Maybe one of my favorite video game titles? I defy you to come up with 10 better counteroffers.

This would've been my first Telltale game. I was a Homestar Runner fan long before I even knew what Sam & Max or Monkey Island was. The Brothers Chaps had been talking about getting a non-browser game out for years by that point (for a while, they were working on an RPG for the Atari 2600 - no idea how on earth that would've worked), but this was the first time something like that actually came to fruition. I actually got the Wiiware release of Episode 1 on the day it came out. Had a good time with it, but I put off buying the remaining episodes until much later 'cause each episode was $15, and that was a lot for a high schooler with no income.

In retrospect, it's easy to see Strong Bad as a natural fit for Early Telltale's humor and presentation. There's sort of a loose, loopy cadence to the Adventure Game Logic governing Free Country, USA, and I could see someone who didn't know the source material seeing a lot of Sam & Max in how this game is written. As someone intimately familiar with Homestarrunner.com, I honestly just see it as a very natural take on the world. You have to think of Homestar Runner as a parody of a kids' variety show, basically, where new content would manifest in basically whatever fashion the Brothers Chaps found amusing that week. A lot of the times you tuned in to a low-stakes villainous luchador reading fanmail, but sometimes you tuned in for a G.I. Joe parody, or an exceedingly violent stick-figure comic about teenage girls, or a (deliberately) sloppily-made music video for a double-fictional rapper. It made for a super anarchical viewing experience, but that was part of the fun.

And Telltale did a pretty good job with that! This is probably the only major episodic release of Early Telltale to not feature an overarching narrative, but having a narrative would honestly miss the point of the work. You can even see an attempt at this, with the events of "Homestar Ruiner" flowing into the events of "Strong Badia the Free", but Telltale quickly steps away from this and just lets the characters sit in whatever ridiculous scenarios they wanna be in.

You can break down each episode to tributing an aspect of the web series. "Homestar Ruiner" is built around vague sports competitions, like the original children's book concept ("The Homestar Runner Enters the Strongest Man in the World Contest" - yes, if you didn't know, that's where this all comes from) and a lot of the early cartoons. "Strong Badia the Free" is the most general idea, playing with ideas like Strong Bad's self-declared micronation and the various implied armies and political bodies within Free Country, USA. "Baddest of the Bands" is the musical episode, paying tribute to the series' many fictional bands and song interludes. "Dangeresque 3: The Criminal Projective" is a loooong-overdue payoff to a running joke about the apocryphal third entry to Strong Bad's over-the-top, no-budget action movie series. "8-Bit is Enough", finally, is a nod to many of the side continuities and video game projects to come out of the website, including Stinkoman 20X6, Peasant's Quest, and Trogdor (and Gel-arshie, weirdly). This is on top of all the other little nods, like Teen Girl Squad (who get their own mini-game comic creators in the first three episodes), the completely auxiliary Videlectrix mini-games playable in the den, and the ability to make emails go A-DALEEEEETED.

Favorite episode is a toss-up for me. I love that "Dangeresque 3: The Criminal Projective" exists, finally, and that the episode doesn't break character until the end. But on the other hand, it's really fun seeing all the video games reinterpreted in "8-Bit is Enough", plus I love the joke of the Ultimate Video Game transformations being in cutting-edge 3D. Which, to perpetually behind-the-times Strong Bad, means "early PS1 graphics".

I have two complaints, one general and one nitpicky. The general issue is that not all of these characters translate well to 3D. Generally, characters with more simplistic designs like Strong Bad, Pom-Pom, Marzipan, etc look fine, but characters with more abstract designs like Homestar and The Cheat don't look great. This isn't specifically an issue of the game, though; there's a reason why we almost always see Puppet Homestar and Plush The Cheat from the side, in the puppet segments on the site.

As for the nitpicky one? Why does Marzipan get so excited about the King of Town eating bats live on stage? She's an over-the-top "save the animals" new age hippie! Bah! A weird blank on an otherwise tonally-faithful time.

Homestar Ruiner - 6/10
Strong Badia The Free - 7.5/10
Baddest of the Bands - 7.5/10
Dangeresque 3 - 10/10
8-Bit is Enough - 8.5/10

When I played this for the first time in middle school i thought it was the bees knees, but it's got a lot of filler coming back to it - the rapid-fire razor-sharp comedy of homestar is hard to stretch out to 5 games at 4-hour length each. The snippets of good content is definitely worth the trip though

Best part of the experience was getting to Dangeresque 3 in a call with Vi, it's always a treat seeing ppl react to strong bad stuff for the first time

Basically an interactive toon - if you like Homestar Runner, it's basically more of that in playable form. While the writing is largely as sharp as ever, there are a small handful of weirdly edgy lines here and there that felt a little out of line with H*R's usual tone. The puzzle design is also often as obtuse as to be expected with this style of game, with the current solution sometimes not being entirely clear and leading you to rely on guides unless you want to try "use cat on fence"-type trial-and-error. Overall an enjoyable time though, with charm to spare.

I loved this thing so much more than I thought I was going to

Letting the Brothers Chaps write this themselves was a stroke of genius on their part, and you can tell these guys know the adventure game genre inside and out

There was a bit of clunkiness here and there (that Risk-style minigame near the end, for one), but, dammit, I love it to pieces; honestly might be my personal favorite thing Telltale has put out