Super NES

From Homestar Runner Wiki

Current revision as of 18:06, 31 January 2025

This article is about the toon. For the video game system, see Nintendo.

"Homestar run, run..."

This is the first animated Homestar Runner cartoon ever made, using Mario Paint.

Cast (in order of appearance): The Homestar Runner (storybook), Tiny-Handed Strong Bad, Pom Pom, The Cheat, Strong Mad, Strong Sad

Places: The Field, Arena, Various Houses, A Workout Room, The Athletic Field, The Stage, Outer Space, A Rocket, A Basketball Court

Page title: Super Homestario Bros.

Date: December 1996

Running Time: 1:26

DVD: Everything Else, Volume 2

[edit] Transcript

TEXT: THE FIRST HOMESTAR CARTOON EVER
MADE ON THE SNES USING MARIO PAINT

Homestar Run GO!
Hooomestaaaar! Run! Run!
Hooomestaaaar! Run! Run!

Homestar Runner really great,
Homestar Runner, ath -ah- late
Homestar Runner, Pom Pom too
Homestar Runner, we love you!

Hooomestaaaar! Run! Run!
Hooomestaaaar! Run! Run!

Homestar Runner, do your best
Homestar Runner, pass the test
Homestar Runner, Mom and Dad
Look out, Homestar! It's Strong Bad!

Hoooomestaaaar Run!
Weekdays.

TEXT: COPYRIGHT HOMESTARRUNNER.COM
1996 AND 2000

[edit] Fun Facts

[edit] Japanese Phonetics Transcript

アホチスーカヲ (Strong Bad and Homestar in the wrestling ring.)

ソコカオヲタス
ウコスキテ ホ. (Pom Pom floating by...)

えおか? せきひ (Homestar with a yellow background.)

クキカ? アシネ オスセーホヌツネ! (The Homestar Runner splash.)

[edit] Transliteration of the above

Ahochisūka o
Sokokao o tasu:

ukosukite ho.

Eoka?
Sekihi
Kukika? Ashine
Osusēhonutsune!

No translation exists (nonsense text)

[edit] Explanations

• Mario Paint is a video game made for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System that allows players to create their own art, as well as animations and music, being packaged with a mouse designed for the system. The game lets the player use the mouse to paint a large 16-color (15 actual colors plus transparency) picture with various tools, as well as place a smaller animation on top of it. A music-making mode is also available, allowing one to create songs to play over their animations. The game was highly popular, resulting in Nintendo releasing a Player's Guide containing information on how to get the most out of the game.

[edit] Trivia

• Matt Chapman, Mike Chapman and Craig Zobel made this for Donnie Chapman for Christmas.
  • In an interview with The Gothamist, Craig alternatively states that he and Matt made it as a Christmas present for Mike.
• This toon marks the debut of Strong Mad and Strong Sad.

[edit] Remarks

• The Japanese characters are mainly written in katakana, a character set used in written Japanese primarily to transcribe foreign words and onomatopoeia. The exception is the "Homestar with yellow background" screen, which is written in hiragana, a more general-purpose character set used in conjunction with kanji. The Japanese text in this cartoon does not translate to anything meaningful, however.
• Almost all of the animations are possible in Mario Paint. Mario Paint allows four, six, or nine frame animations, which loop, but the animation is a sprite and can follow a user defined path, which is what most of the animations do. The last animation (the "drip") is one of the full-screen erase effects in Mario Paint. The only animations that do not look possible in Mario Paint are the intro text, the outro "Copyright" text in the old version, both with accompanying fades, and the close up of Homestar with the moving horizontal black moving lines which cover the entire screen. A Mario Paint animation can only be 1/4 of the screen at its largest - and, indeed, the scene is zoomed in relative to the others (check the larger pixels)
• The music that accompanies this toon could not have been made using Mario Paint, which has a fixed note length and can only play notes in the C major scale.
• The music was created on the MT-100, a small electronic keyboard made by Casio in the early '80s. The accompanying bass and percussion line consists of pre-programmed riffs which are supplemented with a single-line melody. This keyboard is also used for a variety of other H*R sound effects and background music segments.
• Mario Paint can only handle one scene at a time, so each scene must be created and recorded individually, and then spliced together at the end. After being spliced together, the music and singing would be dubbed over the recording.
• There seems to be several discolorations within the movie. For example, Pom Pom is shown with a white head in the soccer scene, Strong Mad's singlet is black a la Marshmallow's Last Stand, Homestar's visor is blue and Strong Sad is orange.

[edit] Inside References

• In this toon, Strong Bad has a green tongue.

[edit] Real-World References

• The page title references the classic NES game Super Mario Bros.
• The animation of Homestar swinging a bat mimics one of the sample animations included in the manual for the Etch A Sketch Animator.

[edit] Fast Forward

• The Homestar Runner Theme Song heard in this video would continue to be revisited throughout the body of work, beginning with a Flash reimagining in Theme Song Video.
• Mario Paint is used again in Strong Bad is a Bad Guy, the Easter egg of Homestar Runner Goes for the Gold, and Mario Paint Thursdays.
• Strong Bad and other characters would continue to be depicted with green tongues on occasion.

[edit] DVD Version

• The text at the beginning is gone.
• The framerate is a lot better on the DVD, due to bandwidth restrictions on the website. In some scenes where the characters are moving freely around, the animation looks "smoother".
• The DVD version features creators' commentary. To access it, switch the DVD player's audio language selection while watching.

[edit] Commentary Transcript

(Commentary by: Matt Chapman, Mike Chapman)

MATT: Merry Christmas, Donnie.

MIKE: Aw, this looks beautiful!

MATT: Yeah, it's a good thing we filmed the TV so nicely!

MIKE: Yeah!

MATT: So this was done in Mario Paint for the Super Nintendo. The first animated footage of Homestar.

MIKE: So why didn't we just... was it so... ah. I don't even know.

MATT: Why we filmed the TV and just outputted each individual scene? Look at that smooth animation there.

MIKE: That's nice!

MATT: Oh, he struggled there a little. And Pom Pom's got a white head there for some reason. He's green. I don't think that's just discoloration, I think it's green... like neon green. Aw, Homestar's in a rocket! So there were some limitations to Mario Paint.

MIKE: Apparently.

MATT: Yes. It's a... it flip-flopped between being pretty impressive what you could do with it, and then being really unimpressive, what you couldn't do with it.

MIKE: Yeah.

MATT: There's a lot of Japanese kanji characters you had access to.

MIKE: Kanji? Is that what it's called?

MATT: I don't know. Look, it's flesh-colored Strong Sad!

MIKE: That's horrible. Look at that...

MATT: The tongue!

MIKE: And teeth for that matter!

MATT: Yeah. There was some nice transitions like this one you could do.

MIKE: Rain.

MATT: Undo Dog.

MIKE: Undo—{barks like a dog}

{Matt sneezes}

MATT: He'd sneeze occasionally.

[edit] Fun Facts

• The Undo Dog that Matt refers to was a button in Mario Paint with the image of a dog on it that, when clicked, barked while the previous action was undone. The Undo Dog would also sneeze at random.
• Undo Dog later made an appearance in the game Super Mario Maker, and just like in Mario Paint, it was used as an undo button. In Super Mario Maker 2, he was given a full-body render.
• Matt is incorrect about the Japanese letters - they are kana, not kanji, which are letters taken from Chinese but used in Japanese.

[edit] See Also

• The visuals that occur during this music video.

[edit] External Links

• watch the new Flash version of "Super NES"
• watch "Super NES" (old version)
• view the video file for "Super NES" (old version) (.mov file)