[00:00:00] Clip: So I remember back in my youth, uh, last year, the Bombers had a tremendous season.

[00:00:25] Ian: Hello, 

everybody, and welcome to the Intermillennium Media Project podcast. I'm Ian Porter. 

[00:00:32] Matthew: And I'm Matthew Porter. 

[00:00:33] Ian: He is my dad, I'm his son, and I'm taking over for not just one, but two episodes. Because- 

[00:00:41] Matthew: The millennial strikes back 

once again. 

[00:00:44] Ian: Exactly. It is quite the millennial strikes back this time, because welcome to Humongous May.

We've dealt with all sorts of stuff , on this podcast, that my dad has encountered all throughout his l- his life. Any time from when he was the smallest kid up through college is usually what we consider in bounds. And this time I had some things that were really influential to me, and the more I looked into them, the more I realized just how influential they were.

These were linchpins to a lot of my sense of humor, to a lot of my favorite picks of other things, things that I've even had us do takeovers on this podcast for. And so I wanted to give this a a proper, special. And I thought I'd drag my dad along with me- ... as we do on this podcast. 

[00:01:42] Matthew: Well, these, this is a great choice.

And you're right, this, this paved the way for so many other things that you enjoyed as a kid. 

[00:01:50] Ian: Oh, absolutely. , If you look at my Steam library now, you can probably, , link every single thing I've purchased back to these quintessential fundamental games I played. Yep. 

[00:02:06] Matthew: So yeah- But we're- ... we're back to video games.

[00:02:08] Ian: We're back to video games. 

[00:02:09] Matthew: We've done a few video games, both on streams and on podcast episodes. 

[00:02:14] Ian: Absolutely. Usually they're in my set, just because of media in general, the variety of games available, and some of the options to vi- revisit them are bigger now than ever before for my era. But there are things that you have that still, unfortunately, are a little hard to get into, get access to nowadays, I'll say.

We've had trouble with that, but I'm grateful that I can get to share some of the ones that were so important to me now. 

[00:02:44] Matthew: Yeah. 

[00:02:47] Ian: Because we're talking about the works of Humongous Entertainment. 

And we're gonna talk about a couple of their brands this time, and then next episode we're gonna talk about one of their specific lines of games.

But this one's just gonna be an overview of Humongous Entertainment in general, because these kids games were my childhood. 

[00:03:09] Matthew: And you didn't necessarily play all of the games that Humongous Entertainment published over the course of their history, but there were a few specific, , series- that were at the right time, at the right age for you, and that really, uh, were influential. 

[00:03:24] Ian: See, I even know how they came into our house- Oh, yeah ... which was a major part of it, because I distinctly remember you coming home one day with this new part for the home computer. And if I remember correctly, 'cause I've got this vague, fuzzy, you know, childhood memory of the box, I believe it was a Sound Blaster Discovery CD X8.

[00:03:53] Matthew: It was. I believe you are right, because we were on, on a budget back then, but I had just managed to upgrade my computer to, might have been a Pentium II. I know it was a Pentium. 

[00:04:05] Ian: Oh my goodness, yeah. A new 

[00:04:07] Matthew: motherboard, uh, and got the Sound Blaster and the CD drive as a kit. 

[00:04:13] Ian: Yep, it was like a kit that came with, 12 games and titles and applications and software things, and all of this equipment.

And so you were like, "This is great." We are, you know, "We'll, we'll upgrade the computer." And sitting there in the middle of the box art is this little yellow fish, and this company founded in 1992 by a bunch of ex-LucasArts employees. Uh, by the way, of like all of video games, like LucasArts probably helped invent whatever game you love nowadays.

There's so many things that go back there. LucasArts feels more like a rail cannon that , took in different creatives and launched them into the industry at high velocity. 

[00:05:01] Matthew: The things that they did so early in the early Apple and the Commodore days- LucasArts had the money to throw at this stuff, which meant a lot of people learned how to make games as young programmers or game designers, doing- Yep

stuff for them, and, and you're right, that just spread through the industry. 

[00:05:20] Ian: And so you take a bunch of the people who'd worked on their point-and-click adventure games who were like, "Well, we could make these for kids because a lot of kids enjoy playing these games, but they don't know what they're doing."

In fact, I was listening to a, talk by the founder, where he talked about... Or it's discussing exactly that. It's like, I saw that people, you know, kids playing one of my games, but he never, he didn't know words yet. But he liked clicking on stuff and he was learning verbs just by trying to understand the game, imagining completely different stories, but it was educational.

But I wanted to make a fun thing that could teach- ... not a teaching thing that was fun. 

[00:06:01] Matthew: Oh, that's a great distinction. I like that. 

[00:06:04] Ian: I don't know if I'm using his exact phrasing, but it was along those lines. It's like- Yeah ... he's not making educational games, he's making fun games, but they're engaging.

[00:06:13] Matthew: And that influence of Lucasfilm Games and later LucasArts, it is very, very concrete because all of these games we're gonna be talking about, they were created using SCUMM. Yeah. S-C-U-M-M, the Script Creation Utility for Maniac Mansion. Created by Lucasfilm Games to make Maniac Mansion, and it became the, the tool by which every- everybody who made these games at Humongous Entertainment, and so many others, uh, wound up- Oh

creating their games. 

[00:06:45] Ian: Oh, yeah. So you... I- if, if people are wondering why episode 135 of our podcast was Myst- Yes ... it's because I grew up playing point-and-click adventure games from Humongous Entertainment- ... and it has led to me being a person that does a yearly speed run of Myst for my own enjoyment. Talk about the, the evolution in transport.

[00:07:10] Matthew: And there was a, a year or two, couple of years there, when you were, uh, were little. On a, a Friday night we would go to the computer room and we would play a, a Humongous Entertainment game with you, and then it would be your bedtime. We'd tuck you in, and then Mrs. Darling Wife and I would go and play Myst or Riven- 

[00:07:28] Ian: Exactly

[00:07:28] Matthew: in the next room 

so you could fall asleep to their soundtracks, 

[00:07:31] Ian: and- Which, which had its own impact on me. But Humongous Entertainment, it's a bunch of silly creative people with early MS Paint tools- ... and SCUMM building these fascinating little point-and-click worlds, and they made different levels with different amounts of parody of genre and such.

And they had, I'd say, five main series. Eh, six. Depending on what you wanna think about. But the ones I played with, because I was a little older by the time we got it, I was playing a lot of Freddi Fish, Spy Fox, and the Backyard Baseball series. And those are the ones I wanna talk about today, because each of those is a specific kind of Humongous Entertainment weirdness.

[00:08:29] Matthew: Another of their really popular series was Putt-Putt, but that was for the younger set, wasn't it? They were pretty- Yeah ... well-categorized by age or by, by reading and, and, and logic capabilities. And you , were already a little bit too old for Putt-Putt by the time we got this equipment. 

[00:08:47] Ian: Yeah, I was a little past Putt-Putt, and I was on the, the cusp of leaving Freddi Fish realm- Mm-hmm

right as we got it. But Freddi Fish and the Case of the Missing Kelp Seeds was the one that was packaged with the Sound Blaster. Yes. So that's the one I played a bunch early on. And I think once that was, like, established, you picked up some of the other games in little packs elsewhere. 

Because the other games I got later were ones you bought.

I think you went to the Circuit City nearby. 

[00:09:16] Matthew: Yes, yes. And remember CompUSA. 

[00:09:18] Ian: Oh, goodness. CompUSA. Oh, goodness. 

[00:09:20] Matthew: May it rest in peace. 

[00:09:23] Ian: Oh. , The searching I did for this, I have ruined my eBay listings- , because now it's trying to sell me, like, "Do you wanna pay $2,000 for an old Sound Blaster card?"

And I'm like, "

How much?" 

[00:09:36] Matthew: Oh, I've probably got all that equipment still in the basement. 

[00:09:40] Ian: Well, hey, that's, yep, it, it apparently, actually, not apparently, it sells. It's popular. I wanna kind of like increment up, because there's an interesting bit of story at the end here- Sure ... for one of these brands.

So I'm gonna start with the youngest one, which is Freddi Fish. Ah, Freddi Fish is an odd series. I'm gonna go over just, like, the first game, but I can go over the first game very simply. Describe to your friend the plot of a Scooby-Doo episode. Set it underwater. Done. Freddi Fish is a simple mystery point and click series.

[00:10:24] Matthew: But- And the mysteries, they give just enough structure for the fact that the real point of the game is just wandering around and clicking stuff. 

[00:10:34] Ian: Exactly. Humongous Entertainment is known for just beautiful, weird visuals- Where 90% of the things you can click on make strange noises and cause weird animations.

I, I cannot be mad at kids these days because I have found what TikTok was as a protozoa. It is the Humongous Entertainment weird noises. But it's there. It's, it's simple gameplay. It's fun though. It's fully voice acted, which is kind of the impressive stuff at the time. Fully voice acted animated games like that, they are, they were impressive for their time.

[00:11:18] Matthew: There was a lot going on. And we say animated. This was, low frame rate, simple line drawings and shaded colors. Very, very rudimentary, and yet it was crisp, it was clear. It was equivalent to a comic book aimed at early readers in terms of its visuals, and it was just right. You don't need- Yeah

high res graphics. You don't need super smooth, fast animation. You just need to know that if you click, something's going to move in response to that click. If you tell Freddy to go somewhere and look at something, he's gonna swim across the screen and look at it. And it had- Yeah ... just the right level of detail and feedback.

[00:11:59] Ian: Yeah. It was very, very responsive, and honestly, they were brilliantly programmed on the backend all of these games, everything Humongous Entertainment made that's a point and click adventure game, does stuff that more modern point and click adventure games don't even bother with, which is full randomization.

Yes. Like, the puzzles will change every time. Replay value for these is way higher than it has any reason to be. But there's a love and passion for the creative element in there, for the medium they're working with, where they will make automatic, uh, responses. They will make if/then statements built in that cover practically anything you can do.

I've never found a way to soft lock- ... there's, um, get, get trapped in a, like un- unwinnably in a Humongous Entertainment game, and that's, that's actually because it's really well built. 

[00:12:58] Matthew: It is, and it, it knows how simple to be and how complex to be. Essentially- Mm-hmm ... it's a series of screens. On any given screen, there is usually a character you can interact with who's going to give you some information and/or there's a thing you can click to get something into your inventory that you need.

Yeah. And/or There are just random things to click on because they give you fun and interesting responses. And so- That's all you need for any given screen. 

[00:13:28] Ian: That's all you need, and I will als- I will say, like we're, we're not even talking about the- ... Freddi Fish story here. No. Because there's not much. 

[00:13:35] Matthew: No, yeah, not a lot of story to tell.

[00:13:36] Ian: Not a lot of story in those. But you can also just tell that these people had fun making it, because the, the, the amount of potential things is infinite. You do not know if you're gonna click something and get slapstick humor. You don't know if you're gonna click it and get a, a classic film reference, or a strange-

David Lynchian avant-garde parody of modern advertising. You have no clue what you're gonna receive. I have seen online, this is gonna be a deep cut, I have seen online people use the audio sound for the Worm Doodles ad out of Freddi Fish- ... like a sleeper agent activation code. Right. It's like you walk into a Discord server of people exactly my age, within a, within a specific range.

You play that noise and you will just cau- cause certain people's eyes to light up. It is weird, but it is effective. And that says something about like the, the strange variety that these offered.

[00:14:44] Clip: You gotta have 'em. Mm-hmm, Worm Doodle. Squishy, squashy Worm Doodle in all your favorite flavors. Original, chocolate, sea cucumber, lemon, orange, red, and new fat-free. Grab 'em, 'cause you gotta have 'em!

[00:15:03] Ian: I'd say like 80% of these games are not narrative. They are interactive fun environments.

[00:15:13] Matthew: we could talk about the story of, Freddi Fish- and the Missing Kelp Seeds, though. . It's fairly dramatic. You've got a kingdom on the verge of famine. Yes. A mad king who's heedless of the plight of his subjects, and one brave fish- Mm-hmm ... who is attempting-

to do what's right. 

[00:15:32] Ian: Sent by an elder in the community who knows the ways that will actually repair things. 

[00:15:37] Matthew: Yes. 

[00:15:38] Ian: Uh, oh, we have organized crime. 

[00:15:41] Matthew: Of course, of course. 

[00:15:43] Ian: Because the squid father... I mean, okay, you're set- you're, you're setting a thing. Yeah, that, this is, this is a fine example. You're targeting a game towards children and you're making deep The Godfather references. That's going right over the kids' heads, straight to the parents. 

[00:16:00] Matthew: As with a lot of creators of media for this kind of audience, they were smart enough to include things to interest or at least entertain the parents playing with them.

Yes. The op- the weird little jokes, the strange bits of subversion, the, the classic, comedy duo bits with the two, mobster sharks. 

[00:16:25] Ian: The classic, comedy pair that is Freddi herself and Luther her sidekick fish who play off of the competent and the ridiculous one, who have this, brave and the cowardly one dynamic in this perfect mix.

Yes. It's, it's classic humor in that sense, and it's a fine introduction. But yeah, you've got, you know, mobsters stealing treasure from the kingdom on the verge, and it's, it's very simple puzzles. It's like, "Can you find four things?" It's interesting that the four things change every time. 

[00:17:01] Matthew: But there's also kind of an aquatic version of 127 Hours in there.

Huh? Oh, yeah, there is. What in the w- ah. There's a fish who is on a page with his fin stuck under a rock or something, and- Yes ... Freddi and Luther have to go and find a board to use as a lever to free them, and I'm thinking this could get ugly if they're not quick with that. 

[00:17:28] Ian: Yeah. There, it is. Oh my goodness, you're right.

The, I, I, I will say we've, we've discussed before, like, TV tropes kind of things and the, uh, the classic concept, uh, of fridge horror that I love so much. 

[00:17:44] Clip: Yes. 

[00:17:45] Ian: Human Kids Entertainment is so full of fridge horror.

[00:17:48] Matthew: Oh, it is. It is. 

[00:17:49] Ian: It's so much. So many little things that it's like this is gonna go right over the kids' heads.

This is going to slightly scare the parents. But Freddi Fish is simple. The later games do things like what if we did a Freddi Fish with a Indiana Jones-ish temple theme or a Western theme? And the fact that they can just play around with that is pretty awesome. They made five games so that's pretty good. 

[00:18:19] Matthew: And it's a very classic cartoon approach where we've got our same- characters, we've got our same tropes, we've got similar comedy and action beats, and we'll just dress them up differently by putting them in a different environment. Exactly. And that works, especially for that age where that repetition is part of what attracts kids at a certain age.

[00:18:38] Ian: Yeah. If the kid really does burn through all of one of these games, it's been long enough for you to get another- ... because there's just so much, to do in each one. And I, I always appreciated that. Freddi Fish was not one I dove into, pun not intended- ... too much, because it was for a little younger, but I remember it clearly as that first introduction to, like, a kid's video game, point and click adventure.

It was right, it was, like, right in there right when I was doing stuff.

And from there, we moved, I moved on to some of the other games. I think you came home some other time with- ... another CD or two. 

[00:19:22] Matthew: Yep. 

[00:19:23] Ian: And I encountered one of the next ones, which was Spy Fox. I was never quite sure where they were targeting Spy Fox, but because a James Bond parody for kids sounds hazardous 

[00:19:40] Matthew: at times.

Yes. It was clearly a James Bond parody, right down to all the supporting characters and the like, and yet it was, even though it was targeted for older kids than Freddi Fish or some of the other Humongous games, it was on the higher end of their age range generally. Yeah. It was still targeted at kids who were probably too young to have seen a lot of James Bond movies.

And yet the idea of the suave super spy in the dinner jacket and the bow tie, that was enough in the culture, they'd kind of recognize that. And to some extent, it's the kind of thing that the, the parents would recognize and maybe explain to the kid to the extent that it was required.

[00:20:18] Ian: Oh, yeah. Spy Fox came out in 1997, so it's hitting the Circuit City and the, the CompUSA shelves exactly as all of the, theaters in the area are putting up their big posters for Tomorrow Never Dies. 

[00:20:35] Matthew: Yes. 

[00:20:37] Ian: So it's like we are, we are just into the Pierce Brosnan era of s- of, uh, Bond.

I can see them like, "Oh, one of the Pierce Brosnan films did really well. Hop on, grab that- ... popular pop culture wave." And I remember these ones because they were more creative adventures. You had gadgets you had to figure out the right place to use. You had missions in different places. You had villains to stop.

It, it became a lot more engaging. It was more plot heavy. The jokes were still going over my head- Mm ... you know, seven out of 10 times. 

But I remember these ones more because of what they were. 

[00:21:22] Matthew: And making him a, a secret agent on a spy mission, it was a very natural structure for this kind of game. You didn't need to have to come up with some way for a little kid fish to have a, an assignment to solve a mystery.

This is Spy Fox's job. His boss tells him he's gotta go infiltrate some place with shady characters- Mm ... and find certain things, and he's got the, his version of Q Branch who gives him his gadgets. Yeah. And, uh, he's on his way. He's got his job to do, and he can then go screen to screen and meet the people and talk to them and find the things, and all of that.

[00:22:02] Ian: And, and Spy Fox was one of my first encounters of, like, full-on cut scenes in video games. 

[00:22:09] Matthew: Oh. 

[00:22:10] Ian: The- there are entire sections which are just, like, animated shorts of the plot, of what's happening, of villains monologuing their plans at you. Of, you know, quippy one-liners from our main character as he defeats them.

These are more narratively focused games, but they're also, like, one of the first instances I got of video games being a source of story. It's like, oh, I am hearing a tale of, good guys versus bad guys, of intrigue, of heroism through this. It's an odd reference, but it's one of those pieces where I remember thinking about Spy Fox games after I'd left the computer, because a story sticks with you differently.

Suddenly it's like, oh, someone's trying to steal all the milk in the world. Someone is trying to power a giant robot to destroy the, the world. I remember those. 

[00:23:08] Matthew: And they were an interesting bridge between the kind of storytelling you'd get in kids' picture books or chapter books, and the kind of storytelling you can get from an interactive video game.

Exactly. In that they were interactive. What you did affected how the story played out in terms of what you saw on screen. There was really no way to lose or to not beat a Spy Fox game. It was just a question of how long is it going to take you. Are you going to doggedly click enough buttons? I don't think there was ever a setup where the robot actually destroys the world, that kind of thing.

[00:23:44] Ian: Actually, there is. Oh, there is. Spy Fox games are weird because they involve the very last mission always includes a timing puzzle. True. A quick ti- a quick time event where you have to click. You can reload, but there's always this like if you're not fast at clicking, you will lose and watch the bad guy win or escape.

[00:24:08] Matthew: Oh, they actually do show you, oh, the bad guy's plan coming to fruition. But they 

[00:24:12] Ian: can show you- Oh, well I guess- ... the bad guy winning- I stand corrected ... which is kind of wi- which is kind of wild. 

[00:24:17] Matthew: Yeah. 

[00:24:18] Ian: Uh- 

[00:24:19] Matthew: Little kids know f- learning, learning early that they can get the bad ending. 

[00:24:22] Ian: Yeah. The bonus ending is, is available where the player catches the villain.

It's only there if you click the option at the right moment. Ah. It is a part of every single one of those games. Wow. So it's like you might have stopped most of their plan- ... but they'll get away to do something else if you're not swift. And talk about a check as to whether or not you have a good home computer.

Because these things could be a little rougher, but they were still very well made. 

[00:24:49] Matthew: And that may be one of the differences between Spy Fox and the Humongous Entertainment games that were made for younger audiences, and I might be thinking of some of those rather than Spy Fox. Uh, did like w- w- was it possible in Freddy Fish that the undersea kingdom was actually going to starve?

No. I didn't, I didn't think 

[00:25:09] Ian: so. Freddy, Freddy Fish could be left a- could be left running forever and nothing would go wrong. Okay. 

[00:25:15] Matthew: That makes sense then- But yeah ... that at some point they, they introduce more and more sharp ideas of consequences. 

[00:25:22] Ian: Yeah. they ran a parody of that.

Everything from, you know, Miss Monkey Penny- ... and Professor Quack, and these are... I, I kind of don't know how to describe more. Spy Fox is a weirdly condescending- ... quick talking guy. It's like he's, he's a character who I almost don't like the older I get because he's just kind of a jerk at times, but he's here to do a mission, which is more accurate to a James Bond interpretation than I'd expect.

A tiny bit more book James Bond s- slipping into Spy Fox than shows up- ... in some of the modern movies, and that's a scary sentence. 

[00:26:04] Matthew: You take that really snide, mean-spirit, not mean-spirited, but that really snide, superior, cutting wit that you get in, like yeah, some of the Sean Connery and, and some of the early Roger Moore James Bond movies, and here it's a, uh, a wise-cracking fox giving you these lines.

[00:26:26] Ian: Yeah. It's like, what is, what is MI6 in the Zootopia world doing? It's these games. Yes. Uh, it's, it's weird, but it's very fun, and once again, they've got that whole randomizer system, so if you know the answer to a puzzle, there's a chance you're not gonna get that puzzle next time. 

[00:26:44] Matthew: Mm-hmm. 

[00:26:46] Ian: That replay value was a lot to these games.

It was a powerful piece of being able to just draw you back in every single time. I can't remember lines out of Spy Fox quite as well, but I remember tone so heavily. this weird heightened exaggerated world that is always under threat.

And then, the last one of the set I wanted to do to describe kind of Humongous Entertainment's oeuvre to begin with is the Backyard Sports series, which doesn't seem like it's made by the same people, and yet is exactly made by the same people.

Backyard Baseball is a game I remember so well because it was a really good sports simulator. 

[00:27:36] Matthew: It was a remarkably good baseball simulator. You're right. 

[00:27:39] Ian: Yeah. It's, it's a very accurate to the game. They, they took their time when they were building these to just make the best dang sports game that happened to be featuring a bunch of kids playing at their local field instead of the big stadium or something.

[00:27:58] Matthew: And it had a lot of cartoony elements and special trick pitches and things you could throw in, but it also had, it was a, a team management simulator where you had to assemble your team carefully and balance all their strengths. It had mechanics for things like pitcher fatigue and other things that you would need to ke- take into account when managing, uh, a team.

Yeah, it had- So it was more than just a video game baseball. It was m- had much more depth than that. 

[00:28:27] Ian: And it had this weird and wild cast of characters- ... of kids who covered like every different community they could think of. Uh, ev- everyone from, our local, , greaser kid with an Italian and New York accent to a, African American girl who's really, really talkative, to Pablo Sanchez who had the greatest stats in every game and always had all his lines in Spanish.

[00:28:59] Matthew: There was the tall, lanky farm kid. Yeah. And it was all of these different people, but they were all part of the same neighborhood where there were a couple of dozen kids all living there who all liked to play baseball. 

[00:29:12] Ian: Yeah, or whatever other sport, because after baseball did well, they did all these other ones.

I specifically had baseball, but this, this series, the Backyard Sports series, became its own entire other line that kept growing. 

[00:29:27] Matthew: And th- this is a series that I think highlights some of the changes in Humongous Entertainment as ownership changed and other things, because eventually they introduced, like, kid versions of famous athletes.

Mm-hmm. 

[00:29:46] Ian: Um, that was a, I believe 'cause Humongous Entertainment did so well, they got purchased. they got purchased actually by a group called Infogrames, who also purchased the other license to a thing you referenced earlier in this episode. They bought the license to Atari. And see Hu- Hum- Humongous Entertainment was owned by Atari Inc.

for a while. And as they did, they evolved it and sold it off to another group who decided to introduce official sports stars as kids into the franchise. But the fact that this franchise was big enough to live through that was huge. The first game though, yeah, it's a sports simulator, but it's, it's still got the weird sense of humor.

It's got color commentators that are going off on the weirdest tangents. 

[00:30:40] Matthew: Yes, they are the best. What was it, Vinny was the color... They would had a, a, a, a girl who was the, the statistics-oriented play-by-play person, and then Vinny, was it, who was the- 

[00:30:52] Ian: Uh, yeah. The two of them were Sunny Day- Right ... and Vinny the Gooch.

[00:30:59] Matthew: Vinny the Gooch. And he would just have these bizarre stories- Oh ... 'cause he was th- just there for color. 

[00:31:05] Ian: I ca- I ca- yeah, he was the color comment... I- I cannot find the clip of it to save my life, but I remember sitting there playing this game, and in the middle of, like, a par- uh, of an inning, they go off onto their little color commentary thing, and this character Vinny goes onto this weird diatribe about, like- "I used to have a good fastball, but I've never been able to pitch like that again."

"Yeah, that was before the war." "What war?" Says, says the other commentator- 

[00:31:38] Matthew: Driving Sunny crazy. 

[00:31:39] Ian: Driving Sunny crazy. The, the thing that I remember is the fact that my mother sitting next to me loses it at this. Because this glances off my little brain as weird, but it hits her sense of humor dead on.

And I laugh up a storm re- at her reaction to it, if I remember correctly. 

[00:32:05] Matthew: That's one of the reasons why we like playing these games with you. Yeah. Because they had all of that weird sense of humor that just fit ours so well.

[00:32:11] Ian: Exactly. It's, 

it's, it's this, you know, the world is weird. I almost feel like this was the world is weird, kid, welcome to it-

kind of attitude. It never was trying to hide it from the kids, and if the kids got the humor, they found it fun too. But it was never shy about just going for the joke. 

[00:32:34] Matthew: Right. It- And the- It did not explain the jokes to you. You could get them, or you could not get them, or your parents could explain them to you.

Exactly. 

[00:32:43] Ian: And the Backyard series kind of gets rid of the, the jingling keys of click everywhere, s- hear weird things happen. But it replaces that with much more constant gameplay aimed for an older kid who can, you know, keep up with the game and, uh, keep up with sports in that sense. 

[00:33:07] Matthew: Yeah, it's definitely a different kind of game.

Mm-hmm. Not in the progression of point and click adventures that we've been talking about from Humongous, and yet it was clearly done with the same kind of sensibility, the same kind of cartoony art style. But again- Mm ... elevated a little bit because it's for a, an older set of kids. Yeah. That's actually- And that weird humor.

[00:33:26] Ian: That's actually a great point. Yeah. Freddi Fish has this, , rough sketchy, , line style. 

[00:33:33] Matthew: Very coloring book-like. 

[00:33:35] Ian: Very coloring book, yeah. Spy Fox was all angular, avant-garde, uh, New Yorker magazine is what my mind wants to jump to. Oh, yeah. Like, kind of art deco cover art style.

[00:33:50] Matthew: Mm-hmm. 

[00:33:50] Ian: And Backyard Baseball is smooth, curved line, mascot design. Yeah. There, there's something very, like, Japanese prefecture mascot art to some of the heavy line work designs they've got. 

[00:34:04] Matthew: With a little bit of Charles Schulz Peanuts thrown in. 

[00:34:07] Ian: Yeah, definitely some Peanuts thrown in there. The fact that this one company can have such a wide variety of art styles is another part of it.

All of them work- And all of them are given care and respect, but they are matched to the tone of what they're doing- in a very reasonable way. And the Backyard Baseball game looks brilliant. And I'm gonna just say, all of the things we're mentioning are available still o- You, you can go play them if you want.

They're easy to get on Steam and such, so it's great. I, I played through some of these again to remind myself, and I was surprised that they were engaging to some extent still. Backyard Baseball one was definitely trickier because if you didn't have a computer that was running quite as fast, that made it harder.

But at the same time, there's this expected progression of computer upgrades at that time. 

[00:35:05] Matthew: True. And every aspect of the gameplay had some element of timing in terms of pitching or, or hitting. 

[00:35:12] Ian: I actually feel a little bad that I probably did a lot of damage to your- ... to the mouse of your good computer there, just trying to get the timing right and being, you know, a kid hammering at the button too hard.

[00:35:25] Matthew: Well, you've seen the way I type, so I can't blame anybody else for damaging keyboards and the like. 

[00:35:31] Ian: Yeah, yeah. My, my, my father trained on typewriters dealing with, uh- ... dealing with that. It, it definitely... I, I, I felt weird sometimes 'cause it's like I would, I would slow down your computer or, or, uh- Not a problem

hit your mouse very hard. And it's like, "Oh, no. Dad's gonna be mad." He's not. Nah. But then the- these were all things I got to play in your office. And we've described before how your office was this inspiring place full of weird, magical wonder. And one of those things was this computer, this device my dad keeps upgrading and making better, and there's these fun games I get to play on it.

And the Humongous Entertainment, the little noises that it made, that those games made, are still baked into my brain somewhere.

There are things I pick up in the modern era that in the back of my head I hear, "Woo-hoo," little noises happen. And I know they are out of that same sound library that that company used for everything. 

[00:36:34] Matthew: Just this week on Blue Sky, somebody posted a picture of '90s era computer speakers with the question, "Okay.

What song is playing on these speakers?" But as soon as I saw the speakers, I did not think of a song. I s- started to think of lines from Humongous Entertainment games- Yeah ... or music from Myst. 

[00:36:58] Ian: Oh, absolutely. I think we're gonna have to go to our final questions here because there's interesting pieces I wanna put into our later information on this.

[00:37:09] Matthew: I think you're right. I think it is about time for our final questions. 

[00:37:14] Ian: Okay. So if you're enjoying the podcast, we can be found at immproject.com. We've got all of our back episodes there. You can go back to listen to our episode about Myst. You can hear some of the other takeovers I've done.

We've got a contact page there. We'd love to hear from you about, games you remember or interactions you've had.

We also have our shop there if you're looking for, some fun shirts or coffee mugs. We've got things for Kosho and the classic holiday favorite of Die Hard. And of course, we've got our Patreon, there's bonus episodes there available for people who join. We even have, options up from, our basic $3 a month up to our IMMP Movie Club.

If you wanna enjoy some of the movies, TV interactions we've got here, you can join there and experience some of the media we're talking about before the episodes even come out. It's a great way to join in and be part of the community.

[00:38:18] Matthew: And you can also just, follow us, free of charge on Patreon as a way- Absolutely ... to keep track of what we're up to. Absolutely. And 

[00:38:27] Ian: Dad, where can they find you? 

[00:38:29] Matthew: Well, you can find me as bymatthewporter.com on Blue Sky or Mastodon or most other places, or YouTube. Best place to go is bymatthewporter.com, which is a website where you will find my blog as well as links to whatever else I'm doing.

Uh, right now you'll also find on bymatthewporter.com information about my new book. If you're listening to this podcast on the day that we release it, the book will be out tomorrow. If you're listening- Woo! ... to this any time in the future from there, the book's available now, so you can go to your favorite online bookseller, or you can go to your favorite, brick-and-mortar bookstore and ask them to order it.

The title is Questions for the Dead. It is a Martin Rodak psychic mystery about a- Yeah ... a, a grouchy private eye and his strangely talented friends. So I hope you'll give it a try. 

[00:39:23] Ian: It's a fun story. I, I, I like it. It's good. Yeah. And Ian, where can people find you? I can be found most places as ItemCrafting, be that ItemCrafting on Blue Sky or ItemCraftingLive on Twitch.

I try to stream most every Thursday and couple of other days sometimes sprinkled in, especially since I'm talking about games. If you wanna come see me play some of these point-and-click adventures, come on over. We're... I'm happy to chat, I'm happy to pull up things and make projects and craft crafty designs based on what we're playing right there.

So I'll, I'll take what's on the screen and- ... bring it into the real world along with you. 

[00:40:04] Matthew: Watching you play Spy Fox recently was a lot of fun. Brought back memories. 

[00:40:08] Ian: Oh, yeah. Uh, that, that was we- that was wild. And it's kind of funny to hear it's kind of funny to be like, "I'm here with my, with my glowy RGB gaming rig-

playing Spy Fox." It's like, ah, it doesn't matter what the happens with the computer, the game is still there. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. So that moves us into our final questions and our further information. So, uh, the Humongous Entertainment things I think I'm just gonna have to put as a play, but they're also not f- they're, they're just designed for kids.

I'm gonna put that out there. So I think it's a watch. 

[00:40:54] Matthew: I think so. I'm gonna say play, but step one, find a kid. Yes. Preferably- ... one that you know, with their parent's permission, if you have kids. Mm-hmm. If you are, aunt or an- Yeah ... uncle or, a babysitter, that's a great... it's, it's a great set of, uh, games, great series of games to use to introduce kids to video games- Mm-hmm

or point-and-click games, and just as something to have fun with them. So if you've got a kid in your life who might enjoy this, definitely seek them out. And if you don't, they can still be fun either to play, or as you say, to watch. 

[00:41:33] Ian: Yeah. There's an entire subgenre of things that Humongous Entertainment games have become that I wanna reference, which is they are very popular on YouTube with people who have never played them before, having a fun, weird time trying out these strange kiddie escapes for the first time.

I have watched big name, , YouTubers, uh, uh, Proton Jon, AKA Claire, you know of them, uh, the Game Grumps, members of Loading Ready Run- ... have all played Humongous Entertainment games and had wonderfully wild times. It, it says something that the mentality that makes a great kids game also makes a great couple of friends hanging out a couple of drinks in- Yes

playing some weird point and click adventure game energy. 

[00:42:25] Matthew: Watching Ben and Adam from Loading Ready Run play Freddi Fish recently, a lot of fun. Be warned that some of these grownups playing Humongous Entertainment games, these, uh, these videos or streams are not for kids because their commentary- Yes ... is, is definitely for the grownups.

[00:42:43] Ian: It's definitely for the grownups, but if you're like, "I wanna just know what these games are-" Yeah ... "and it's just me," they're fine and fun, and they are weird and wild. They- And we'll 

[00:42:53] Matthew: put links to some 

[00:42:54] Ian: of these in the show notes so you can find them. Absolutely. Um, but yeah, these games are... Like, find someone who wants to watch, you know, who wants to play them.

If you've got a kid in your life, think of these as an option. They are, they are built by people who started out wanting to make something that was fun but smart, and they are done with a love and passion for creativity. That means they are still plenty of, plenty of fun and still relevant to kids nowadays, I'd say.

[00:43:27] Matthew: Right, and kids are not gonna be concerned with what is the, the latest- Mm-hmm ... series of video games. I don't wanna play this, I wanna play Horizon Zero Dawn. I'm probably dating myself with that, uh, not necessarily a new game. Um, they s- they still appeal to kids, and kids are still going to enjoy this.

[00:43:47] Ian: Mm-hmm. But here's the interesting thing. Humongous Entertainment had a rough time. . They went defunct in 2013. The company c- itself is completely gone. They got purchased and dissolved into numerous things. They were handed off back and forth everywhere. They were always considered valuable enough to stick around, but never, never enough to make a lot more,

until more recently.

A company picked up all of the license to their stuff and ported every single game they could over to Steam. And even more recently, and part of why I wanted to do the timing of this when I did, is that an entire company picked up the Backyard Sports series.

[00:44:41] Matthew: So that was one of the things that happened around 2013, was that as the assets were purchased, they were split up, right?

And the Backyard Sports went in one direction, and these other point and click games went in another. 

[00:44:52] Ian: Not quite. They were actually all under one roof for a while. 

[00:44:55] Matthew: Yeah, they were all bought by Tommo for a while. 

[00:44:58] Ian: Yeah. But f- since then, uh, and, and Tomo in 2022 started porting these games for, like, the Nintendo Switch.

[00:45:11] Matthew: Wow. 

[00:45:13] Ian: But just recently, a company formed to buy the Backyard Sports brand completely separate. Mm-hmm. So they purchased that as a separate line, and they are called Playground, and they're releasing a new Backyard Baseball game just this year. 

[00:45:35] Matthew: Very cool. 

[00:45:36] Ian: It's not often that we get to talk about a brand that is bringing itself back like that.

But it says so much that the Humongous Entertainment brands were popular enough that the company that owns the old ones is like, "I can s- we, we can still make these work on the newest things because they're worth playing." And another company will build itself from the ground up to buy up and make new of one of their game lines, because it meant so much to them.

[00:46:06] Matthew: And it shows how they filled such an im- an important niche in, in video games and computer games, and they did it so well that when they stopped, nobody else was able to come in and essentially take that place because nobody had the exact sensibilities that made- ... the Humongous Entertainment games so attractive.

[00:46:26] Ian: Yeah. It, it takes the right amount of crazy enough to make it work. It takes the people who will throw strange Easter eggs into the back of their games, but love making the games so polished and nice on the surface as well. Yeah. But yeah, it's, I, a part of why I was happy to do this now is that, you know, there's a game series I need to talk about next episode in much more detail, and I needed to have this, this early thing 'cause I'd otherwise just ramble for way too long in that episode.

[00:47:00] Matthew: And it's an important context too. It's an important context to what we'll talk about next time. But it's, it also gives some context to, as you were saying before, some of the previous Millennium Strike, some of the previous Millennial Strikes Back episodes where you shared things that were important to you as a kid.

Uh, I don't think that you, uh, are as into Homestar Runner as you are- Yeah ... were it, were it not for, uh, Humongous Entertainment, for 

[00:47:27] Ian: example. Oh. Oh, that's a fine example. Honestly, Humongous Entertainment primed me to be ready for the strange, offbeat humor. 

[00:47:37] Matthew: Yes. 

[00:47:38] Ian: It's like, there's this, like, just alternative stand-up comedy stylings-

that hooked onto me early. I, and I'm, I'm the sort of person, you know, I was- I was early on loving hunting around and clicking these games and finding the secrets. So my response is a, a loving revive, but a, I don't know if anyone can. 

[00:48:04] Matthew: Yeah. I, I would say- The Backyard is getting 

[00:48:06] Ian: revived, but can you do that with anything else?

[00:48:10] Matthew: It's almost another category of answer. I don't want them... I don't necessarily need someone to create new titles in the Junior Adventure series or any of those. Yeah. And yet I wanna make sure that these games continue to be updated such that they're available to future generations. 

[00:48:26] Ian: Yeah. This is a preserve.

[00:48:28] Matthew: Yes, right. And, and in addition to all the entertainment, the other things we've talked about, I think that these games foster something important about technology. The, the Junior Adventure games like Freddi Fish and- Mm-hmm ... and Spy Fox and the like especially, they promote a fearless approach to the question, what does this button do?

[00:48:51] Ian: That's a good point. Oh my goodness. 

[00:48:53] Matthew: And that's important. It's not, "Oh, I don't wanna break anything." It's, "Hey, is there something here I can click? Let's click it. Why not? See what happens." 

[00:49:01] Ian: Oh, yeah. That, that's a very good point. I mean, these are games where it's like you've gotta try figuring out how to do stuff.

You've gotta be willing to click. You've gotta be willing to engage. And even modernly there's an element of, you know, as you get older, how'd they make that happen? Yeah. Open up the file. Learn the system. Indeed. There are people out, there are people out there who I'm certain have learned how to run ScummVM, the modern Virtualware system that gets these games to run again, because they're following that nostalgia.

But that's, that's an entire powerful emulation tool for a m- Yes ... for modern systems to run old games. And these games have a piece in its legacy, is lovely. 

[00:49:52] Matthew: And they're also great examples of a really clever user interface design such that if on one of these point and click screens, . If there is something on the screen that is drawn such that it will catch your attention, it will do something interesting if you click on it. 

[00:50:07] Ian: Yes. it will interact with something. I, I am not going to have us do the editing- ... but I feel like there could be a version of our podcast episode here which is just full of the little background noises while we talk-

that a Humongous Entertainment game would put in. 

[00:50:25] Matthew: Well, I think we could probably include a link to sound resources from Humongous Entertainment. 

[00:50:28] Ian: Actually, yeah. We're- And, uh- ... we absolutely will need to. Uh- So our 

[00:50:31] Matthew: listeners can, can create that for themselves. 

[00:50:34] Ian: Oh, yeah. We will set, we will put a link to all, to the Humongous Entertainment thing on the- The sounds resource, which has pulled all of the different weird noises that you can find in those games out.

So absolutely. Yeah. 

[00:50:45] Matthew: But I'm so glad that you chose this. This was a fun, uh, topic. 

[00:50:48] Ian: This was a fun topic, and I'm glad you got... I'm glad you enjoyed getting to re-watch some of these old things that you remember from me growing up as much as I did revisiting these things. Absolutely. They are, they are quintessential and weird, and I know next episode could be quoting so much.

I feel weird doing so much preview for our next one, but I gotta, I gotta hammer in just how much- ... that's going to be a biggun. Ah. But yeah, this, this is, this is a love letter to Humongous Entertainment, and I'm glad that their legacy is still, is still preserved.

Now if only I could figure out how to defeat Pablo in any of the Backyard games. If you don't get him on your team, you're a dead man.

So we'll be back in two weeks with our next topic in our Humongous Entertainment special here. Uh, things might get a little, a little weirder even than it has been.