Choose Our Own Adventure!: 11/11/2015 (Toonstruck)

This is basically a documentary of what it's like to be an animator.

Life is strange got weird.

All aboard the toon's truck!

I've owned this on GOG for a while but never installed it. Cool choice, fellas!

EDIT: Cool World: 4% on Rotten Tomatoes.

Toonstruck! This game was so weird and wonderful.

Edit: I, uhh, forgot about that line involving Elmer. Youch. I also forgot about the scarecrow's... personality. Another youch.

I love when people presumably in the entertainment industry write something as though they have no idea how the industry works.

"You created a show that's made millions, but you're still a low level peon! Now create a whole new show in 12 hours, or your fired!"

Yup, checks out.

Christopher Lloyd's pretty cool, guys.

I don't know what I'll be voting for next week, now that this dream of mine has been fulfilled.

Cool World SNES had a good opening song https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rD6iO4VuDt4

Good find (?), community.

This game is fantastic and I was one of the probably 500 people in the world who bought it upon its release. It totally deserved a sequel.

I don't get this feature's purpose. Vinny said that it was going to be one-offs only because the point was to "get to as much stuff as possible, stuff they wouldn't have a chance to see otherwise." Since the first game was Life is Strange, I (wrongly, I guess) assumed they meant games that are actually relevant to 2015 that people are craving to know more about, and that this was for the purposes of coverage and their (and our) personal education of games that are important and relevant right now but that they wouldn't have a chance to see on their own time.

If we're just going to be playing weird old FMV games, I don't see why they couldn't just play more Phantasmagoria 2 (which I thought was a one-off joke pick for Halloween and not representative of what this feature is about), for instance. I don't see why they haven't created a separate FMV feature. That would honestly make the most sense, considering Vinny likes playing these games and we all like watching him play them so there will undoubtedly be more in the future. It's what GBWest would have done (look at old games show, for example), and it would be a great idea loved by all (not to mention make searching through the video backlog easier for people down the line). More granularity and separation between features when there's an obvious point of separation is always a good thing, just as creating a new feature when there isn't an obvious point of separation is always a bad thing. The giantbomb makes mario features could've just been most of a UPF (after all they had one UPF where all they played was Mario Maker and MGSV). It made sense to separate it out though, and I'm glad they did. I would like to see more of that from you guys, please. Named, unique, specific features with specific content would be a nice change. Make FMVinny happen already.

At the same time, this feature seems like little more than another name for a playdate that takes suggestions from the audience and places this arbitrary limitation on what they can play because nothing can repeat between episodes no matter how invested the audience and staff are in it, while at the same time not having any limitation as to what kind of games can be suggested as far as release date or anything that would give this feature any kind of connective tissue between episodes. It's an "anything goes" show just like UPF and Playdates are, and is redundant because of it. As a viewer who doesn't participate in the forums, the Missing playdate and the phantasmagoria choose our own adventure might as well be the same feature. I actually forgot which was which and had to go back and check, and I think that's a problem. It certainly isn't something that happens with GBWest features.

I don't know what the answer is. Vinny's obviously trying to do a specific thing here by soliciting suggestions in the forums, but I do know that the result on my end is I have no idea what this feature is about for people who don't bother to go there. Far more people will watch this video than participate in those threads. Toonstruck got chosen because maybe 20 people mentioned it. That doesn't feel like we're all choosing an adventure together (and as Vinny said, it was more that he chose it based on some people throwing it around, which adds to the disingenuous nature of the title because there's nothing truly democratic about it). Everyone's crying for Life is Strange, and it's great you're spinning that off into its own thing, but what happens when you play another game on here that a large portion of the audience wants to see more of? Far more appropriate to the name "Choose Our Own Adventure" would be something where we all vote on an actual poll (that's perhaps better advertised to non-forum peeps by having it's own article on the front page) and then you play through that entire game rather than just show a little bit of it. Obviously only games you guys are also interested in playing all the way through would be on the poll. That feels like an actual important choice made by the audience to me. If all you want are suggestions of random ass games to play one time you could've simply recorded twice as many playdates and added a subtitle (GBE Playdate: Audience Choice: Toonstruck) to denote the difference, keeping the same rule that audience choice playdates won't repeat games (but they may end up on the non audience choice playdates).

In general the stuff coming out of GBEast has been pretty all over the place when it comes to how it's organized and presented. Contradiction, for instance, starting as a quick look, then having a short "quick look supplemental" and then finally getting finished in two playdates was just sloppy and odd. They obviously continued playing the game right after the quick look, why wouldn't you just cut that into one video? Stuff like that really bugs me when this is supposed to be a professional website I pay money for and not somebody's youtube channel. Being goofy in the video itself is all well and good, but not when it comes to naming videos and creating features.

I know I've gone on about this for far too long and probably made an ass of myself. It's really not a huge deal in the grand scheme of things, I just wish they'd put a little more thought into this stuff. I really, really hope this doesn't upset anybody since I'm not trying to shit on anyone. The content is still great, I just think it could be presented and organized a lot better than it has been.

At the start i thought the game would be too old and slow to be enjoyable. But once the subtitles appeared and the fast travel button was found, it worked out all right.

It's great game and I love you guys. But the Sand M cow left me traumatized. How was that allowed into this story? If only this play through had ended just a little sooner.

Love this feature and being in chat while you play.

This game is absolutely terrible, the audio on the voice acting is incredibly grating.

Oh great. I voted for this game as well haha

I think this was the game that actually got me thinking about voice actors and how I started to recognize them as it flaunted how many talented and famous (which I use sparingly here as VAs were not really "famous" at the time per say) voice actors the game has.

I really wish they'd finish the second part of this game, but at this point maybe it's better left in the past. I know it was like... almost done, but if even 1 minute isn't finished I don't know if they could really finish it now. It's really sad because this game was great at the time. It just came out at a bad time when people weren't paying attention to adventure games on the same scale they used to for a few years.

It's awesome to see ya'll play it.

@vinny A super young Christopher Lloyd surprised me when he showed up in an episode of Cheers. I almost didn't recognize him.

@davidh219: I don't think this feature should be purely democratic, especially since it isn't even premium. The community gives suggestions, the crew finds something they like, and then we get a cool video such as this.

If Life is Strange kept getting 30 votes or something, a handful of people are holding a feature hostage that's seen by thousands of people. Yet another Life is Strange playthrough on Youtube can easily get lost in the shuffle, so a playthrough of Toonstruck stands out and can bring more people to the site. I see no problem with older games being covered because it's meant to be a fun feature to see weird shit.

The only major downside is I'd like to see some of these games continue, but then we're stuck with a bunch of "spin it off into its own feature!" requests. Maybe an Epilogue show of sorts can solve that problem.

Playdates in the past have been varied, from Mordor to Contradiction to Until Dawn. The past two happened to be adventure games, which is why the community probably defaults to suggesting more adventure games (we've had a history of good results with them).

"In general the stuff coming out of GBEast has been pretty all over the place when it comes to how it's organized and presented." It is, and that chaos is part of the charm. I dunno, I like having the crew feel things out and randomly go to a train simulator during a Playdate. I know some other sites have to announce "ok, we have this new segment in this feature" and it just feels restrictive. Sure, they restricted this to a one-off thing, which honestly works out so each week isn't taken up by a single game for months. I would've completely ignored this feature during Life is Strange, for example.

I visit the forums but keep missing this thread. Regardless, this still feels like a community-driven feature and I like what it's brought so far. Maybe the fact that they've done a bunch of adventure games recently might be blending it together for you. I know they listen to criticism, so maybe they'll take yours to heart for Playdates and mix it up a little. But as long as people can get Vinny to play adventure games, this obscure stuff might continue getting suggestions. To be fair, that thread made a pretty good argument for Toonstruck.

Long posts!

Am I crazy or does Ben Stein's office look like Paul Newman's office from Hudsucker Proxy. I'm probably crazy.

To those who keep missing the thread: Vinny usually posts it the day before and pins it to the top of the forums, so it's usually easy to find by going to the forums tab the night before. I've almost missed it a couple times myself because it usually doesn't show up on the 'Recent Forum Activity' on the front page (I think the front page might ignore pinned threads). So yeah, just fyi.

I love this feature even when it not a game I'm super interested in. Hope it continues evolving. I think it would be cool if the guys gave out a theme for the game suggestions, like this week they are feeling like a horror game, or this week they are feeling like a adventure game or a strategy game. Might shake things up a bit and keep similar games from dominating the feature.

(oh, and please continue with the LiS Playdate soon... can't wait to see you guys continue with it)

Jesus Christ. I remember trying to get this game to work on a Windows XP machine. It seriously took me something like a dozen attempts over the span of half a year to get it to run. What I got was... underwhelming.

@csl316: I totally like that playdates are their own random, "hell idk let's play whatever and figure it out as we go" thing. I just think one "random games" feature is enough, don't you? GBWest seems to do alright having just UPF as the umbrella for "whatever we want" and then having other features for things that are more specific. Playdates are the east coast version of that. We simply don't need two separate features that do the same thing, imo. If they want to play more random games, they can simply do more playdates. There's literally nothing stopping them. If Vinny wants to let people in the forums give him suggestions of what to play, he can ask what he should play on the next playdate. You see what I'm saying?

And yeah, of course they can play FMV adventure games on their rando feature just like they can play whatever else randomly, that's what a rando feature is for. It's just that since everyone likes them so much and since they keep happening I think it's a great opportunity to put them under a different umbrella. People have been wanting FMVinny forever. It boggles my mind why they haven't just done it already. It helps it feel more unique and separate, and makes them easier to find so they're not just lost in a sea of a weekly feature that has "like, whatever sounds cool, man." FMV games are just such a specific thing and so separate from other video games that if we're gonna keep doing them, I vote for them to be their own feature.

As an aside, the problem with playing an adventure game only one time is that people get invested in the story. If they had played something less story driven for the first Choose Our Own Adventure (say some open-world early access game Vinny could break apart), people wouldn't have held the feature hostage for LiS like they did. Don't play a narrative focused game and expect people to be okay that you're not going to keep playing it, is my advice. And yet here we are, doing it again...

As for this being free, I honestly didn't think of that. I don't really notice what's free and what's not anymore. Perhaps that's enough to justify its separateness from playdates. As a subscriber it still feels like two features that are basically the same thing named different (one with a name that is imo bad and slightly disingenuous), but it's undeniably an important distinction for non-subs.

@monty_vaca "I think it would be cool if the guys gave out a theme for the game suggestions, like this week they are feeling like a horror game, or this week they are feeling like a adventure game or a strategy game. Might shake things up a bit and keep similar games from dominating the feature."

That is a great suggestion!

@davidh219:I'm surprised Full Motion Vinny never happened. but the FMV games never stopped. I remember throwing that name out there years ago, along with my "Vinny's Sandbox" idea (since he just had a kid and kept messing around in open-world games).

Anyway, I suppose this feature's "purpose" is to give people a weekly thing to vote on. The content itself may overlap a bit (2 hours of playing some game), but it's the closest we've come to a weekly feature involving the community since TNT. When watching the Playdates, I do view them as a completely separate thing because it's a surprise pick we didn't influence.

They're still figuring it out, but I don't want this feature going away, and I don't see them putting on more restrictions on the types of games people can suggest. Maybe they'll differentiate more as we go. But I wouldn't get too invested in what they name their video features. Just enjoy the ride.

@davidh219: TLDR- The community picks what they play. DEMOCRACY doesn't always work.

People aren't really voting though. There's not an actual vote, and it's obvious Vinny just kinda looks for stuff that interests him in there. TNT was about playing multiplayer games with the community. This really isn't the same thing. Again, if people were actually legitimately voting for something and a big deal was made out of it, sure. That hasn't been the case so far though. Anyway, everything to be said has been said. They'll either change and tweak it or they won't. Time to finally sit back and enjoy the rest of this dumb game. 'Night folks.

Highly underrated point and click adventure. I remember loving this.

Would be great seeing these go up on youtube sooner. It's been more than a week since the last one went up on the site but no sign of it on youtube.

It makes me happy that Austin considered Akira Toriyama a hero of his when he was young.

I cannot for the life of me handle Vinny without his glorious beard.

This is fantastic, I hope you guys get back to it eventually. I had never heard of this before.

@muchogusto: Yeah, surprise nudity doesn't go over well on Youtube.

@csl316: Ah i see, i haven't watched the other one yet because the player on the site makes my macbook sound like a jet taking off.

Flux absolutely sounds like Jeff Bakalar doing a cartoon voice and I hope you let him know that.

This is my favorite feature on the site!

This is what immediately came to mind when I heard that music in the Wacme shop:

I think I used to have an album of tunes kind of like this, but I can't remember what it was.

That was a trip.

@davidh219: I have been assuming that Playdates the Premuim feature is now were they finish games and Choose our own adventure is were they sample games and if they and the community like them they move the game to Playdates and finish them there

@davidh219: I agree with you, I'm finding the current format a bit confusing. I'd also prefer to see games completed rather than seeing the first hour or two of a bunch of games.

Didn't Vinny say last time that Life is Strange could be completed on another feature but this feature was meant to show off lots of games? I like ther concept.

If it's a problem because the play date is premium, spend a little money for the hours of entertainment you get here and get access..

01:47:06 Background music is Gay Activity by Clive Richardson. Also known as the Yogscast opening song for many of their older videos.

Toonstruck? Oh man. Oh wow. Can't wait to watch this.

That flamboyant bird reminds me of Louis CK's impression of Ray Bolger.

@vinny I don't know if it's more difficult to capture games in 4:3, but it seems kinda unfair to the original art to stretch it out like this. This seems to be running with ScummVM so there should be a toggle in the video options for it if you're interested. You might have to use the function keys to find the options though because ScummVM is a little weird.

@august: yeah, it's running straight from gog's .exe, which seems to launch dosbox. I agree about stretching it. Stinks. I gave a hunt around for some options to kick it into 4x3 but I'll see if I can find more info next time.

The video seemed to be dropping frames during the livestream, but the archive is completely fine. I'm guessing it has something to do with what you're sending to the player? Either way, just letting you know it looked bad live. I saw other people reporting the same.

So it seems that I want every one of these to just turn into a playdate

This makes me really close to buying this game on GoG for €9,09. I'm really close to buying this. It looks like the kind of silly I might enjoy once every 10 years.

Wacme Store is apparently this track I've heard hundreds of times in my life but had no idea what it was called.