Game Theory - Play and be REBORN! (Courage The Cowardly Dog ARG)

Episode Date: April 30, 2023

Theorists, it's time to go down another creepy rabbit hole... Welcome to the "canceled" Courage the Cowardly Dog game that seems to be hiding a scary secret. What is hiding in this lost game? I think this is going to be scarier than a Courage the Cowardly dog episode...

Hello internet, welcome to game theory. Today we're talking about the absolute classic animated series, Courage the Cowardly Dog. This thing was pure nightmare fuel bottled up and IVed directly into kids' eyeballs back in the late 90s. Now, I want you to open your mouth and say ah. If you aren't familiar with it, the show is about an elderly couple, sweet Muriel and grumpy Eustace, who lived near the fictional town of Nowhere, Kansas with their easily frightened dog courage. Every episode the three would end up encountering all sorts of horrors ranging from spirits, aliens, monsters, even terrifying relatives. Alone was I with tender courage, and all his fur, his furry, which I say did encourage me to be quite naughty.

Courage. Honestly, if you've never had a chance to check this one out, I highly recommend it. There's a reason it holds the record for the highest rated premiere on Cartoon Network. And even though it ended years ago, it's still kicking around. Last year, a game designer named Nathan Gabriel went online to claim that he had found an old hard drive at a yard sale, containing the only known copy of a Courage game for the PS1, a game that went unfinished and unreleased. Ladies and gentlemen, we got ourselves the classic creepypasta story. Boy goes to yard sale, boy finds haunted game, scares ensue.

Rather than release 24 let's plays here on YouTube, Nathan and his partner Chico games decided to pull together the assets they found and put it all on Itchio for everyone to experience. But before even hopping into the game, I did some research. Even though courage seemed like the perfect cartoon to turn into a video game back when every successful show had its tie-in, courage only ever got a few browser games. No official standalone title was ever planned. So, with my theorist senses tingling, I decided to give it a go on GT Live. I don't buy that for a second. Yeah.

So I was gonna say, if it's on Ichio, I don't know. We'll see. We'll see. I have a feeling that this is something more than what it seems. And boy, was I right on. the money. Constant crashes, haunting imagery, and a soundtrack that screamed, put me through a spectrogram. So you know what time it is, theorists. Time to break out Photoshop and our base 64 decoders. We've got ourselves a scary ARG to solve. This game isn't telling us the truth. There's a hidden story inside the

code and we're about to find it. The only thing I wonder is whether we can survive to tell the tale. Firing up the game, we take control of courage, wandering around the bag house and that's basically it not a lot to interact with other than a few question marks that basically do nothing however after exploring the second floor when you go back downstairs the living room is bathed in red uh oh things are getting creepy up in courage's house going back upstairs you get your first jump scare whoa hey this terrifying face which it's worth noting isn't actually just a jump scare it's from the show this is the spirit of the harvest moon from the episode the house of discontent Because you don't respect. Ain't going nowhere. Then you will suffer. Told you this show is pure nightmare fuel.

The game is only mildly more upsetting than what they decided to give to kids on TV. The giant floating head tells us to find them, while three paws circle the screen. Now I know it's a courage game, but this moment's really given me some solid blues clues flashbacks. So, finally armed with a mission, we go explore the house again, only to suddenly be teleported onto a carpet made of rotting flesh. know, the usual for the games that we cover here. If it doesn't have a decaying carcass texture, ain't nobody got time for that. At the center of the area are 16 red chairs

with an odd-looking pentagram symbol in the middle. If you look close enough, you can see that the line is actually meant to map out a path. Following it and clicking on each chair as you go triggers a sound that, you know, would be great if you knew what it did. After mashing my body against every wall that I could find, because what else do you do when you're stuck in an indie horror game, I found a spot that I could phase through. I realized after the fact that there was

There were also birds chirping to hint that it was there, but of course I had to do it the hard way. And on the other side of that wall was, nothing but another question mark that didn't do anything. At a loss, I did the only thing that I could think of. Okay, got another question mark. What if I jump off? And we've crashed the game. Fantastic. Turns out it wasn't a bad decision.

When you relaunch the game, all the furniture in the living room is gone. And we get treated to a music track that absolutely slaps. Oh, this doesn't bloat well. Oh, this is definitely Morse code. Obviously, the music bed is a code. Morse code, to be precise, which at the time of filming I couldn't look into, but afterwards I was able to translate to learn the way of the Old Wind. Old Wind isn't a reference to the show as far as I can tell, but it does seem to be important.

Considering that it's a phrase that gets repeated throughout this ARG, look back at the Itchio page for the game. Perfect grammar in all the game's descriptions, except for two randomly capitalized words in the middle of the sentences. Old and whined. Mom, it's wind. Well, I've only read it in books. However, to understand what it means, we have to keep digging. By heading upstairs and then back down, you'll find that the bag's grandfather clock has moved to the center of the room.

If you let it chime 12 times, the game crashes. Again, and this time you have to restart from the beginning, which is definitely what happened to me the first time, but if before the 12th chime you head to the kitchen, you get a data missing screen. Now, this is important, because when you first boot up the game, we're told that there are, quote, at least three levels connected to completely broken sections. We couldn't find how to access them, but we were able to put date missing screens on them. So we just found the first of these screens, but so what? It's blank. It doesn't tell us anything. Or does it? At this point you know that when an ARG

presents us with the black screen, it's Photoshop time. By messing around with the brightness and contrast levels, we find a hidden message within the black void that says quote, father wasn't home, which admittedly doesn't tell us a whole lot, but there are still at least two more clues to find, so hopefully this will paint a clearer picture for us. After getting that screen, we delete the safe file and go back to the start. So we do it all again. and click the question marks, talk to the creepy moon face guy, go outside, follow the pentagram path, slam my body against all the walls, find the hidden ledge, and click on the question mark out there.

But this time, we don't leap to an untimely and premature end. This time, we go back into the main section of the game, and we're rewarded for that big brain move with this. Wait, was this here last thing? Oh, no! Wait, oh no! Muriel's dead! It's a funeral memorial for Muriel. Naturally, you click on it and it crashes. Eat your heart out, Cyberpunk. But don't worry in this game, it's a feature and not a bug.

This time when you restart the game, you're dropped into a pitch-black room. So, as you might imagine, I took my time and thought carefully about my next move. Okay. Oh, hello. You know, life is all about failing up. Trying again and looking closer, I was able to identify based on the textures that there was an invisible path. You'll notice that the texture here is different. Watch, I bet if I walk on this.

Yep. There's an invisible path to get to that chair. But with it being invisible, there was really no way to move. forward or was there you see if you actually pay close attention to the music in this section you'll hear some deep creepy tones with a high-pitched ping it was enough to set off my theory senses yet again the grandfather clock scene as well as that sound are very reminiscent of like the sounds that you would hear if you put something visually into a spectrograph or if we were to do it the audio file in

some way would give us something back and I was right tossing this audio into a spectrogram gives you something that looks a lot like a map gotta give it to the puzzle It's an awesome clue if it actually worked. I tried really hard to do this level legitimately, but I just couldn't. Without any sort of landmark to tell how far you've gone, it's really difficult to estimate exactly where you need to turn and stop. Luckily, there's actually a far easier solution to this, and that's messing with your computer's rendering settings.

Twitch streamer, the Beard Dude, had the idea to use a program called Reshade, which made the path visible and possible to navigate. It's also worth pointing out that while I was installing Reshade, I noticed a text document among the greek games files that read she followed the rules he broke the rules the OW was all the way to the right with the words being censored there thanks to the Morse code from earlier though I think we have a pretty good idea of what that's trying to say the OW is obviously the old wind but what is it saying about being all the way to the right well going back to our invisible

maze we actually get a choice in our path going left or right so to learn the ways of the old wind I started by heading right at the end of the path you're teleported to a dark corridor with a house behind the house you find a second memorial picture. This time featuring a man named Robert W. Half burnt, and without any of the decorations that we saw around Murials. Clicking on it, we'll, surprise, surprise, crash the game. This time when we reload, we're back in the bag's house, only now it's dark and eerily quiet. However, things take a turn when you go upstairs. Suddenly, the game locks you into place and we're forced to confront Robert W. His realistic face stapled onto a wisp-like body that slowly floats towards

us with a digital whale. I hate it. But what I don't hate it, but what I don't is that it gives us our second data missing screen. Adjusting the brightness and contrast of the screen reveals the phrase, Mr. Wheeler was there to greet me. So our storyteller's father wasn't home. Instead, he was met by a Mr. Wheeler. Considering that this floating entity is Robert W, it's not much of a leap to assume that the W stands for Wheeler,

but to absolutely confirm I went to match the fonts. Times New Roman, wasn't too hard. And sure enough, it turns out that Wheeler is a perfect fit for the rest of that burned image. It's also worth noting that the asset name for the horrifying creature is real, Wheeler. Seems pretty confirmed, Robert is Mr. Wheeler, but what are we trying to say about him? Well, there's still at least one more data missing page to find, and hopefully that'll start

giving us some answers. Last time we went right, so this time at the spotlight, maze we're actually going to go to the left, away from the old wind. After a long walk, we make our way to a single chair. Clicking on the chair does what you'd expect at this point crashes the game, and we end up back in the baghouse. This time, though, it's full of coins. Notice that the pattern on the coins actually matches the earlier chair puzzle. As you collect the coins a player two slides onto the screen, which would be weird enough considering it's a single-player game, but things get real uncomfortable when you realize it's Muriel. You know, that dead woman whose memorial we paid respects to earlier? Yeah, no biggie. Collecting all the coins causes Muriel's face to go dark. The music stops, and we get our final data missing screen. Contrast down, exposure up. It reads, it was her, Eleanor. Father wasn't home. Mr. Wheeler was there to greet me. It was her, Eleanor. Okay, so we found all our data missing screens, but what's it all? all mean? Well, based on the evidence we've collected so far, I think I've got a decent idea of what the story's about. Our story has five people. Eleanor, Mr. Wheeler, Father, Muriel, and Us, the storyteller, who is clearly the son of father.

We know that we call out the fact that father wasn't home, which to me suggests that father probably should have been home. His absence was unexpected, leaving us to ask the question of why. Why wasn't he there? Mr. Wheeler was there to greet me, implies that Mr. Wheeler wasn't part of or close enough to the family to be on a first name basis with our storyteller. Like maybe a neighbor or coworker or some other trusted adult. The phrase, it was her, Eleanor, implies that Eleanor was closer to the family than Mr. Wheeler. Hence why she's referred to on a first name basis. She's also not the mother of our storyteller, as most children would call their mother just mom, just like father was called father.

All of this would suggest that Eleanor was maybe a neighbor or a stepmother or a sister. But that's not all we're working with here. Each time we rebooted the game to start down a different path, we were forced to delete the save file. This, to me, felt like it could hide a clue, like we were intentionally being led to those specific files. Why else would you force players to do that without giving us some sort of a payoff? And sure enough, when opening up the save files and notepad, we find plain text phrases like, I don't or was good. I tried to collect as many of these as possible, but to confirm that I hadn't missed anything, we extracted the plain text that the game looks for within the files to get this.

Do you remember a time when the world was good and fair? I don't. Manually changing the phrases inside the save files would allow us to load different parts of the game. So I went back and did it with each of the phrase chunks. Only the phrase, do you, loaded a part of the game. that we hadn't previously found. A gray version of the bag's home with nothing to do except endlessly interact with your computer. I feel seen. Creepy, ARG game.

I feel seen. Anyway, the game's assets have a few more clues hiding in plain sight. There's a file called Old Wind, which, it turns out, is the symbol that we saw under the chairs and on the coins. So the Old Wind is the symbol. Interesting. There's also a file named Eleanor,

which is worth calling out because Eleanor is the image that we see at the memorial, but one that was attributed to Muriel. Makes it seem like maybe the two are actually one and the same. our character count down to four. Father, Mr. Wheeler, us, and Eleanor slash Muriel. So taking all of our evidence into account, we might be able to explain why father wasn't home.

It was her, Eleanor. Considering we see her memorial in the game, it implies that Dad had to leave to see her in her final moments before she dies. Do you remember a time when the world was good and fair? I don't. Certainly sounds like the sort of question someone would ask in the wake of a tragic, unexpected death.

But it still feels like something's missing, right? Like, why are traces of all of this left in the game, and what does any of this have to do with the seemingly important phrase, Old Wind, that keeps getting repeated? Well, remember that text file from earlier? She followed the rules, he broke the rules, the Old Wind was all the way to the rights. Wind in The Courage of Cowardly Dog Show

tends to be linked with the passage of time or death in some way. The episode Little Muriel, for instance, involves a tornado that sucks up Muriel and turns her back into a child, and courage has to find a tornado that spins the other way to age her back up. I'm only three and a half years old. Could you? Another episode titled Windmill Van, has a windmill that stops things rising from the dead.

The old wind, I suspect, operates similar to these. It's a wind that makes you grow either younger or older. Eleanor followed the rules. Well, by dying, she followed the rules of nature. But upon seeing this, Robert Wheeler begins to realize his own mortality and looks for ways to become immortal, breaking the rules of nature and refusing to die by being involved in some sort of ritual or cult.

I mean, look at that symbol and tell me there isn't something cultish about that. The lack of memorial when we find Robert's burned picture seems to suggest that he isn't dead. This is actually backed up by the game's Itchio page. On the day the page was created, there was also a user profile created R Wheeler 1998, and for now that's as much as I can piece together about the courage game. A PS1 era game riffing on mascot themed platformers back in the day that hides a family tragedy under the surface. Maybe having to do with a death or cult rituals attempting to be immortal. And you see, this is why courage was such a clever choice for the game. The occult, demons. Courage has faced them all. Much like the winners. mills in the show, which stop the dead from rising, the old wind will ultimately be our key to stopping the immortal monster that tries to cheat death. And there does seem like there'll be more added to this story, as Nathan, the guy who quote unquote found the game, tweeted that he's been able to locate another mysterious hard drive with more courage content on it. In the meantime, is this a perfect solution?

No, obviously not. There are plenty of holes here in the story. But as a wise show once said, there's no such thing as perfect. Huh? You're beautiful as you are, courage. With all your imperfections, you can do any fool. And as always, friends, remember, it's all just a theory. A game theory! Thanks for watching!