the wiki; having Wikipedia, MobyGames, and GameFAQs should more than cover the subject with screenshots, info, and more. Fix or remove, but I don't think it's good to have dozens of links that auto-redirect to spammy landing pages. -- Bleu Ninja 16:29, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

[edit] Please don't change the Anchor IDs

Hi everyone, I've noticed that anchor IDs ocassionally change on this page and I think that's generally a bad idea. This edit was handled okay because it was followed up by a related updated. However, after seeing this recent anchor fix I searched the problematic edit and discovered that the change was made back in 2010! It turns out that edit changed a lot of IDs but most of them were okay since wikipedia automatically changes spaces to underscores. However, this illustrates how problematic it can be to update anchor links, especially long-standing ones! Even the wiki's search functionality isn't good enough to find what pages use which anchors. To that end, I reverted the anchor change here and on its corresponding army entry. Since the 2010 edits have been around for a very long time, I'm keeping those as-is, but I'll have to go through the pages related to those items to see if any updated names have been fixed. I'll also go through DEIDATVM's fix. I doubt there's a restriction on anchors beginning with numbers but I'll have to test that another day. --Stux 10:59, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

I’m not understanding what you’re saying. Why should we not fix ids that are misspelled? Especially if we then also fix links that use them. -61.204.232.1 11:13, 27 July 2021 (UTC)
Unlike regular wiki links, anchor links have many disadvantages that hinder easy maintenance. Here's an outline that hopefully clarifies the problems:
  • Unlike regular links, anchor links are not highlighted in red when they're bad (usually the pages exists but the target anchor may not). This makes it hard to identify bad anchor links at a glance.
  • Unlike regular links, anchor links do not have an easy way to trace back its use. In other words, I can't tell which pages use a specific anchor. This is a bigger problem when it comes to pages with lots of anchor links like this one (Floppy Disk Container). While we can see which pages are linked, we don't know which pages link to each of the games or programs listed. I've tried the search and it doesn't seem to help (at least not 100% of the time).
  • This leads to my final point: in the case of Seicross above, we were able to tell that it linked to army because that email is linked from that Floppy disk entry. However, because of the previous point, we can't tell if there's a main space research page, talk page, user page, or image page that also links to that entry.
Basically, by changing anchor IDs, we could potentially be breaking links on several pages and not know (sometimes for years at a time, maybe never.) If we had better tools to handle anchors it would be a different story, but those would not be easy to create (and likely hasn't received the attention that it needs) which is why Mediawiki has never had them. I hope this clarifies the issue. --Stux 11:36, 27 July 2021 (UTC)
Okay I think I understand better. Thank you for taking the time to explain. So are you saying this link is not accurate? -61.204.232.1 13:04, 27 July 2021 (UTC)
You're welcome. But the search you provided above actually is useful. I'm still somewhat distrustful of mediawiki's search tools, for example any anchors with spaces might not return the right results (or too many) and a partial search I had tried earlier did not work. --Stux 15:40, 27 July 2021 (UTC)
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