Retronauts - 531: Toonstruck

Episode Date: May 8, 2023

Christopher Lloyd and Toons, together again! New contributing host Jess O'Brien, Cohen Edenfield, and KC Green unpack Toonstruck, the 1996 cult point-and-click that makes us wonder "Who is this for?" and "Why is it so horny?" Retronauts is made possible by listener support through Patreon! Support the show to enjoy ad-free early access, better audio quality, and great exclusive content. Learn more at http://www.patreon.com/retronauts

This week on Retronauts, why the flux is this game so horny? Hello, everyone. Welcome to Retronauts. This week, we are covering tune struck, the star-studded 1996 FMV, point-and-click adventure game that sees Christopher Lloyd trapped in a twisted cartoon world that aged really poorly. But before we get into that, who the heck is speaking right now? This is not one of the usual hosts of restaurants. It is instead me, Jess O'Brien, aka Voidberger. You might know me from my previous gig at Giant Bomb.com, where I was the video producer. And you may also recognize me from a smattering of Retronauts

guest spots over the years but enough about me who are my esteemed guests let's go in alphabetical order That's me Hi, I'm Cohen-Eddenfield I'm a game writer and a cultural archivist

Jesus, no I was just trying that out for the first time I don't know I like video games Oh I made one of these one time an adventure game That you really liked

You're gonna drag me for the rest of my life about that. I'm sorry. No, it's just really funny. For context, it was a homestuck game and I had never played homestuck. So I was like, what the fuck is this? It's all good. We all dance to the devil.

We know. Go ahead. Yeah, that's me. Skull Mandible on Twitter, if you care about such things in these days. And I'm Casey Green. I'm a cartoonist and a cartoon and joyer. I've never written a game, but I've played plenty. That's a shame.

You should get into the game development. That'd be like the only hobby I have is video games. And when I try to turn that into any kind of job-based thing, it does. Don't monetize everything you love. It's not a good thing. Folks, you heard it here first. Don't do that. No, I got my, like I started drawing because of video games in general.

Not in video games, cartoons in general. I'm sorry. Well, this is a smashing of both of those things. Yes, yes, most of those at once. Let that first heard about it. I said, let's go. Give it to me. And then you get this.

Then you get tuned struck. And I'm like, stop it. Don't go. Let's go. Let's not go. So yeah, what's our experience with this game? I played it six whole years ago. And I don't remember how I found out about it at all.

But I did not enjoy it, but I was. fascinated by it. It's so weird. Casey played it. We played it. Oh, yeah. That's right. I guess we have a, we have a, we have a game, a streaming channel on Twitch, game worms. It's sometimes used for games, but mostly for cartoons these days. But back when we were doing games, Casey played this and I watched, I watched him go, which was sort of our format. Yeah, it's, it's, it's not great. I think I found it on good old games, G-O-G. I remember I was just looking around on GOG at old point and click adventure games and saw what I was what I thought looked like Christopher Lloyd being electrocuted to death on a cover and sure enough it was and it was yeah what a fun thing to stumble into with no context yeah I mean there's always something there's always little parts of the world that you've missed that go by the cracks the way sides or whatever you know I have my I have my I have a my little thing, idiosyncricities. Is that though I say that word? Idiosyncrasies. I have my little things that I liked, but then, like, other things go, like, just

fucking miss me. I didn't really have a access. Well, I did have computer, but I didn't have access to, like, FMV computer games. And this one is not really for kids, really, even though it is as, you know, lame as a 90s mad magazine. So it's like, who's really going to get owned by this? it's the specific not like not to hop too much into it but it's that specific kind of shitty where it's it feels like it's targeted towards irreverent like kind of smart teenagers like that's the ideal but all the jokes are for extremely divorced la writers in their 50s who have like a lot of access to grind and like a lot of like i feel like 1995 and six that was kind of like that was the year to make a game with that vibe, because you also got Harvester, I think, the year before, Fantasmagoria II, a puzzle

of flesh, which was also aimed at this, like, sort of edgy teen sort of crowd, and then you get tunestruck, and, oh, man, 1986, what a mess. And all those games have made, like, a lot of money, right? These were all, like, huge successes. So, for those of you listening who are unfamiliar with Toonstruck, I'm going to just, like, run down the premise really quick. Drew Blank, our protagonist, is played by real live actor Christopher Lloyd. He's a cartoonist who ended up kind of typecast with this cutesy character called Fluffy Bun Bun, who he absolutely hates.

But he's stuck working on that show and he's miserable. And during an all-nighter, Drew gets sucked into his television set for no discernible reason. And into a cartoon dimension, whoa. But yeah, this isn't Isakai. Anyway, he meets his original character that he actually likes and vibes with. His name is Flux Wildly. Yeah, they do not seem to fucking like each other in any of their conversations, though. It's like, Flux, old buddy, you piece of shit.

I'm going to fucking tear you down every time we even briefly interact. Yeah, they got this like friendly. They got this like friendly antagonism, like rascal behavior between the both of them. and I consistently mispronounce his name as fucks wildly and not flux. But that guy's voiced by Homer Simpson himself, Dan Castellaneta. And this cartoon paradise he's found himself in is in trouble because a villain named Dr. Nefarious, voiced by Tim Curry, of course, is bent on using this weapon called the malevolator to turn all the cute and zany characters into dark and twisted freaks. and what follows can only be described as hijinks. This is probably the game with the most hijinks ever.

Lots of point-and-click puzzles that rely heavily on cartoon logic and puns. Do you remember any particular nightmare puzzles in this game? I mean, the main thing is like remembering like heart and soul bells and whistles. To find every opposite for the, to make the cute in the fire. The cutifier. All it gives you is like, it says, we have to find the opposite. And then it shows you what the malevolator is made out of.

And then you just have to have that like a brain dead animator cartoon knowledge that like as a kid, you're just sitting here like, what? Yeah, because, you know, so specifically there's a thing called the malevolator and it's like, oh, it's turning cute things evil. We got to find something that's the opposite. It's made of these 13 shitty objects. So we got to find the 13 opposite objects. But, like, they're not quite opposites.

Most of them are just, like, idioms. Yeah, they're all idioms. Yeah, this is an untranslatable, unlocalizable thing, I might think. Yeah. Which is a shame because the demand has just got to be through the roof. But it's like, okay, there's a dagger, which, if you know it's a dagger, it's fine. I can't remember if they give you the names or if it's just a garage. No, they don't.

I don't think they do. I think you just have to, like, surmise it. Yeah, you just have to look and then, like, Just think cloak and dagger, you know. There's a heart. So you need a shoe. Get it. Heart and soul.

Heart and soul. Heart and soul. Uh-huh. Spit and polish. You know that phrase every child of the 90s is always using. Yeah. Yeah. You know.

So yeah, not only is an idiom, but it's also like a pun, I guess, you know, like heart and soul. So you have to be like, well,

how do I get a soul? How about a soul of a shoe? You know, I just go down that way. Like weird wordplay, pun play you know elements to this game and there's also just you know you're kind of not regular but twisted and cartoony um like you're you're pointing click puzzles where you're just kind of going through the key ring of your inventory being like what the fuck is this for what the

fuck is this for there's like one where you have to combine a stuffed cat with cotton candy with something else to make basically a sex toy for a very pissed off squirrel so you can get past somewhere. Yeah, and you have to put jumping beans in it, so it has like enough give, you know, it has a vibration feature with the jumping beans, I assume. So the first, I'm looking at the instruction booklet now, and I was like watching, I was watching a play through because like I needed to refresh my. So this made no, I remember the like the S&M barn and like the contrivance of the main puzzle, but I like nothing of the rest of this stuck with me. So I was like catching up. And it's like, wow, this first, it seems like you got to do a

lot just to get out of the opening palace. And so there is a walkthrough on how to do that. It is eight pages of about a 30 page, of a 25 page instruction booklet is a walk through for the first puzzle in the game, which they need because it's really rough. It's that kind of thing where you're just, there's no, there's no direction. There's no direction on what you might need to be doing at any given time. You are constantly trying to solve everything. And also, like, there's the fact of the matter of that, like, you know, Flux and Christopher Lloyd have a comment about literally everything you can click on in this game.

There will be a little snarky antagonistic back and forth between these two characters. So it's like, even if you might have had an idea of what to do, you might get distracted along the way just because there's so much constant dialogue between these two. Yeah, the dialogue is really every conversation is about three times long as it needs to be. Yeah, the joke gets killed mercilessly. There's this weird, the ice cube that's like melting as you talk to somebody, which is supposed to represent that you're running out of the topics of a conversation. No, it's like you're breaking the ice, I thought. Yeah, but it's melting, so it doesn't make sense.

Well, let me just, let me just consult the instruction booklet I have here and see what it says. Let's see, talking, play through. It says, fuck you, kids. Hence for the road. Yeah, Jesus Christ, you would think that. Oh, here we go. click on the ice cube to break the ice with whomever you're currently conversing. This will initiate a general conversation with that character.

When the ensuing conversation ends, the ice cube and hand icons will reappear at the bottom of the screen. Notice the cube is melted some. Each time you click on the cube, it will melt some more. When it's melted to a pool of water, you have exhausted the general talk. What I loved about Sam and Max was that she would just, it would turn into a mouth and you would just talk to somebody. No, no, we've got to make this a little weirder. This needs to stand out for some reason. Like, maybe if the conversations weren't eight minutes long, like, to a conversation, you wouldn't need, like, a little, like, stamina meter to be, like, you're almost through it.

You're almost done here at this accent. Hang in there. Gotta get a bang for your buck back in the day. Yeah. By the way, the game ends on a heel turn. Spoiler alert, where a former ally is revealed to also be a crazed evil jerk. Fluffy Bun Bun herself. Because she wants to zap the cartoon world

with the opposite of the malevolator, the cutifier that you made during the game. So it's like, ah, you're evil too. There needs to be variety in cartoons, I guess is the moral of the story. And then there's like a UFO chase and our protagonist zaps both of them warps out into the real world again

to get in trouble with his boss and then be led straight into a sequel hook that would never, ever, ever pan out. And it's like the same hook from the end of the 1993 Mario movie basically where it's just like you're not going to believe this and then the credits roll. Something's got to be done

about this game Marty it sucks you gotta stop it from being made oh god I wish I want to say as a cartoonist myself and a drawer that Drew Blank is bad at his job he's a lazy son of a bitch

he's asked by his boss at the beginning one Ben Stein to create Yeah, it creates very like more bunnies, more fluffy bun bun bun characters to hang with fluffy bun bun bun bun because as Ben Stein put it in his business-like way, if one bunny does this well, then more bunnies will do, you know, better. You know, that's just a very, that's the joke. That's the very boring business way of thinking it. And I guess he's like in the afternoon when he has this early morning. It's like 11 or something. And then he takes.

takes all day and night and comes up with nothing not nothing like nothing it is so easy to phone something in a bow in its hair like done put a bow care bear that shit make them all different colors of the rainbow it is not that goddamn hard yeah the issue of this is funny in a way that I don't think they intended it to be because yeah it's like okay if you're like this is your job why you're so bad at your job like he's pulling like an all-nighter like a It's 4 a.m. And he's staring at a blank sheet of paper. It's like,

makes up eyes bloodshot. A rude one. Yeah. He obviously doesn't want to. He wants to like make his, he like he's really loving the flux wildly. That's the Dan Castlenetta's character. He's like,

ah, flux, one of these days, we'll make your show, you know. And like what is that show? I don't know. Yeah. You know what?

There's nothing to the character. Yeah. He's just a little wacky. What's it? It's like, what if Bugs Bunny had like, like less definition as a character like just and wasn't likable and he's just purple and like has sunglasses and that is like it for character design that's like he's wacky i think something

this game is really working against really hard is and this is something that happened a lot to me as a kid with the 90s is like there was a lot of media like this that seemed to have a chip on it shoulder against like cute saccharin stuff and it's like I didn't live through the 80s so I didn't watch any of those cartoons like I never saw fucking rainbow bright and care bear all i got was this like we're not doing that anymore everything's irreverent take this and it's like okay it's like if you're dropping this in 1998 like it's like you won man i've been i've been watching only your brand of this kind of like everybody's chandler bing everybody's got a sassy quip every like the conversations in this are just like needlessly antagonistic

from the jump every single time there's very few likable characters in this no No, like, why are you, what is the, like, why would anyone want to save this world? It's better than working on more characters for Fluffy Bun Bun, so I guess he just does it, because why not? It's got to get to. Yeah, every, the whole aspect of this game is, is like the worst, just runoff of classic 90s cartoons. It's just, it's like, even more so because it's like they get to say the R word. and hell and they get to cuss

just a little bit more you know yeah and like cool and they're like lo we'll let's get some deviant lifestyles not like me I'm safe

they get to do overt gay jokes with the scarecrow and shit like that yeah it's like it's as as interesting as like I said this earlier

but like a mad magazine like the ads in Mad Magazine like the rude like the rude corn nuts ads in Mad magazine that's what it feels like Yeah, that's the caliber we're working with here. But hey, history time, time for history.

According to Wikipedia, TuneStruck was conceived in 1993 as a game that was originally geared towards children and then it was later rewritten to be more adult oriented and it wasn't until 1996 when it got released because it turns out it takes quite a long time to draw all those dang cartoon characters.

No, it doesn't. Don't make a 2D animated adventure game with a retro-90's vibe. We're going to get more into this later but around half of the entire game ended up on the cutting room floor to even get it out the door in 96, which is such a waste.

And as a result, that's why the game ends, like, really abruptly on a cliffhanger and it was implying that a sequel was coming, which never did. And presumably, this cut content was going to go into the second game, even more than presumably, because developers have said, like, we were just going to take the stuff we had already done that was getting thrown away. We're going to repurpose it for a sequel and just didn't happen. Yeah, the thing was very slapdash. It's, it's like a refusal to commit. Like, is what is what is what, I think that's what really, like, brings this game down is like, like there's it's like okay here's the cute world where everybody's cute oh but here's the ray that's turning the cute characters mean it's like yeah but all the fucking cute characters

are also mean yeah they are they're also goofy and wacky so it's like they only hate them because of like their aesthetic and their cutesy voices like that's really the only like you know discernible real quality difference between the cutopians and the zanidoo people okay but like outside of the castle and that one rabbit screaming in a field who even is who even are like the cutesy characters i don't know they're all drawn a very similar style so yeah that's really what's holding it back is like the design of the cutesy world just looks wacky you know it's not like they actually nailed the aesthetic that they were probably you know railing against which would probably be more of like the my little pony rainbow bright you know 80s style and they really did stick with like this like 90s Disney Disney TV show

slash WB style Why is their character And why is the first character You can talk to in Qtopia A foot Like an anthropomorphic foot guy Like a guy who's just a big foot Well you know

I'm not the butt I'm pretty wacky That's like more of a wacky joke right Like and that's like yet a third place God it didn't occur to me that Like of all the fetishes in this game That we've got a giant talking foot in it as well Yeah who gets tickled

and tarred, tormented. Anyway, this game was brought to us by Virgin Interactive Entertainment makers of such classics as the seventh

guest, the 11th hour, the Aladdin game that everyone loves, and also like a lot of European versions of stuff like Earthworm Jim, Resident Evil,

to name a few. And Virgin invested Mondo money into this game. We're talking $8 million in mid-90s money which is like yeah that's a 15.5 mil in today money uh the game however only sold about 150,000 copies uh-oh oh that's not a lot what was it's uh what was its price at the time

full price oh i did not know i do not know probably probably 70 i had to guess well i'm guessing i'm guessing no not 96 like computer games used to be like 40 bucks console games were like 50 Like computer games could be like 30 or 40 I didn't start playing PC games Until American McGee's Alice I've no idea All the computer games I played were free from

cereal boxes Yeah yeah that too There wasn't like a unit There wasn't as much of a unified cost And so they could kind of range around Interesting I don't know maybe they were trying to make it up Maybe they really

Jesus Some other information According to joystick there are 52 original characters in the game to interact with endlessly for too long, as well as 80 puzzles to solve and 120 objects to retrieve throughout the course of the game. That sounds like a little high to me, but I don't know. Maybe that maybe there was a lot of that. Oh, I found it.

It was the initial price of $60. Yeah, I was close. You were close. No, you were closer than me. I was fucking. How much is that in modern money, $70, 1996? 60 and 96 was about a little less than twice as much so it would be like yeah it would be like in the hundreds like low hundreds you had to save up to play tunestruck and stuff like that that sucks and by the way this was 96 and it was definitely past the tail end of full motion video games and 2D games is popularity at that point because everybody was getting super hyped up for the Nintendo 64's released that same year, and we were already two years deep into the life of the PlayStation

two, everybody was pretty like, you know, this was old hat at the time. No one cares about FMV games anymore. Where the PS2 or the PS1? One, sorry. Did I say two? Yeah. Oops. This is all good. However, they did, they had the idea for this game in 94, you say? 93. Oh, okay. 93 would be exactly one year after the movie Cool World came out. Oh, that makes sense. Cribbing heavily from conceptually. There's definitely. a line graph of some kind where it's like Roger Rabbit is on one end, cool world is on the other

and this game is in the middle and like forgotten. Three points make a trend right into the turlet. Oie. Is cool world worse than this? I suppose implied yes. Yes, but infinitely more interesting to watch. That's true. Cool, cool world or this more interesting?

Cool worlds. This thing is like, TuneStruck is like if you don't know and you're a weirdo like me who just likes that kind of shit, sure. It's fun to play once. Fun to play once. It's interesting to play once. Don't say it's fun. Don't lie. Yeah, fun is a strong word to use here.

I'll say it. I'll say it was fun. Fair enough to play once. Bold. A second time and I'm just like, oh, how fast can I get through this? Oh, that's right. I saw you playing it for the second time. That's right.

You had already, that makes a lot of sense. Yeah. For the most part. That's what we got through it so quick. Okay. Good. Thank you.

I did, I streamed it and it was my first play-through. And yeah, it was just like immediate brick wall. What do I do? I'm not great at point and click games. They're not like, they're not my,

uh, my forte, despite me being like, decently fascinated with late 90s, FMV ones and how they, uh, are just such weird little freaks. I love Harvard.

Vistair. I love puzzle of flesh. And this is, I don't love it, but I'm just like, wow, it's another one of these freaks. What a strange chunk of the 90s. Let's talk about the cast of this thing, because this is star-studded this cast.

The only two people playing humans, FMV humans, are Christopher Lloyd as the protagonist, and Ben Stein is his crappy boss that we only see at the very start and the very end. Did we even see him at the end? We see him at the end once. Yeah, he yells at him at the at the end or he's just like,

Eh, you're bad at your job. This is in his credibility era too. This is when we would like bring Ben Stein in as like, okay, we need somebody in this who like short hand for respect and like probably good with money and like probably smart. Yeah. That's that's how we're so let's get Ben Stein who I don't. Yeah, Ben Stein was just, he was just playing.

He was playing to his, uh, his typecast. Yeah, he was fine. And he was happy doing that. Yeah. This is pretty, pretty intelligent design. Ben Stein. He needed the money so people could win it later. You'll never get anywhere, Jimmy. Easy filming commitment for Ben Stein on this project.

Some other recognizable, like, real deal, capital C, celebs in this are Tim Curry playing Count Defarious, needs no introduction, we know who Tim Curry is, total icon, loves playing campy bad guys, just moi, perfect in every way. uh we've also got david ogden steers uh best known for playing major winchester and mash but he was also the voice of cogsworth from beauty and the beast which i did not know um and uh ratcliffe the bad guy in pocahontas and uh jumba in lilo and stitch i did not know any of those three huh i just knew his name i knew who's around i did not like put together like oh he's cogsworth and stuff it's crazy always you ought to forgetting jumba uh and the last to less uh recognizing recognizable, like, Hollywood-ish celebrity is Dom DeLois. He plays this octopus cashier. And I know him best from The Secret of Nim, where he played Jeremy the Crow, and an American tale where he voiced Tiger the Cat.

But he's also Pizza the Hut in Spaceballs, FYI. And not to, but to play through. Casey, you're the fucking voice actor, Holocron. There's a bunch of them in here, right? Like a bunch of the... Of course, yeah. I mean... Tim Curry, David Ogden Sears, and Dom de Louise were, like, you know, actors beforehand.

But then you have, like, the fucking cast that you've heard forever, like. Everywhere. Like, yeah, Dan Castleaneta is Homer, Earthworm, Jim. Extremely prolific cartoon voice actors in this. Like, I'm not kidding. Like, when I say like, half the people in this, like, list of, of the cast, the voice cast, Half the people in this list have like 400 to 600 acting credits on IMDB. They've been in literally hundreds of shows that we all watched growing up in America, if you're American.

But yeah, Dan Castellaneta, obviously. You also played the robot devil in Futurama. I forgot about that. Yes, yes. And the genie from Aladdin in all of the spinoffs where it's like they're not going to get Robin Williams. Well, they got him back for the third one. They got Robin back for the third one. But Dan did do it for the TV series.

and the second movie Return to Jafar and Kingdom Hearts and Kingdom Hearts. Oh yeah, he's he's Kingdom Hearts Jeannie. And you can really hear

the Homer in his Kingdom Hearts Genev when he's like Yeh over and I can't do either but like he's doing a good job. It's like I was out I was like what like I was I leapt off of the fucking diving board like no water of the tank

like what was my thinking? Sorry, go ahead. And what else we got? We got Jim Cummings. That's Tigger from Winnie the Poo. That's Poo Bear from Winnie the Pooh. That's Pooh Bear from Winnie the... Is it Pooh Bear?

Yeah, it is. Later Pooh Bear when he got a... When the older guy died, I believe. Or was that Tigger? I don't know. But he's also, I think, the most iconic guard in Aladdin, Razul. You hear him a lot. And also like a zillion other things, because apparently he's like...

We've all got swords. That guy. The main guy. We've all got swords. The robotic and the Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog. He's boxman for a okay, K.O. Oh, man. Yeah, he is the only actor to appear in every animated series produced by Disney during the 90s.

Wow. That's what his time to be said. I'm like, whoa, okay, bold claim. True? I don't know. The penny just dropped for me on the fact that Christopher Lloyd was also in Who Framed Roger Rabbit. So I bring him back as like, it's like, it's like, wow, what a, oh, no, this is, it's an extremely derivative choice, actually. And kind of a miscast for a guy who feels like he's supposed to be like a not 58,

which is what Christopher Lloyd was when this game game came out. Good Lord. He's been old. He's been old forever. He was born in 1938. Yeah. He was old looking in cuckoo's nest, which is like the first, like the youngest I've ever seen Christopher Lloyd in that movie.

He was a baby. And it's like, that guy's an old baby, isn't he? He was old and back to the future. Yeah. In the 80s. And then he still looked at. to old in the 50s. That was the best

bit of that movie. Knock on wood, he's still with this. Before as this goes up. He was in nobody. Oh my God. Or Mr. Nobody or whatever.

He was good in that. I know it sounds sorted, but you'll be rewarded. When at last I am given my dues. And injustice, deliciously swear. Oh, another fun fact. about Jim Cummings. I did not know. He's the guy that replaced Jeremy Irons when he busted his voice and couldn't perform the song Be Prepared and the Lion King.

That is certainly the polite story that they put out about Jeremy Irons, that he busted his voice and not that he couldn't. It's, Be Prepared is a very important song to me. So I always found that to be a little bit like, well, just admit it, Jeremy. It's okay. Not everybody has to be a singing voice actor. That's okay. Aladdin had a different singing voice. Like that was common practice. in like Disney days. Oh yeah. Singing voice, regular voice. Yeah.

I think the first time I ever noticed that was in Nightmare before Christmas because Chris Sarandon being the speaking voice of Jack and Danny Elfman being the singing voice of Jack which would plummet me

into Oingo Boingo fandom for the rest of my goddamn life. Just don't look at any event up on YouTube. Just don't don't look at the live performances. It's great view. Yeah, it's weird Because, like, they eventually moved into what they do now, which is how they have the voice actor sing it.

And then at the end, they've had a pop star to a cover. And then they're able to have their cake and eat it, too. And also, like, you know, the pitch shift correction has like, leaps and bounds, you know, advanced since the 90s. So now it's like, oh, we could like, make any old actor sing and then correct how they sound later. Yeah. Other super, super recognizable people in this is Tress McNeil, which you mentioned earlier. she's like almost every female character in this game.

Yeah, if it's not her, it's April Winchell, the other one. She's like almost every female character in the 90s. Like, yeah. Babs, but she's literally doing a Babs bunny as fucking fluffy bun bun bun. Mm-hmm. Absolutely. Like, she was in absolute shitloads of Disney shows, Nickelodeon shows, Cartoon Network shows, just like, wow, everything.

She does multiple voices on the Simpsons, Futurama, Animaniacs. It's probably like the, you know, most of the voices she's she's doing for this game are just animaniacs voices that she was already doing at the time. Is it Edna or Agnes Skinner? Agnes. You can definitely hear the Agnes Skinner and the S&M cow. Oh, yeah. She's also both of the guards up front of the house, the two Armadillo guards.

Oh, yeah. She's both of them. She's doing like her tiny boy voice and her old lady voice. Oh, yeah. So that's one of the first early, really bad puzzles, which is that you have to, to get the Armadillo's, they do a little dance when you meet them. Get them to keep dancing. And you still the key.

They keep doing it until one of them drops a key that you can't even see that they're holding. It's just like, I just got to get him to keep doing this dance. It has been presented to me as something annoying that my main characters don't want to see again. Because like every

interaction is like undercut by a quip. So the like the signposting to the player is always like somewhat devalued by the need to keep writing a joke on a joke on a joke. It's like, what am I supposed to do? Similar to the modern script writing crutch

of constantly lampshading and quipping on things. There's a lack of confidence in the material in this that is made up for in volume. And I say that as somebody who has made that mistake in the past. A couple other people. We got April Winchell, like you mentioned.

She's the four female characters that Tress McNeil did not do. She's also, she's Claribel cow in a Disney stuff did not know that yeah she's great she was peg and goof troop oh yeah and wander over yonder she's like the sylvia uh the horse that wander the horse the blue horse thing yeah she's great no like you can always tell she's like she's got like that fucking soccer mom i'll kick your ass kind of vibe um also we got we got frank welker which like i most associate him with that video of him in the 90s

doing lion roars and snarls using a trash can for reverb. Oh, yeah, yeah. But he is behind one of the longest continual performances of a character ever. Fred from Scooby-Doo. He has been voicing Fred from Scooby-Doo

since 1969. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Isn't he also Scooby or they get someone else who's Scoop now? I think someone else is Scooby. And he's also voiced quite a few different transformers. Am I right, Cohen? Uh, I wouldn't know.

I'm not only about like cartoons. And of course, he's Dr. Claw also from Inspector Gadget. Yeah, he's, yeah, he's Megatron, Galvatron, and Soundwave. He's three of the best, uh, voices. I know I can count on you. Soundwave is a little bit of a cheat, but he does a really good, because Soundwave has like a vocal thing they do to it, uh, which was like a big buck and deal in the 80s, uh, autobots, you know, that kind of thing.

Uh, but they put a little, they put a little sass on it. It's nice. But he's really good. He's also the official new voice of Garfield. Oh. Oh, I didn't know that. After Lorenzo Music passed, like Frank Welker just took it over. So any new Garfield thing is our boy, Frank. Wow.

I did not know that. We've also got Corey Burton, who has done a lot of video game voice acting. Finally, video games. God, I miss them. Fuck, back. He's the voice of Dr. N. Jin in Crash Bandicoot. he was the original Zeus in the original God of War

I don't know if Zeus shows up in the remakes I haven't played him He wouldn't After what happened Oh yeah maybe he died at the end of the word Wait a minute Wait a minute Really God of War

Really God of War games Really dealt with the expanding cast problem Very figure that out Spoilers for the original God of War He plays Hugo Strange In Batman Arkham City and in Kingdom Hearts, he played Yen Sid, handsome, and that's Disney Backwards. It is.

And Dale, the chipmunk. Oh. Interesting. That's also Disney Fastfords. I just got to squint. I know I've heard the name Corey Burton like forever, but like, yeah, I'm just, I can't really, like, I'm looking at his thing. I'm like, he's been in everything. God damn, but I just, I don't recognize him as much as like, you know, Tress or Jim Cummings or other stuff.

Yeah. It's like he's just as prolific as all these other people, but I guess like, I don't know. I want to see what Christopher was doing around when this came out because I was like, so 1994. So while he's doing, while he's, yeah, it must have been filming in 94ish probably. I'm going to say yeah, for like just because that's how longed his shit. That was the year that Uncle Fest, Adam's Family Values comes out. So this is a sequel. So it's the sequel, which is the that's as everyone. knows is the it's the first one is the one where uncle fester is like welcome back into the family but then an outside force is trying to use him to steal the adams fortune and then the sequel he uh no that's in the sequel that the same the same forest is yeah it's the same same thing but it's jane kusack it's david jillinski anyway uh and also angels in the outfield where he's the the angel from an angel on the outfield that was that was one of the vhs tapes i had as a kid so you know how that you know how that is or it's like i guess this is one of my movies i'll watch

yeah i guess i'll memorize this by accident yeah not it's not not a not a great film um very uh no one should get divorced which is a lot of movies of they in like page master in 94 like this was definitely this is like a year this is a this is a year for christopher lloyd and then like two years later fucking tune struck comes out to all this work has fallen off since 94 it's like He's had a couple of years of like not as much work. They're like, Drew, Drew, don't worry. It's about to turn around. Tune Struck is finally dropping.

Oh, man. So just take $90. Last voice actor I want to mention is Jeff Bennett, who is the voice of Johnny Bravo and Kowalski, the Penguin in Madagascar. And like everyone else here, he was in just absolute shitloads of kids shows in the 90s and aughts and to this day. All these people, pretty much all these people are still, like, working a lot. Yeah.

You don't, you know, like, that's the great thing about voice acting, but I bet the hard thing about voice acting, if you are trying to get into voice acting, I would imagine that sort of like academia, it's like, oh, no, all the positions are already filled, actually, about people who've been doing it perfectly for 40 years. There's no more voices left to do. Whoops.

We've got them all covered. So, how is this game age, folks? So, how is this game age, folks? Oh, beautifully. Very carefully. uncarefully, I don't know. We mentioned earlier, the Arsler shows up. There is a character that is a scarecrow who is just a extremely homophobic caricature

called the Carecrow, very mincing queer stereotype that talks about fashion and talks like this and, oh, I wouldn't be caught dead in that. It's like, okay, great, great. done by Jeff Bennett. Yes, also, Jeff Bennett. And his quest is that, oh, he hates these clothing.

Oh, please get me a cape. I need a cape. And you have to get him a cape. And then he gives you his cloak for cloak and dagger. And then he immediately gets malevolized. And you can't even talk to him after that, right? No, he just turns into like a spooky scare like a Halloween decoration, basically.

Which you know what? Almost kind of the game to imply that gay people, not evil. They're cute. Oh, I see. Wow. I'll put one on the fucking board for this game. I'll stretch that one to its absolute limit of benefit of the doubt, sure. It's rough, especially to watch those scenes because Christopher Lloyd is playing them as if like Christopher Lloyd and Dan Castellanetic could not have been playing those scenes more differently.

Like Christopher Lloyd is like just talking to the scarecrow as if he's a person. and he's not off put and then like Dan Castanella has like turned his head all the way around several times to do the get a load of this guy cam yeah right

just like what flux is the audience surrogate obviously and we you know gay people are so weird yeah any like it's such a collection

this game of like crummy little LA writer trope problems it's like everybody's got a hot secretary who thinks she's so smart with their books I mean it's just that's just jokes in the 90s I mean

Animaniacs did half of this shit in its own way they just like hit it differently they just hit it better you know Yeah well they just didn't have to I mean animaics was more Animatics played it more on its face that it was like very L.A

because it's like it literally takes place on like the Warner Brothers studio a lot so it's very very Hollywood and like has all the celebrities and stuff like that So I feel like it was a little more obviously, like, since it's set there, like, it's not like high, I don't know. I think Toonstruck is more just like, well, we're copying these things, but there's no reason for them to be this, like, L.A. Yeah, no, it's just, it's just a series of like the most the, I don't know what, I don't know what the tone they were going for was specifically. Yeah, I don't think a lot of things that came out in the 96th knew what tone they were going for.

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's like... Harvester was recent. Yeah, everything was... There's a weird line to toe when you're trying to do something that is like, on paper for kids, but a little edgier, you know? And that can, like, it's rarely done well. And I can't even give you an example of what was.

Like, I have my favorites. The movie Shrek? Like, I feel like that's about as close as we get. maybe yeah like that's kind of like all ages family stuff that's like yeah it has a little bit for everyone but it does know that it's like yes family stuff pg stuff yes yes yes but like there's still like a different push that always seems to happen like uh look at conquer's bad fur day a game that i love but it has like similar fucking problems like i will absolutely a hundred said it meant that it does.

But, like, I enjoyed the hell out of that game than it now. I think a word you might be looking for is sophomoric. Ooh. Yeah, I guess so. That could be fun, but, like, when you're trying to, like, toe the line of, like, is this four kids or is this for adults, that can be a real tough, tough line. I mean, Simpsons kind of did it, you know, early Simpsons. And then you saw people try to, like, mimic.

that and it just like fucking you have the fucking fish police you have capital critters you know two two kitty for adult to adult for kids you know yeah i think it often like kind of drifts into just like it's for little stinker 14 year old boys yeah and it's like nobody wants that as your main demographic do you they don't have money yeah they don't have money they don't always aren't always watching tv and their parents don't want to buy them these things that are going to alter their personalities in negative ways. Like Toonstruck will do that I don't know, maybe Toonstruck would be an

argument for like, see how see how difficult life is when you live when you live this way? See how everybody, nobody likes you when you talk to them like this? You see how empty and confusing it is when everything is a transaction? You see the

Keratron represents the self that you are trying to build out of the cutifier. Yeah, the cute of whatever. I do like the Caratron a bit better, actually. Yeah, well, you know, I'll, I'll, yeah, no, I mean, I'm better, I'm a better writer than this person. I think, I, Cohen, I think you did hit on something, though, with Shrek, Shret being like kind of a, yeah, four kids, but, you know, adults, the adults who are watching it can also get a kick out of some of the jokes. And specifically, I felt, I felt the same way about, um, the new Puss and Boots, the last wish movie.

Yeah, yeah. Which I've heard it's amazing. It's a great movie. It was really good. like it's it is definitely a fun like romp but with like moments of just like yeah they aren't they aren't completely they're not pulling a lot of punches when it comes to certain things it is a cartoon like they they talk about people dying in a cartoonish way you know and stuff like that and it's like they'll drop as as silly as it is they'll drop things like what the hell

are you doing and stuff like that or this is crap or whatever that's just like well it's still fun for everyone you know yeah crap is the most like appropriate like usword for 12 year olds you know it's the bart simpson list yeah yeah yeah hell damn ass crap are all bart simpson slash strong bad but like they used to it's crap yeah but even around like late this type of 90s they they fucking just like said no thank you they they said uh they being like i don't know s and p's of standards of practices and offended moms who watch the TV. We're like, I don't want Wren or Stimpey saying crap, you know? I don't want to see the word hell in a cartoon, even though you're just talking about, you know, the place.

Yeah. It's H.E. Double Hockey sticks. Yeah. You couldn't really feel. I mean, that's not what anima animaics had Lydia karaoke network censor. Like, that was a whole character was the censor character. No, wait, it wasn't Animaniacs. It was a hysteria.

Yeah. Well, it's that same, okay, so that's, I think that's something that's happening in this game. And it's, it's the exact same thing that happened with Star Wars episode one. And what it is, is it's somebody who formerly had constraints or limitations of some kind that they had to work with them. Like, all this kind of like snarkiness plays better in something like Tiny Tunes, where they are kind of having to get it in around the edges of what they're allowed to do on something that's next to a fucking Captain Crunch commercial. And this, it's just like, not only do we not have that and not only do we not have the limitations of, oh, this whole thing has to happen in 11 minutes. The story has to be introduced, progress, and resolve in 11 minutes. Now it's like, oh, one conversation with a shamrock who is both Irish and Scottish, why, that can go on for eight minutes without repeating. It's just like read every single line. Like, this is what happens. It's like, if you don't have anything holding you back and you're like, finally, I can really cut loose. It's like, oh, I have no editor.

Oh, everything gets in great. Yeah, yeah. I feel the power. It's growing by the minute. And pretty soon you're going to see me wallow in it. I feel good. A special kind of shawney. Flowers and trees.

Debrress. And frankly. Speaking of a censorship, the 90s was a weird time, I think, for instilling fetishes in children that would last into their adult lives. How many fetishes we got in tunestruck, why is this so horny? We've got hypnotism, including like master slash slave terminology. We have milking. We got BDSM. there's war

there's furry stuff we make a sex doll for a squirrel there's a lot of horny shit in this game yeah but nobody's fucking cowards

like this is it's very yeah Christopher Lloyd and flux I was shipping it the whole time I get it

you're going to twist it around for me old buddy get it wet but oh Jesus look only one of those only that's why

that's why his like beautiful ancient drawing of flux that he had done 10 years old had one one drawing of him and then like a few sketches around the edges because that's how far he can get before he starts jerking off I don't want to draw

bunnies I want to draw my little trash bag It does look like a trash bag He kind of looks like a Pokemon It looks like nothing It looks like the 1996 Olympics mascot Oh my God fuck Izzy is he is he Is he yeah sucks

Well Izzy Yeah I mean, that, again, another par for the course for cartoons in the 90s. Yeah. Let's just have fun with being horny and in love. Yeah, fetishes, fetishes. Calling it in love is a thin. Let's just have fun with being horny, you know?

Yeah. You know what? I just watched like a couple nights ago after not seeing it for goddamn 20 years. Fern Gully, lots of fetishes in that thing. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. That's the one where Tim Curry says he comes in the song. Yeah.

Not in the movie, though, on the, on the OST, he says, he's, he's horny. That's a, that's one of the lyrics. He's a special kind of horny. Oh, in the original soundtrack. Yeah, for toxic love. Interesting. I never knew that. Everyone look up toxic love from Fern Gully and you tell me they weren't drawn all that with one

hand. Yeah, it's a filthy song. It's, it's a, it's a very, it's a very horny movie. like like for i mean a lot of this was and a lot of it was just i think i think a lot of it was that they were drawn it by hand like he is at the start and it's like god i'm gonna i'm gonna have to draw this character 800,000 times well okay better make them hot yep i i make him hurt yeah make him out but like a lot of the the the malevolator like what it does is it like turns things evil so a lot of what it does

is turned cute things into weird, horny, deviant, hot things. Like, you mentioned that barn earlier there. I mean, the barn was already a sex joke, though. That's what I mean about, like, the consistent, like, the commitment to the tone. They can't help themselves. Like, the cute, like, the cutylands should be, like, this, like, neutered and, like, nothing. Like, nobody is, like, but there's a bar where people are just, like, getting drunk and making out. And it's like, this is, hold on.

Like, it's like, oh, the, like, the octopus talks about, like, oh, all the video games, the only ones they play are stupid cute ones. But then, like, as he's talking, you can see that, like, the cute characters are just playing, like, what just look like regular ass video games. There's not a, there's not a cohesion stylistically between what's happening in the story and what you're looking at. It's all just aesthetics, very shallow fucking just like, yeah, it's cute because it looks cute. It's, it's evil because it looks evil. and they're also not lying about the things they're doing. Yeah, they're just being dominatrix now. Oh, well, fucking they like

doing it. Yeah, I guess they killed the other horse and made him into glue. That's how you know they're really bad. Yeah, the original barn, for those who don't know, you go to this barn and Tress McNeil is everybody, I think, in this barn. But, uh, maybe. Uh, but there's a cow that has...

April's one of the, I think April's the, uh... April's the sheep. The sheep. Yeah. But, uh, this cow is like, lamenting that. this butter machine, this milking machine is like out of commission. And it is like very clearly to this cow, this is like a sex toy to this child. I get my rocks off. Yeah, like it's super overt that this is, this is a sex thing to begin with.

And then it gets zapped by the malevolator. And now it's just like an S&M sex thing. But it's still a sex thing. So it's like, okay, this is a really like lateral move, but now there's like a lot more talk about. not lying. Yeah. We're not hiding it. Now there's just more S&M jokes,

but it's the same damn thing. Yeah. Aesthetics. Yeah, that's the thing. It's just, if the whole thing is aesthetics, then like, they should have just been like, like, just like, it's like you meet the wolf in the woods and it's like, okay, well, what are you? And is,

do you live in the middle because you're intentionally like blurring the lines between like cute and wacky and evil? Yeah, those are the three ideals of this whole. areas. There's cute. Yeah, there's wacky, zany do and then there's evil. And it's all aesthetics. I mean, the wacky stuff is like, okay, well, they're actual cartoons,

but they're also kind of cute. Exactly. But also kind of mean. So it's they're kind of being evil too. Like everybody is hostile to you. Everybody is cute and everybody is wacky. Yeah. So you literally have to like, be like, well, are there spikes?

Are there spikes on the building? Because I guess that's malevolent. Unless there Yeah. Is it dark and awful? Yeah. What if they're colored spikes? Then it's key. Then it's zany. Speaking of color, how about that, uh, the phone, the phone where you have to dial the colors on the phone? It's a quiz, right? Yeah. So the, you find it, you find a like piece of paper. It tells you, oh, dial this number and it's just some colors. It's like like seven like orange. It's like, you know, little swatches of color. You find a phone that has the three primary colors and you've got to enter in the colors using and like to mix the colors you have to hold a button down and then release the mouse when it's over the other button you want to combine it with and that like this isn't explained at all this just takes like you know but the only way to enter it is to try to make the call and there's no feedback that you're getting it right until you call the whole thing and then if you finally do that then you get a quiz where you're asked some random questions about like well what color is this is the right side of this guy's jacket

Paldron. And I guess what you do is you listen to this quiz, fail it once, write down all the questions, then go and look up all these things, come back and reenter that tedious seven-digit color sequence at the start again, and then get to enter all of these. And all of this is to like win a better hammer so that you can, you can hit the, hit the bell from before, like the arcade test of strength but also you need to have gone to gone to the wacky land and gotten into the gym and been made stronger but of course he doesn't look physically stronger because it's just a live action christopher lloyd so they have him pose while they make like stretching sounds there are so many just like three second clips of christopher lloyd like reacting to nothing in this

that are just they have a special place in my heart one of them is like one of one of my twitch alerts is is Christopher Lloyd making one of these dumb faces from Toonstruck? It's just like you know, you can see the the mighty desire to be like comparable to Roger Rabbit and like it's just

he's not as good at this as Bob Hoskins is like let's be real. He does not have as much to work with. I think he would have done just fine in something like Who Framed Roger Rabbit as evidenced by the fact that he's in fucking who framed Roger Rabbit. He's in that movie. He does great.

I wish she was in cool world. He should have been in cool world. That would have been, damn it. As what? I don't know, but I wish he was. Oh, the scientist, the scientist at the beginning, who makes the thing. He should have been the cartoonists. Like, just replace that idiot with Christopher Lloyd.

That Brad Pitt. Oh, the guy who draws Hollywood. It's Brad Pitt, right? Is he the artist? No, no. Brad Pitt's already there. That's yet a different character. Oh, God, damn it.

He's killed in a motorcycle crash. Yeah, the cartoonist was some freak. who I can't even fucking remember the actor and I don't care killed his wife or something something like that in the movie

cool world is is a sister movie to me to monkey bone I just realized oh my god monkey bone's on that fucking list too

somewhere monkey bone is closer to cool world I'm seeing a little mask here too I think I think monkey bones worse

than cool world I'm not saying I'm not saying it's the whole thing I'm just saying I see threads I see threads of the mask in this

Yeah. Monkeybone is worse than Ben Stein shows up in both of them. Monkeybone is worse than Cool World, but I don't know. Like, Cool World is such a, like, on that line graph, it is like, Cool World and Roger Abbott have to be the opposites. And Monkey Bone somehow is like, yes, worse, but close to. An offshoot. What is the, you know, we've been so negative.

What's the, you know, we've been so negative. What's the best thing in this game? I mean, like anything that is overwritten, there are some like just funny lines and funny jokes once in a while. yeah there's there's nuggets it just didn't get sifted like you're having to just look through the dirt like when you beat dom de louise's octopus character and he goes it looks like i won he goes my mother's ass you won but i'll give you the prize anyway but he just says it and that's such like brooklyn like hey my mother's ass you did but here you go there was a line that uh you know when i was looking for you guys's play through of this because i knew you streamed it but it's lost to time there was a couple of tiny times tiny clips that survived on Twitch and there was one that was actually like a funny line that someone said in the game like Flux said something to

there's like a dog and a cat that run the shop that has like all the different weapons cartoon weapons. Yeah. Yeah. Wack me. Get it? Yeah. Wack me. Flux says something sassy to one of these characters and the character goes Now don't get smart son. Never change who you are. Yeah, that was pretty good. I heard that. I wrote that

down too. I heard that a little bit. I think it's the only joke I wrote down. It's like that one's an actual joke. You did it. Yeah, let me see. I'm looking at my notes, see if there's anything. This seems, yeah, you're never just solving one puzzle. You're always trying to solve the whole world at once.

Oh, positives? Sorry. I do have one thing that I want to point out. One thing. A lot of this game is backtracking like any point-and-click adventure game of the era that wasn't made by Tim Shaver like I want to say like

pretty far into this game you get like a portable hole where you can like warp to between the centers of the three areas like the center of town but they make you go through like yet another area to do it

so it's not really that fast to travel but okay so the they change the music in every single background they do not they're not permanently looping so everyone has like a long like start up to the song. So if you were moving from one area to the other, you just keep hearing the starts of

these same five or six, like public domainy kind of songs over and over and over again. They got like, you know, the most iconic, most typical, most cliche, like, this is what cartoon shit sounds like, all those like orchestral soundtracks from like, you know, that were reused in Renan Stimpy, but we're originally. from like you know bugs buddy cartoons and things like that and like the sarcastic ones all the one where it's like see it's a joke that we're doing this we're ill is we're showing you as a cartoon it's like yeah but it's like it's just over and over and over um stuff i liked um i'm not doing a bit i like i like the basic concept of the fact that there is a central thing that you're trying to build that you put together

from all the like bullshit to try to you pick up as you play adventure games like a place for those things to go. I think if that had been executed well, that's like that's a pretty neat little bit of business that encourages you to just like get out there and go for it.

You know what I mean? It's something better than the, than the X and Y, you know, fucking Pokemon X and Y like opposites concept to illustrate what those things are supposed to be would have been way better. But like, I I don't hate it as a concept.

I don't hate like you are putting the solution together just through going through the actions of playing an adventure game, which normally feel like, yeah, they do feel very detached from your ultimate goal often. Yeah. And like the concept of like, you know, it makes sense for this game to lampshade how you do get a lot of weird random bullshit in your pockets from adventure games and how just like bizarre adventure game logic is. like it does kind of like lend itself fairly well to this cartoon format. It's like, well, it's kind of like almost, I don't know, it's almost like a yes and to the concept of just ending up with a ton of like really weird stuff in your inventory by the end of it all. But like, you know, pull it off. Great. I don't know. No. Well, some of the, some of the better point and click games also had a similar cartoon logic, Day of the Tenicle is all.

Oh, but Tim Schaefer is a lot more funny. he's a lot more funny and he knows how to make a game I mean Day of the Tenticle is great Maniac Mansion is kind of a pain in the ass to go back to it. I've never played that but I've seen what you can and can do and I'm like no

thank you. Yeah and it's like they moved as moves away from that and to you know making like the little things like in Day of the Tenticle the fact that you can swap items between inventories by just dragging it to the icon of the of the port like the time machine port of party thing

yeah like the fact that you don't have to physically go there and do that every time like just like little details like that like little things that smooth and experience and that people have if you try to do something almost right there's kind of a hint that comes you know what i mean uh obviously it's very easy to get stuck in like day of the tentacle and stuff too because it's all no i don't get the joke i'm not as i'm not a comedy writer i can't yes and this i'm 11 like yeah trying to play that game when you're you're young and don't understand it, you don't have the cynicism, or even this game, if you're young, and you don't have the cynicism of being bored by and seeing too many cartoons and shit like this. You'll just be like, I don't cloak and what? What do I do with this thing? You know, what goes here? I would be looking for a fork, knife and fork. Like, that's the kind of thing I would have played. Yeah. I mean, the same for like, probably the Sam and Max game, too. You know, just like, I didn't have that, that push. Like, I enjoyed it a lot, but I didn't have the fucking like head full of like too much cartoon bullshit yet you know I do now but

he as a kid I was like I need to look up how the fuck to do this salmon max is a lot better because what it does is it will have somebody make one quick joke that is memorable and later you will be like somebody I's like and I and by the way I'm the jar opening can't you know it's like well aren't you proud of yourself it's like I should be I'm the jar opening champion of this whole state and then later you find a fucking jar you can't open you're like hey wait a minute there was that guy yeah yeah i remember coming across moments like that as a kid but not still understanding that like i need to bring it to the jar opening champion i know he said that but to me that's just like a throwaway gag yeah you got to learn that i literally throw away and yes i like when i'm 11

or whatever playing this or that game i'm playing this or that game i'm i don't think about it as game stuff you know i don't have the i don't have the the verbiage of adventure game knowledge in my head to be like oh yeah this and that and that and this it's like how water temple's actually pretty easy something that's weird about a tune struck i feel is like i personally i can't tell if it hates cartoons or loves cartoons because there's elements of both that's that's the tone that's the tone that's always hard to like tell with stuff like this and and and and conquers Bad Fur Day and other games that, like, are, you know, two kiddie for adults, two adults for kids. Do you like what you're doing here? Are you, like, obviously these people are

professionals, like, conversation like a boss and a performance review. Like, let's, what, what, do you like being here? Do you enjoy working in the space? You don't have to. Yeah. You could do stuff. You don't have to make a sarcastic cartoon game if you hate cartoons. Yeah, yeah, I'm a therapist. Like, do you like doing this? Who hurt you? It's weird because the animations are clearly like so loving. Like there's so many like, you know, actual like incredible like squash and stretch going on. Like clearly these were people that were incredibly talented animators and cartoonists.

And then like you'll at the same time you have these writers that seem to have this like active disdain for a lot of like the trappings that come with, you know, animation and cartoons. It's like, I mean, let me let me tell you. That's just, sometimes that can be one and the same with the, you know, the job you love to do. But it's, it's still, it still begs the question of like, are you okay? Like, you get so, you get so sick of doing like the fucking, you know, the cutesy bun bun, fluffy bun bun stuff that you just want to have your character, you know, call the cow the R word or whatever. Call the old horse the R word. to be like, ah, he's a g-r-word.

Yeah, the donkey. This is bizarre. I'm like, TuneStruck was originally conceived as an interactive who-framed Roger Rabbit, but in reverse, since a live-action character enters a fully animated cartoon world. You can just say, cool world. Executive producer David Bishop conceptualized the game is a children's game where a villain was draining the color out of the world, turning it black and white. According to lead designer Richard Hare, Bishop's original concept was titled Trouble in Toonland and had its protagonist, a young boy named Daniel. here's where things get really interesting. However, once Bishop's concept was passed on to co-writer and designer Jennifer McWilliams

and went through several revisions to make it more adult-oriented with comic violence and touches of parody and cynicism. Touches. Yeah. And I'm looking up Jennifer McWilliams. This is like her only credit is Toonstruck. Like that is it. Like IMB, known for tunestruck credits.

Writer, Toonstruck. Additional crew. Went into hiding for her crimes. Video game Toonstruck. Yeah. Jennifer McWilliams, where are you? Are you okay? Yeah.

Like, account for yourself. Whatever you are. Or just explain. Like, I'm curious. I'm curious, like, how something like this happens. Do you think Christopher Lloyd remembers any of this? I hope not. I think he's probably like, he's, I think Christopher Lloyd is like Nick Cage.

He's like getting something from everything, even if he's not like remembering every detail of everything that he does. There's nothing that I completely agree that Lloyd is probably, you know, he's one of those actors who gives a hundred no matter what. No matter if he's in this, back to the future, food fight.

Oh, food fight. Tim Curry is the same type of guy. You know, God bless him. But yeah, like you said it earlier, the co-in or Jess, I forget, is like he didn't have a lot to work with. You know, he did, he did what he did what he could. Didn't have a lot to work with as he was just on green screen. Probably not even with like a, um, like I, I start to wonder if they were like him and Dan Castlenetta as Flux were even like talking to one another.

Ever in the same room. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Or something like that's like, Flux was probably in the booth and like Dan was Dan's on us or I mean he had like Chris had to record a lot of fucking lines too. Yeah, but he would have been recording them in a green screen set. Actually, I would actually briefly, I just remember he would have recorded some of it in a VO booth because of all the

dialogue voiceover stuff. Oh yeah, what am I thinking? But like for that FMV stuff, he would have just been on green screen going I worked on an FMV game very briefly for like a summer. It did not end up coming out, which is what happens to 99% of video games, but

it's a huge. It's a huge pain in the ass to shoot fmv yeah it's you're getting like it's all of the again bring it back episode one it's all of the like the 2000 star wars problems of like the person has nothing to react to they could like not even like like even less sense of themselves in physical space than they do when they do like cg i and they're like okay well here will be this is where the this will be and this is that and like yeah i remember i remember ian mackelan lamenting like having to talk to tennis balls for all of the Hobbit after like being, you know, working with real actors on the original trilogy of Florida of the Rings and like having a bit of a emotional breakdown over

over that. I mean, they gave Bob Hoskins just like a weird Roger Rabbit doll to talk to. But also the guy who voiced Roger Rabbit was just off screen in a Roger Rabbit outfit doing the voice at him too, so, which is funny. I remember Bob Hoskins saying like he started to think he could see Roger all the time after he finished making that movie like he got like a little like stir crazy like you're on a VR helmet too long and you just start to like

you start to fall as you're sitting there people on like the same lot you know because like when you share the same lot you use the same cafeteria or something like that they would see I god I'm forgetting the name of the guy who voiced Roger Rabbit they would see him around in the cafeteria dressed like an insane

maniac man looking like shit it would all be like man it looks like that Roger Rabbit movie is like not going to be good. That's what they think it's going to look like. They're like, oh, my God. Jesus, what are they doing over there? So, Someone told me on Twitter, you know, because I brought up Tunesruck because Bob Mackey told me that if I did not bring up that Christopher Lloyd also played Sebastian Jackal in the 90s UPM series, Deadly Games, I would get demoted back down to guest from guest host.

So, there. But, folks, we got to watch this. Everybody has their Christopher Lloyd poll. Mine was Angels in the Outfield. It seems like we got a, we got, what was that again? What was that? What were we talking about? Deadly games.

Casey, what's your weird Christopher Lloyd pole? What's your thing you saw him on? Tunstruck. Yeah, I guess like, yeah, no, we're in your house, I suppose. But deadly games, he, you know, talk, you talked early about how he's a guy that gets 110% and doesn't phone it in. He phoned it in a little bit for deadly games, just a little. He could have been campier, but he's playing like the bad guy who is,

He's from a video game, and he gets Isakaied into the real world, the opposite way around. And the game devs of the game he's in need to defeat him. And we need to watch it. I found it. We're watching this. So he was shooting this. Halfway through him being on this, Hoonstruck came out. Like, I keep thinking of it in terms of, like, his personal 9-11.

Just like, oh, here, there's everything. Where was Chris for Lloyd in 9-11? Just try. It was like zoom in on the Ground Zero wreckage, and it's like, Who's Brack to the opening meeting? Marty, we got to go back. They had it blocked it to play it.

It was the only way. Anyway, we should watch this. But I posted like a screenshot on Twitter of Christopher Lloyd and being in this. And I mentioned Toonstruck. And someone on Twitter at Eric the Grabo told me that they brought a boxed copy of Toonstruck to Wizard World like a decade ago for Christopher Lloyd to sign and his handlers

said nobody brought that to the table ever before and Lloyd looked at it completely puzzled and was like I've never seen this before did he know it was a video game and the guy was like well you're in it you're on the box art

I hope it was the one where he's being electrocuted too like the one yeah yeah which makes me oh no you scared suddenly. No. No.

Ghost of Christmas yet to come. There's a life made right. Which makes me wonder if like, you know, don't, don't do this. Don't abuse this man. But like, is it possible to just like doctor up a box art of Christopher Lloyd in something he has not been in? Give it to him and he'll sign it anyway. Probably.

Maybe. Probably. I mean, especially like the 90s. He was increasingly violent looking things happening to. his handlers Handlers. Yeah. So that people don't come up to Christopher

Lloyd with a break his hands. No, no. They put him in a cage after he's done signing things. And that's how to handle him. Back in the cage, Chris. You know, this says something racist or awful or, you know. We'll wheel his ass back into like fucking. Oh, shit.

There's a physical copy. Okay. Also, I wonder if they walk. I wonder if, oh my God, you could get a fiscal company. of two and struck. It's on eBay. $4.90. $0.10? No bids. Less than $5.

It has the box. It has the box art. It has the instruction manual. That's about the same price as getting it on G-O-G, I think. Yeah, just get it on fucking steam. I'm not going to fucking play it. You're out of your mind. I want to display this and have people ask me, like, Christopher Lloyd was in a video game?

I'm going to nail it to a tree. Yeah, with, with I, with, with, oh, my God. the back of the the back of the CD case is the S&M sheep when she's got the cone boobs Hell yeah It's just like They were proud of that

That's what like a 10 year 10 years after Madonna did that They're doing the joke in this That's the You still remembered it Iconic I only know of it because it was referenced in everything I didn't actually

Exactly I still remember it Yeah I walked right into that I mean like you know That's that's why we still have like The voice of all bad guy sound like this. It's like who knows who that guy is modern

day. I don't, I forget who that guy's name is. Peter Laurie. Peter Laurie. That voice showed up in the fucking Mario Brothers movie and it's like children will never know its connection to Peter Laurie at this point. It has been like processed by culture so many. It's a hundred year old reference

at this point practically. I talked to I talked to Branson about this. I think that like they're talking about Branson Reese the also a comic book artist. Comic artist, follow him at Branson Reese. He's fun. Boy, Rood Tales of Magic. But it's like, there's, there are these voices that have been passed on, like,

that have been passed on specifically. It's like, for me, it's like Peter Lory is like Digitamon from Digimon. He's like, nightmare syndromeer, you know, and so it's like slight variation, but, you know, or it's the genie saying, it's not the pretty picture. I don't like doing it, you know, but these have become these, these stock characters, like used to show up in Shakespeare and stuff. Like, it's like, oh, it's, oh, it's, oh, the classic character of, you know, the cuckled night watchman. Yeah, you don't have, you don't have to know who Peter Lurie is to enjoy that voice.

Yeah. And you've seen him in all those things. So it's, it's conveying. It's like, oh, yeah, it's the creepy egg or it's the zombie genie or it's all these different things. Edwin is now like, yeah, that's King Candy. That's who they think of is. Chookees, choose. Yeah.

Yeah. But like not, not to the next generation who it's king, uh, king candy. from Reckett Ralph. You know, it's all been passed down. I love that shit. Hey, at least Alan Tudick actually did a voice act, a voice acting in that role. It wasn't just being his self. God bless his ass. Alan, too. He's like, like, pass it down to Alan. Yeah. It's a good Edwin. I wish like, you know, celebrities are always just cast in stuff and they don't even do a friggin voice or anything. Like, get the celebs that give a shit enough to do a voice like that. like come on yeah yeah and that's like i fully believe he's a part of that same group of people who

will always give a hundred percent and and like that's something that uh billy west has complained about is that specifically like there was there was a practice i certain big animation studios one or two or three of the most popular especially in the 2000s uh would bring in like him or other like really good voice actors get their audition like hear all the stuff that they bring to it and then give that to the not give them the job but then give the audition to the celebrity be like yeah do do some of this stuff like all this stuff that the voice actor had come up with to try to get the role like here's what i can bring to it good look good look imitating billy west yeah but like maybe you can put a little affect on your say finding nemo's dad or

whatever marlin his name is marlin yeah his name is mud my book his name was finding right it was cult is like banjo-cazouye. Finding an Nemo. Yeah. Getting back into it, Cohen, you said you found something. Yeah, I found, I found an article on retro gamer from about 20. 17, that is a conversation with Jennifer, with one of the writers. And it's a, it is not really, I would not say this is particularly, this is not hardballed journalism. It's like, wow, what a weird thing that happened.

Here's what we were going for. But it's really a lot of like talking about like, yeah, there was actually a ton of money from the executives at Virgin and like really a lot of push to like, handle it almost like a movie and it's like there's just really really no conversation in any of this about the design about like thinking about this as a as a game it really feels like the design was the fact that they were designing a game was secondary to the spectacle that they wanted and the fact that it's like oh this is something you're actually going to have to play like they and enjoy allegedly one of the things they point out is something that I had a lot of I that I really didn't like when I saw it which is that

is that like, oh, time is passing as you're playing because it's like, oh, well, as you solve certain things, it'll say, meanwhile, it'll cut away and other, you know, things will happen. But they're not related to anything that you're doing. Right, yeah. Like, you'll just walk to another screen and you'll get a meanwhile cut scene. And, like, Tim Curry's character is, you know, doing something nefarious. I always thought that I always used, I always took that to mean, like,

I was going in the right direction. It should, it should convey that, but it might not. Like, because what it's really keyed to is like something you might have, because I think they are both like, you do a thing and also you pass a certain area, which is frustrating because it's the problem, it's the thing that happened in Mist Four, why the last world of missed four is the worst because so much of the progression in the last world of Miss Four is contingent on, oh, well, you walked, you walked into this one room and then you pass through this other area. Like, like, it's like, oh, well, you tried to go. look for this person there, but you didn't find them. And then you came back here. It's like, well, no, that's what you as the game designer think is happening because you already have the script in your head for how it's supposed to go.

So in your head, you already know that, well, they're looking for this person and they're trying to look for them there, but they don't find them so frustrated they return. It's like, that's, that's not at all something you can be confident that a player has in mind as they're going. It's like, you

you are writing, you're presently writing a story for to describe those actions, but that's not, it's like, oh, they might have just wandered in that direction. They might have been looking for something. Yeah, you don't know me. Yeah, exactly. They might have saved the game and then put it away for three weeks, come back completely forgotten. That was the last thing that happened.

Yeah, from the perspective of the player, when these cutscenes happened, they could just be utterly confusing because you don't know what you did to trigger them or if it means anything. Yeah. Exactly. It gives you, ends up being a false positive. It feels like it should be commentary on what's happening. But it's not really.

there's a note that oh every time you progress the story at all everybody in the world has something new to say to comment on it which that's not true i don't think that's correct but also that's just confusing that's just confusing like that makes you think that characters are going to have new things to say yeah instead of just more jokes that should have hit the cutting room floor especially if you've only partially solved a puzzle it's like oh shit well is the lady at the costume shop the key to impressing this guy at the gym maybe i have to get a leotard. You have very few characters actually give you any clues that I remember. Is it just me? No, no. It works. It's a thing where it's like, oh, they always make sense in retrospect. Yeah.

Because it's written where they provide a joke setup and then it's up to you to find the prop somewhere in reality that can serve as a punchline. But the jokes aren't that good. So good luck And they're all over the place totally Most of the times the solution is to hurt someone Like whoever you're like And just like real cartoons yeah

Yeah but like They just they keep coming back to like cartoons are violent That's funny right And it's like well they can be other things I don't know Also like not the cartoons that you're like lampooning here specifically Especially the cute ones Oh yeah

Stop figure it out Anyway I want to talk about the legacy of this game if it has a legacy you know despite us you know shitting all over it this game is not without its fans who are apparently they're still clamoring for that 30 years late

sequel uh in fact while I was researching for this pod I stumbled upon tunestruck 2.com uh oh boy it's real and it's kind of slick it's a kind of surprisingly slick looking website I did a little digging it seems like the author

of this website is a British graphic designer when I'm not going to docks you know, find your joy in this, I guess. They seem to have enough time to mess around. Yeah. So it's a fan site. It is not affiliated with the rights holders of the game.

But it seems very enthusiastic on the promises of remastering the original game and developing Tunstruck 2, even going so far as to say, they expect to release a playable demo of Tunstruck 2

in the year of our lard 2023 some fucking how all right that's a pretty big words from someone who does not own the intellectual property to do that do you think they would really care do you think virgin interactive would give a shit that's the thing like

I don't know exactly but I do know he does not own it so it seems like a weird thing to promise you know pretty big words that remind me of the promises of like you know AI art bros and that might be because the site does say

that they would do all this with AI upscaling. And they've included quite a few examples of that. And of course, they do not look great. What's wrong with them? The life vanishes from Christopher Lloyd's eyes when you AI upscale Christopher Lloyd in this game. Like his eyes become these dark pits of nothing. I got to look at the stoptales too strict too.

It's actually quite an impressive website. But yeah, there's like a comparison. There's like a gallery of comparison. that you can kind of like smooth the little divider back and forth and compare and contrast and see how many pores the AI has imagined on Christopher Lloyd's face.

Whoa. Gross. These look worse. They're worse. Yeah, ugly. Part of the aesthetic of like this style of cartooning is that it has like it's kind of like human imperfections that give it some charm. And like when you run it through an AI upscaler,

it kind of, it smooths out things and a discons. inserting artificial, icky-looking way. This is like when they re-release like Sandman and they replaced all the sky, the cool like skies and stuff

with just shitty gradients and just like fill it. They're like, oh, this had too much personality and looked like it might have been a physical object at some point. I'm going to, I'm going to fix that. Yeah,

put a stop to that. Casey, why, why do things look kind of jagged? Like, what is it that's happening when that, when that, when things look really jagged?

It's probably just the compression and the weird, probably weird, digital compression of the early 90s. As I was watching a bit of a long play, I was like, it is very kind of rough to look at, especially like the blurriness of the live action segments. But you can also tell that there is some kind of like early kind of digital painting happening that is just like not quite there.

Some early animated sitcoms tried to do like digital painting stuff like The Simpsons, famously, the radioactive man movie episode was like the first time they did digital painting and it looks so jarring compared to like episodes before and after it before they kind of figured it out. And that's just that's just like, you know, trial and error. And around 96, 95 when this was made and this came out, you know, it was probably, it was probably about the same kind of like level of, I guess we'll try. and it might just not look very great at first, but that's what we got. It's what we can do. And there's charm and trying.

There's charm and trying. I will say one positive aspect I think of this in this game is that I think the backgrounds look great. Yeah. It's well done. It's cartoonish. Yeah, wild-ass, super colorful, really like wonky and fun backgrounds. It's like, yeah, they got that right. Cool.

Yeah. they're very colorful you know where you're going half the time you know it's it reminds me of a day of the tentacle and stuff like that they had a similar like the cartoonish aspect they wanted to keep that's john piampiano apparently was the artist who was brought on to do the background paintings but ended up working on a whole host of tasks including character development storyboarding character and background color styling 2D effects animation, logo design, gaming icon design, marketing promos, and more. Sounds like they got a lot of work out of you, John. I hope you treat you okay. Because you, I think you were the person who was doing the best on this. I do like the backgrounds. Like individually, on their own, each of them looks like a cool place to click around and explore.

It's really only once you see them in motion and like hear the jokes. and see Christopher Lloyd's pixely ass all over it, you know. I love when they don't, I love when they, when they do a gif of him, when they like Tom goes to the mayor, they just have about like a four frame thing of them instead of like, so I kept reaching down to pick something over. They're just like, pooh, poop, poop, but well, nobody will notice them. Yeah. That's that, you know, that's the best part. That is the best part. They should have just Tom goes the mirror the whole thing instead of F&V.

That would have been more interesting. It would have been, yeah, that would have been like, oh yeah, like he's turning into a car. cartoons. Now he's all like... You know, there's some parts of this game where he turns a little bit into a cartoon. It's very disturbing. Oh, yeah. That's how it ends. And it's, yeah, it's how it ends. And speaking about the ending, there's some info on this site run by a madman that has the intended plot of the second game because, you know, people have been talking to the designers and stuff like that over the years. And according to Richard Hare, the lead designer, once Drew escaped from Nefarious's castle, he and Flux were supposed to ride. a train of thought, because there was a train track in Zanidu that you really didn't do much on that screen. It was kind of out of place. And you ride that train of thought up to an island in the sky. And here, Drew explores his own fears and fantasies within a carnival setting. There was a Wild West shootout and encounter with Drew's artist, Idol Van Gogh, and a visit to a maniacal dentist. And just like exploring your own fear in a carnival setting just gives me sanitarium vibes. It's

another weird point-and-click game from around this time. Bad game. Cool game. But kind of, I don't know. Bad-meal mental health things. Bad cool. But finally, Drew would need to kickstart his imagination slash creativity represented by a huge lighthouse. There's always a man. There's always a lighthouse. And defeat both Fluffy Bun Bun and Dr. DeFarious in the process. And if the first tunestruck had been commercially successful, we would have used most of the content that had been cut from the first game and added in additional scenes

to pat out the story. Drew Blank would have been transformed into a tune at the outset of the game and would need to undo this by the end of the game. So technically they could still make the sequel, even though Christopher Lloyd is old as hell, he doesn't have to physically appear in this thing. Yeah, you still do fucking some voice acting.

Yeah. We also want to add in more physical-based puzzles, allowing Drew to physically push around objects in the scene and use them together. Good luck. That's way harder. Yeah, that's hard. And as recently as last year, more lost media from the sequel has popped up with one of the animators, Laura Yanchevsky, posting her work files that she found from Toonstruct 2 on her YouTube channel.

And if you're interested to see that, her channel is at Laura J 7185. And it's good stuff. It's like nice animation reel sort of stuff. She explains the context of what this would have been used for, how this puzzle would have worked, if it got put into the game. so it's a good interesting stuff didn't expect 30 years later i noticed they even had these files yeah i noticed they um what's the word they they referenced uh the idea of van go and is in the dentist part or in the game in like the early part of the game where he gets a call from the dentist saying he missed that and there's a picture of van go in the background of his of his thing but still

it's just like okay in the physical set that he was physically on it. It's interesting to be like, okay, well, they did, there are some, there's some thought here. Yeah. Who knew? Oh, yeah. No, like every, all the hallmarks of like cool ideas is like, like this is this is a thing that is like, I'm a dozen. Lethal with cool ideas.

Yeah. It's like, oh, that wouldn't that have been neat? It's like, yeah, but that also would have been very hard. Like, yeah. I feel like that's one of the things that fascinates me about these types of FMV games from this like precise like, four, five year, like, chunk of the 90s is that they did have all these, like, really lofty ambitions, and it's like, oh, but making games is hard. Did you not know that? This is, like, really hard. And also, there's no market for it anymore because it's 1996 and everybody's, like,

so fed up with M&B games now. Yeah. It's like, oh, what a shame, you know, all this work. And, like, the idea that, like, that all these animators made so much stuff for the second game and it all got cut never got seen like that breaks my heart that sucks yeah it's not uncommon yeah yeah yeah that's because it well because it's like that's the first thing that you can make is concept art and backgrounds and let me tell you it's like I know I know that they're presenting it's like look all these backgrounds already done it's like as as hard as it is to paint those backgrounds like painting the 2d backgrounds like getting the 2d backgrounds painted for an adventure game is like 2% of the work.

It's like there is so much. Like just just like it's a flex to me that the first thing this character that he does is walk down some stairs. Because it is it is goddamn hard to show like to do that. Just like having a character in a 2D perspective like that walk down some stairs and have it not look like shit. For reasons unclear, that's like it's like the first thing you can do and it plays that like piano crash when that happens. You know what I mean? Like, somebody's like running their fingers down the keys. Like it's, oh, it's because it's a goofy staircase.

So it makes that sound. It's like, but isn't this the cute land? Why does it make a wacky sound in the cute? It's fine. It's fucking confusing, yeah. This is hard, hard, hard. But it's like, yeah, they've got nothing. I'm looking what I've got here.

It's like, yeah, here's what we wanted to do. You mean two instruct two guy? Yeah, I mean to instruct two guy for sure. Yeah, sorry. Yeah, it's like, oh, isn't this impressive? it's like not a ton you know AI upscaling

a still image is not really that hard to do and like everything else is like you have to program the whole game you know like that's really hard do you know how to do that you're a graphic designer I think

it's hard it's hard it's hard to make video games good luck to that guy though there's like a couple adorable petitions that have not made enough signatures for interest for two

and it's like oh honey they're not going to Yeah, they're not going to make a game for like only 3,000 signatures. I'm sorry, it's not going to happen. Very little demand for Toonstruct, too. But a powerful and passionate little niche on a weird little corner of the internet that I've stumbled into there. Good luck to them. Curse to them, I say.

I curse them. I want to negate your luck. I want this to have no positive net outcome. That zero for those thoughts. Well, yeah, that's, that's, that's tunestruck. What a, what a weird thing. Any final thoughts? As much as we've been, I've been, like, critical and all that stuff.

I do, I am happy that this game. exist like as weird and odd as you don't know how to categorize something like this to to adult for kids to kitty for adult I love that they tried yeah I love that they tried and and did this and like it's very easy to play nowadays um like it's pretty cheap on like GOG or steam or whatever and um yeah you don't you don't get this that often this kind of thing that often anymore yeah it's a weird little guy

and like yeah it's good to appreciate that kind of shit once in a while yeah like it's even though I don't I would not say I like it I am like I said fascinated by it it's very very strange it's a strange little thing

and yeah it being in like that neither in here nor they're kiddie versus adult area you know that didn't work out for it sales wise that made it difficult to to sell is difficult to market. There was basically no marketing budget because Virgin spent

so much money just making the game. They had like nothing left for marketing. It's like nobody even knew this thing came out practically. So that's why it sold not a lot of copies. $150K. Boy, I wonder where that's like. Yeah, have a marketing budget. That's what I'm going to say.

Important. Yeah. No one will play it if they don't know what it is, where it is, where you get it? Essentially if there's a box, you look at it's like, Who, who's it for? Like, there's Christopher Lloyd getting electrocuted. There's a clown in the background who, I don't remember actually. Does he ever actually show up in the game?

He shows up near the end in Nefarious's hideout and he's in like a, yeah, for being a mascot, he's not that big a part of, he's not that big of a game. He's the guy that briefly turns Christopher Lloyd into a tune, though, if I'm not mistaken, that happens in the room with that guy. So I'm wondering if, like, he had a bigger. role that got like scooted down or something like would have had a bigger role into tune struck two or something because like he's the impetus for him having this cartoon ability ish that happens twice near the end I don't know it's like he's there to

cheshire cat but it's that they made that classic mistake of like well we don't want to introduce our cool character too early and use them up but it's like if you do that too much just like nobody knows who the hell the character is yeah they barely did it at all he had one one character at all yeah it's he's he is this is literally like the instruction booklet it says act two characters and it's it's it's just a picture of the clown it's just that's it's just even in the list of characters he's just a fun character he's he's the most he's the

most subtle not subtle but more succinct simple way of telling you the viewer that this is a cartoon but not for kids It's on the title screen when you start the game. I know. Like I said, it's a succinct little sticker for the front of the game. Like you put Drew, you put Flux wildly on there. He just looks like it's going to be a kid game. The fact that he cusses and this is a fucking stinker is unrelated to how he looks.

Oh, and does this character have a name? Is that in the, I didn't find the manual. I should have looked a little harder for that. I didn't think to. yeah he does i i don't remember it again he's in like one part of the whole yeah but like is he is he on the character page with a name like any no the character page is just uh is just flux and uh the other one it's whatever drew it's just it's just them true it's the character's page

and it doesn't even have images of them uh clearly worthy of a whole chapter of a manual spike spike the clown it's like coon struck it's like the box the main box one of the box arts was just the clown, like our 3D render of the clown sticking a needle into like a dog's eye. And it's like, yeah, yeah, that's really not the energy of the game even though.

No, it's not. He makes it look more scarier and twisted than the game actually is for adults. But still like, I see that as a kid and I would go like, I'm not supposed to play this. This looks evil. Nauty.

Yeah, I guess that's the, that's the, yeah, because you always pitch above the, you pitch over the age you're actually pitching to, you know what I'm saying? You get what I'm saying. So that looks forbidden. Yes, yes. There are plenty of games and weird, not games, but like kind of that type of media that just felt like, yes, was forbidden as a kid. And like, you don't, I don't know if you get that that much anymore because everyone has access to everything. I feel like, as a kid, you see things like this. So the, the trailer for Conquers Bad Fur Day. And you're like, uh-oh, I'm going to get in trouble. I feel like red and Stimpy was in a similar, like, vibe of like, I shouldn't be watching this. South Park when it first started. Beavis and Butthead, yeah. Beavis and Butthead. Um, yeah. So I guess that's Toonstruck.

I guess that's all our thoughts on Toonstruck. Uh, do you recommend this game? Yes. Yes. A little. Yeah. I mean, if you liked old shitty cartoons, here's one. Here's another one for you.

If you like, if you have to play it a little bit. If you like looking at Christopher Lloyd for any reason, that's a good enough reason to play this game. Because Christopher Lloyd has... Yeah, it's fine if you skip it, but it's such an interesting game in its own way. Whatever long play pops up first when you type, you know, this into YouTube, that's correct long play. That's fine. That's going to go quick. And it's still going to capture, because even in that one, you can see, like, the person playing it who clearly knows how to play the game and is like,

the clock puzzle like it still takes them a few tries you could like see them like pausing like what the fuck like this is a person who sat down had this game memorized so they could make a thing we're like all right I'm going to talk to everybody here all the dialogue and even them there's just

there's a couple of times when they fuck up because it's just like what the what the hell am I supposed to be doing in this dog shit game so I guess it's time for plugs Cohen what you're working on and where can we find you? I am, you can find me at Skullmandible on Twitter, if that still exists by the time this goes up. Cohen is a ghost.

Working on something with you two, a couple other interested parties. So I guess watch all our spaces for that when that drops. I won't say anymore now, but game design might be a feature. That's what I got. Secrets. Secrets. Sexy secrets. And Casey, what are you working on and where can we find you?

Well, you can find me on on Twitter or anywhere else, usually at K-C-G-R-E-E-N-N. The one-n was taken. But I am always posting on, you know, Instagram, Twitter, wherever it is. I got a new comic out with King Features on Comics Kingdom called God's Hands. It is just a gag comic than the likes of Farside or making a dumb Twitter post or something like that. definitely more fun to create a funny image than just post online. So that's what that is. And all my stuff is still online at the old and new.

You can find at kCgreen.com.com. And also on to Pataco.com, many, many, many things for sale from the Casey Green extended universe. Yeah. And I got stuff on there too, also. Oh, yeah, that too. Yeah, they get common products. Listener, you know of the Casey Green Extended. Ended Universe, but I won't get into it here.

Buy the official merch. Don't buy knockoffs. But, and I am Jess O'Brien. I'm at Voidberger on Twitter, if it still exists, and all the other main places, you know, YouTube, Twitch, all those things. Co-host? I don't know. I'm not using it yet. I'll do it when I'm forced to.

Yeah, you're on Twitch. Oh, we were on Twitch, too, at Game Worms, spelled with a U in the arm, in the worms. We've been doing... We've been doing old 90s cartoons watch alongs on Saturday mornings obviously not this Saturday morning

or the next couple of weeks but come by and follow and when you catch us we'll see it's a good time I mean like this was a great podcast guys like this is the perfect my tune crew

the perfect crew to talk about who struck with like knowledgeable cool folks in here and yeah this has been Retronaut That's all, folks. That's all, folks.

Sorry, I don't have a thing prepared. Oh, do Edwin, then. Get the fuck off my show. Get off my porch. Get out of here, you. I'm back with that kangaroo. This has been retro-noughts. That's all, folks.

Thank you.