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Archive

Here are the archived update emails we've sent to our adoring fans.  Of course, these emails took hours to write, for we never raced to see who could type up the updates the quickest. Sit back, pop a cold one open, and travel back into the past.

(Also, we have a few tumblr posts that can be found here )

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Email 15 (Newest)


Hey, YOU, help yourself to imagining drinking out of a plastic cup that's red on the outside (no comment on if that's the pigment it always had), because you are now part of and semiformally welcomed to the email celebration of Balloon Co. still existing!

A while ago, we woke up to find a person in a suit knocking on our door.  Our lawyers instinctively readied for battle, but we told them to "stand down" and "lower their harpoon launchers" because we were sure that anyone who would come all this way to visit must be one of those awesome obsessive fans with lots of money that those articles about cell phone games always talk about when our subscription to "Hunting Whales Monthly" gets mixed up with someone's "Hunting Really Rich People Who For Some Reason Pay To Play Games That Are Free When They Could Buy Like A Million Normal Games Instead For The Price They Pay To Defeat Other People And Wear Pink Afros Bimonthly."  So we rushed to the door, saw who was there, and then VERY QUICKLY SLAMMED THAT DOOR SHUT!  We were right that it was a super rich person, but it was an assistant for our dreaded nemeses/caretakers: the big powdered wigs that run Balloon Co. [all the divisions].  Then, the door we had just slammed reverse slammed us in the face because we forgot to follow up our barricading combo with a finishing blow to the door-locking button, leaving us vulnerable!  

He rushed in, gave a long sigh, and put some on the ground before blurting out as fast as he could "Here is your company present to help celebrate your 10 year anniversary.  Thank you for being with us for so long.  We look forwACK" He started gaging and his face got really sweaty. "Look  forwAHUHd, forward to working with youACK HUGH in the years to come."  He then ran to his private chopper and flew away just out of harpoon reach of Fyodor's """""Warning shot."""""  

After learning that Balloon Co [gaming division] was having a birthday, we decided to PARTY! Ironically, we couldn't decorate the place with inflatable rubber that floats, BUT we DID run outside and light ten birthday campfires, one of which became the forest variety.  After making a wish and blowing up our birthday fires (except for the forest one because we didn't have enough TNT to surround it).  We then came back inside to dance illegal rips of our own game music.

After the dance, we sat around and things got real a bit too quickly.  Maybe it was the homebrew bearberry schnapps we were all guzzling, but we started to get really sad.  We were no longer the young hip company we used to be.  Back in the day, we were constantly working on some quality electronic entertainment, but our mandatory "learn how to program in a REAL computer sign language" sentence handed down to us has bogged us down.  Also, another year went by without an E3 invitation, AND EVEN WORSE, WE FOUND OUT THAT THIS YEAR E3 BARELY HAD ANY GOOD STUFF, SO BY THE TIME WE DO GET AN INVITEALL THE COOL COMPANIES WILL HAVE GRADUATED AND START HANGING OUT WITH AT SOME CLUB WHILE WE'RE STUCK HANGING OUT WITH THE DORKY FRESHMEN BECAUSE WE'VE BEEN HELD BACK FOR 10 YEARS.  Normally, our EMS cheers us up, but we didn't even have a 15 minute demo to showcase.  We were having a midlife crisis.  So we did what other successful video game creation companies do when they have a midlife crisis: STOP MAKING GAMES AND START WORKING ON PIMPING OUT AN AWESOME WEBSITE!  The people who pirated Water Vapor, the client we use to get all our pirated Steam games, used to make video games, but now they just make a website to distribute video games.  We realized we could do the same thing, ONLY BETTER, and, we could show off our website for the ELECTRONIC MEDIA SHOWCASE: BACK IN BUSINESS AND REVAMPED FOR A NEW ERA!  

So, here is a summary for features our website, Hydrogen Flow [a Balloon Co gaming division store and more website], we showed off at our very official conference contained:

1.) Purchase multiple games for free with ANY CURRENCY*

 You heard that right! At Balloon Co. [gaming division] we are dedicated to keep up with the modern world.  For too long, people have ignored our amazing games, and we've figured out why: THEY GET CONFUSED WHEN WE DON'T ASK FOR THEIR CREDIT CARD INFORMATION!  So, with this website, YOU CAN NOW ENTER IN A BUNCH OF NUMBERS AND FEEL THE THRILL OF NOT BEING CHARGED ANYTHING! We accept a lack of dollars, we accept a lack of rubies, we accept a lack of yen, we accept a lack of valuable seashells, and we even accept PICTURES OF AN I.O.U. THAT SAY "I O U NOTHING!"  That's right, any currency* you do or do not possess, we are here to not take any of it away from you. 

*Note: Unfortunately, Balloon Co. is not, and does not plan, to accept a "lack of Bitcoins" because we don't even know what they are.

 

2.) The ability to purchase and review games THAT DON'T EVEN EXIST!

We've noticed that a lot of people on the virtual highway enjoy indulging in the noble art of being REALLY ANGRY ABOUT GAMES THEY'VE NEVER PLAYED!  Since a lot of people can get angry about games they've never played, we decided it would be basically the same to allow people to complain about games they own AND never played... since there is no game!  Wouldn't you love to complain about how easy mode got added to Super Hardcore Game 2: The Sequel Where We Realize We Made It Too Hard?  Or how about ranting about how The Best Game Ever had controls that could only be understood via a full PhD course in video game movement?  And finally, how would you like to be one of the lucky few to own the most critically acclaimed non-existed game ever: PT BY HIDEOUS COCOJIMA!!!  And the first to write a review that says "Psh, over hyped piece of garbage.  I didn't even pee my pants and run out of the room ONE TIME.  Horror game, more like SNORER GAME.  @/10, not nearly as good as a Balloon Co. [gaming division] game.  I started living outside and was too frightened to set foot into a home for 10 YEARS after playing that haunted house level.”

 

3.) Super Radtastic Rewards for Playing Our Games!

What could be more rewarding than playing a Balloon Co. game?  Nothing.  BUT we could give you more stuff on top of the all encompassing exciting experience of our electronic ecstasy!  So, we decided that, by playing our game, you could earn digital CANDY!  That's like getting to ride a roller coaster, and when you get to the top, you get a GIANT CARD OF CHOCOLATE WITH A BALLOON CO CHARACTER ON IT!  Not only that, but if you get a full set of a particular candy, you can TRADE THEM IN FOR A HIGHER NUMBER NEXT TO YOUR USERNAME!  But we're not done yet.  Unlike other stores that give you digital stuff for playing games, you can PLAY A GAME WITH OURS!  Its called Throw Virtual Candy at Strangers to Make the Number by their Username Go Down! And when you play that game, since it is a Balloon Co game, you EARN MORE CANDY!  We see no possible problems with this candy-based economy!

4.) Ballooniis

As was stated before, we have a holy and unsanctioned pledge to never make games that cost money.  However, when we get a little bit tipsy (as well as fall on the floor drooling-sy) our minds start to wander to loop holes.  Our accountant Boris was trying to weave a lampshade into a ski mask so he could wear it over his head when he blurted out, "Ysh know WhAt we coulddo ta make  a lilmore MOney?  My buddy, I love him, I love him SO much, his name is, uh, I love him so much, he has a market where, like, artistssss sell wood sculpturrrres.  What ifffff, iff we combine a sculpture, with a videogame?"  First, we consulted our lawyers on if this would break our most sacred vow (his response: "Probably not").  Then we got to work scrapping that stupid wood idea and instead settled on only the best for the best video accessory: High quality glass sculptures of Balloon Co characters!  Here's the coolest thing though, we added a microchip into the sculpture.  All you have to do a A) Play a Balloon Co game, B) Throw your sculpture at your computer, and when it shatters, the microchip beats the game for you!  So say you had a glass figurine of Director Rideo and you were playing Mighty Matt the video game.  If you threw your sculpture at the computer, it would beat the game EVEN THOUGH THE GAME ISN'T EVEN FINISHED BEING MADE THAT'S HOW COOL IT IS!  And since someone once said our games have the concept of being addicting down, imagine all the times they'll want to beat the game without playing it and have to buy new Balooniis! (Also, our legal team advises us to tell you it's pronounced BA-LOON-IS, not BA-LOON-EYS).  But Boris's stupid idea we turned into a great idea was just about to get better due to the idea papa himself.  After sobering up Boris with some "outside swim time," he went into a room alone, and burst out with a giant chart.  He showed us that the amount of money we make depends on two things: supply and demand.  He plotted a graph and showed us that the slope of supply over demand GOES TO INFINITY IF YOU DIVIDE BY ZERO BY HAVING ZERO SUPPLY WHICH MEANS WE'D MAKE INFINITE MONEY FROM THE INFINITE DEMAND WE CAUSED AND ALL WE HAVE TO DO IS PUT "sold out" or "out of stock" ON THE BALLOONIIS SECTION OF OUR WEBSITE FOREVER! GENIOUS.

 

5.) Acknowledgements

So, one weird thing that Water Vapor sometimes does is, when we're playing a game and we do a thing, it will pop up a notification that say "HEY, you DID A THING, and so you earned a THING THAT TELLS YOU THAT YOU DID A THING."  For example, we beat a level, and get the "YOU BEAT THE LEVEL" pop up thing that then goes away, at the same time as the game itself tells us we beat a level.  That's really mildmodertatlycool, but what if something existed that notified you about something you didn't realize when you do a thing IS THE EXACT SORT OF QUESTION YOU SAY BEFORE FLIPPING IT INTO A DECLARATIVE STATEMENT BY MAKING THE THING YOU WERE ASKING ABOUT EXISTING EXIST!!!  Thus, Acknowledgements were born a few hours after the due date because since when did Balloon Co deliver on time? (Note: This is NOT the sort of question that leads to awesome question flipping).  We were too lazy to add them to our existing video games, but here are some we implemented with the not-game website!  Did you click on a link that lead away from the store without buying anything?  You earn the "You are critiquing the foundations of capitalism" Acknowledgement!  Did you down vote a game review on the website?  You earn a "You care about the opinions of strangers who you will never meet" Acknowledgment!   Leave the Balloon Co. website on for several hours when you took a really long potty break?  You guessed it, you earn the "You are creeping us out with your virtual stalkeriness interest on the contact page, also you are using up enough power leaving your computer on to probably cost you a couple cents in your power bill just FYI" Acknowledgement!  Also, since Acknowledgments are so educational, and we at Balloon Co are dedicated to increasing education world wide (EXCEPT IF IT'S IN A VIDEO GAME BECAUSE THAT IS A SACRILEGIOUS UNION), whenever you earn an Acknowledgment, an email gets sent out to everyone who has ever registered with the site informing them of your Acknowledgement Ack-omplishment!  Won't that be an exciting discussion around the water cooler?!

And so, after our prototypes and alpha builds and pre-release content was presented at the EMS, we noticed that we never opened our present.  When we opened it, we found a voucher for a premade Balloon Co website by Balloon Co [website division].  That's a LOT less work, so we tossed out our website into whatever internet black hole swallowed up geocities, and filled out the voucher with a bunch of personal information about us, our games, and the entirety of our email correspondence with our fans (that last part gave most of us hand cramps, BUT IT'S ALWAYS WORTH IT TO CRAMP YOU HAND FOR DA FANS!).  We then sent it off and assume that now, you amazing people, are now basking in the all warming hot tub with bubbles that is 

BALLOON CO. AMAZING WEBSITE EDITION!

All this has inspired us to work extra hard at finishing our "Learn to code in the language Amethyst" assignment so we can get back to making you video games.  Of course, any amount of time learning more than zero seconds would be extra for us, so THANK YOU FOR INSPIRING TO WORK one SECOND EXTRA THAN WE NORMALLY DO!  WE COULDN'T HAVE DONE IT WITHOUT YOU.  
From everyone at BALLOON CO. [gaming division], have a happy happy "It's our birthday, it's our birthday, we just partied because it's our birthday"-day!

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Email 1


Subject: Mighty Matt stars in his INTERNET GAMING DEBUT!

 

IT BEGAN AS THE BEST SELLING VIDEO GAME OF ALL TIME...

Well, not really...

It's not even finished yet...

BUT STILL, THE TIME HAS FINALLY COME FOR

MIGHTY MATT: THE VIDEO GAME

  INTERNET EDITION

Join Mighty Matt, the hero of imaginary world, as he goes through the tribulations of monsters, boss battles, and really cruddy programing and plot.

Be there, absorbing the massive graphics, awe inspiring music, and the suspense of the MASSIVE CLIFFHANGER of the TO BE CONTINUED...

No longer will you have to download this massive game in all of its massive hard drive hogging glory.

Now, YOU can play the entire adventure ONLINE!

NO DOWNLOAD NECESSARY

(Except for a small, safe plugin)

LET ME REPEAT NO DOWNLOAD NECESSARY!

Now go, and experience it yourself

Tra la laaaaaaaaaaa!

Down load plugin here:  http://www.clickteam.com/vitalize4/download.html

Play game here: http://www.geocities.com/pig_quest/onlinegame.html

 

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Response to Customer Feedback


To our loyal consumer,

Thank you for taking the time out of your busy life to contact Balloon Co. about how you felt about our product {Mighty Matt: the Video Game}.  We assure you that your opinion matters to us and will be looked at by a lowly intern someday.

As part of our Customer Appreciation program, our boss is making us give away our internetified minigame collection for free.  The music sensation Princess Alyssa's Dance Party and the cut throat 2-player Rideo Rampage are now YOURS!  Follow these links to experience super small game ACTION!

http://www.geocities.com/pig_quest/dance.html

http://www.geocities.com/pig_quest/rr.html

Quick note:  Rideo Rampage has some small internetified formatting issues.  We'll fix it eventually.

 

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Email 2


Subject: Mighty Matt IZ BACK! New online update!

 

YOU WAITED.  AND WAITED.  AAAAANNNNNDDDD WAITED!

YOU were ready for the update of the year: the continuation of the epic saga of

MIGHTY MATT!

Well, now your waiting has paid off.  Summer time is THE time for all of the big budget movies to come on screen and E3, showing off all the cool games of the future.  But who needs E3?(especially when they didn't invite us) AND who needs movies or the future when you can enjoy Mighty Matt RIGHT NOW!

We've kicked our top game programmers off their lazy buts playing Wii in order to give you

MIGHTY MATT : THE VIDEO GAME version 7.245. update number, uh, like, 3 or something.  our statistics people don't really keep much track of this stuff

With this new update, we have gone overboard to bring you the quality game play you've come to expect from Balloon Co.  We have now added more of our deep, complex musical compositions to levels that have originally lacked them.  We have enhanced our player-immersion driven game play by adding sound effects so real YOU'LL THINK YOUR IN THE GAME AND FORGET TO WALK YOUR DOG!

Are you ready to dive into the fiery depths of a fiery volcano?  Are you fired up to fire your weapon at fiery monsters with realistic fiery GRAFIX!?!?

ARE YOU READY FOR A CLIFFHANGER SO SUSPENSEFUL, IT'S LIKE THE CLIFF WAS ON TOP OF THE EMPIRE STATE BUILDING, THE ROPE YOU DESPERATELY CLING TO IS SNAPPING, AND YOUR HANDS ARE ALL SWEATY!?!?^!?!*!?!?!:)!?!??!!??

If you have taken all the necessary precautions and are, in fact, READY, then proceed to the Mighty Matt website by following the link below.

First time playing Mighty Matt online?  Well, then just follow the link below the Mighty Matt link to download the plug-in to play the game.  Don't worry, its a safe plug-in.  Our lawyers told us so, and we trust our lawyers*.

Play game here: http://www.geocities.com/pig_quest/onlinegame.html

Download plug-in here:  http://www.clickteam.com/vitalize4/download.html

Don't forget to tell us what you think.  Our favorite coffee break pass time is making fun of the e-mails we receive from disgruntled consumers.

*Disclaimer:  The reason we trust our lawyers is that they threatened to sue us if we don't trust them, and since we don't want to be sued by our lawyers and not have any lawyers to protect us from the lawsuit, we've decided that it is in the best interest of the company to trust them.

 

 

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Email 3


Subject: Might Matt (Website) update (not game)

Sound the trumpets, pack the bags, make sure you've got grandpa because

Mighty Matt the video game has just moved to a new site!

Now, we bet you're asking yourself, "Balloon Co, I've had such a great time playing your amazin-awsome games on your original site without a single problem.  Why change that?"

Dear customers, we had a good gig, but sometimes we need to make changes.  In life, you face hardships, you grow, you mature, and sometimes some DIRTY ROTTEN SEA-BASS DEER-TURDS STOP HOSTING YOUR SITE FOR FREE!

We first learned about the problem when one of our interns actually checked our e-mail.  Apparently, geocites sent a message that they would stop hosting free accounts about a month before they dropped the service.  That gave us a good laugh, and we explained to him that Balloon Co is a business, and that those rules only apply to introverts living in their parents' basement blogging about cats.  Business are much too important to follow rules like that, or pay taxes.  Well, a month later, our bug tester tried to access the website only to find it gone.  He came screaming into lounge and interrupted our card game to tell us the news.  After firing the messenger, we scrambled to come up with a solution.  We threatened them with a lawsuit, but they called our bluff, and apparently they have more than just one lawyer.  We decided not to risk that, against the wishes of our lawyer (he was itching to fight).  Instead, we tried random free site hosting sites that's names did not begin with geo and end in stupidbutfaces.com. Almost every site tried to squeeze down our game, or wouldn't even let us edit the HTML (it's like they didn't even trust us).  Finally, we decided on anglefire to be the best website to continue the excellence which is Mighty Matt (Our artistic director especially liked its sketchy layout)

Due to this emergency, we have not been able to update the game.  But we're working on it.

Coming up for Mighty Matt:

~A secret level select screen.  (No more worrying about passwords you can't even enter on the online version)

~The thrilling conclusion to the thrilling cliffhanger and a new cliffhanger to replace it...

~ A BOSS BATTLE AGAINST A BOSS SO MINDBLOWING, WE HAD TO OUTSOURCE THE SPRITE MAKING TO A FOREIGN ARTIST. (I.e., Ryan Walker, whenever he finishes it).

But yeah, basically if you've already played the game, there's nothing new this time, just a new website. If you're new to Mighty Matt, then enjoy!

In order to play Mighty Matt, you need install the Vitalize plug-in.  For more info, visit : http://www.clickteam.com/website/usa/vitalize.html

and now, the new website: http://www.angelfire.lycos.com/cgi-auth/webshell

Bookmark it NOW,

Balloon Co.

 

 

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Email 4


Subject: A MINOR update (get it?)

Here's how it goes.  We at Balloon Co. (gaming division) were just kicking back and congratulating ourselves on another successful internet update of Mighty Matt.  Imagine our annoyance when some whiny intern told us about an email from a whiner source.  We checked it out and couldn't believe the insult we saw: some wimp had trouble with the first two bosses of Mighty Matt.  (Unfortunately, due to legality/morality/blackmaility issues, we cannot name the whiny wimp.  We can name the intern.  His name was Eganon.  Yeah, we thought it was a funny name too.)

First thing he said was that the bosses were too hard.  Come on.  We've heard of some pretty hard games that this wimp has probably played.  We've heard of those teenage, Halo-type games where you have to snipe someone's head off from a hundred yards away, and that Guitar Loser game where on the super-ultra-masterexpert levels you have to mash colorful buttons on a plastic guitar at lightning speeds, and THIS WIMP HAS TROUBLE WITH OUR LITTLE MIGHTY MATT?!?

Second thing he whined about was that he couldn't tell if he was hurting the first boss or not.  Here's how most people do it buddie: BY WATCHING ITS HEALTH METER DROP TOWARDS ZERO!

We were going to give this email the old El Deleto Grande when that little intern pointed out our 100% satisfaction guaranteed policy.  Well, first thing we did was fire the intern.  Next, we quickly made the first two bosses easier and decided to go all the way and make EVERY ENEMY (plus the first boss) SHOW YOU THAT YOU ARE HURTING THEM.  After that was all done, we instantly scrapped the 100% satisfaction guaranteed policy to prevent something like this from ever happening again.

So, long story short, if you've already beaten the game, there is no need to play it again (unless your THAT desperate to see the half-seconds of hurt animation we added to some enemies)

But as for the wimp, who probably greatly improved our game with his whining, try not to lose this time: Play game here: http://www.geocities.com/pig_quest/onlinegame.html

Also, despite the example we made out of Sir Whines-Alot, we really do want you to email us with your comments.  We need something to talk about at the dinner table.

 

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Email 5


Subject: SOMEBODY messed up bad!

In a recent newsletter, we sent the link to our new website.  Unfortunately, we sent the wrong link.  Here is the REAL link for the online version of Mighty Matt the Video Game (We wanted to add the subtitle: The Exciting Epic Quest for Glory and Fun, but we were told that that was too long of a title).

http://balloonco.angelfire.com/mmtvg.html

We are so sorry for the inconvenience, that our boss is making us include two mini games that we worked long and hard on, for FREE.

The grooviest dancing game around: Princess Alyssa's dance party. http://balloonco.angelfire.com/dance.html

And the multi-player game of the multi-century: Rideo Rampage : http://balloonco.angelfire.com/index.html

We hope that the hate mail will (finally) stop,

Balloon Co.

 

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Email 6


Subject: Dive into the depths of a MIGHTY MATT UPDATE!

Hi...um...hi,

We at Balloon Co [gaming division] are well aware that the big fancy-schmancy Electronic Entertainment Expo (or E3 as kids these days say) has once again come and gone without the hardworking folks at Balloon Co [gaming division] getting a single invitation/all expenses paid trip to Los Angeles with a free hotel room.  So, instead this year, we had our own Electronic Media Showcase (or EMS if you need to twitter).  However, instead of showing off cool future releases for the audience to look forward to, we mostly show off our games which were canceled due to lack of funding.  And we would like to give YOU, LOYAL FAN, the exclusive behind-the-scenes treat by briefly summarizing some of the games on the show floors (well, technically they were our kitchen floors, but we're not picky).

Bagpipe Big Shot The epic quest for fame, fortune, and acceptance of an obscure instrument.  You start as a lowly Scotsman, playing for your local village, before working your way up to a world tour and a record deal.  Use your bagpipe accessory (sold separately) to time your notes right when the colorful shamrocks appear onscreen. (We totally thought of this idea before those people who made those Guitar Loser games).  Customize yourself with over 100 kilts and 50 fury hats.  *Unfortunately, the game when canceled due to the high cost of the bagpipe controller (though we didn't think $200.95 was that much) and people collapsing form shortness of breath.

Test Quest: Conquer the ACT/SAT  How you do on these two tests will decide whether you get that $10,000 scholarship you've dreamed of, or have to flip burgers (or make video games nobody funds) for the rest of your life.  Work under pressure to READ, COMPREHEND, CALCULATE, and FILL IN BUBBLES!  Quick thinking isn't just for figuring the square of a hypotenuse.  React to random test conditions like broken pencils, battery dead calculators, or being distracted by the snoring of the test administrator.  Get a perfect score on both tests to unlock a mini game where you can burn all of the test booklets and answer sheets.  *ACT and SAT refused to let us license their product (especially after hearing about the mini game).  But we did improve our filling in the bubble skills!

Ultimate Chess Boxing *We were able to make a chess prototype.  We were able to make a boxing prototype.  But for some reason we just weren't able to mash them together.

Bodyguard Creed  Tired of boring 1st and 3rd person shooters?  Well then get ready for the world's first 2nd person shooter.  In Bodyguard Creed, your mission is to run through a group of obstacles to jump in front of a bullet and take the hit for your employer.  *This game wasn't actually canceled due to funding, we just couldn't get past the first level.  After the main character dies... we weren't quite sure what to do.

The one game we did show off without being canceled (yet) is the water level from Mighty Matt: The Video Game.  Explore this aqua land with the help of fish... things, and battle the fiercest underwater monster since Jaws on steroids.  We also showed off our NEW secret level select screen.  All you need to do is click 3-4 times on Nic's head on the title screen, and you will instantly be able to jump ahead of all those other levels and cut scenes we put so much work into creating to replay your favorite level, or jump ahead to the new Water level.

Put on your swimsuit* and play here: http://balloonco.angelfire.com/mmtvg.html

Remember, you need to have to have this plug in in order to play: http://www.clickteam.com/vitalize4/download.html

*Swimsuit not actually required to play game.

 

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Email 7


Subject: Wait in anticipation for a M2 update release date!

We at Balloon Co. [gaming division] have been forced to attend a bunch of meetings from other people in our parent company.  We are not fans of our "parietal corporation."  If the head honchos are like our parents, then we are like the rebellious teenagers eager to ride motorcycles through the streets and get tattoos all over our bodies (tattoos we now realize are very painful to get and VERY EXPENSIVE TO REMOVE!).

 

At one of these "get togethers," a marketing person used a very flashy PowerPoint to teach us about this biz-nes technique called, "release, date" Apparently, other companies predict when they will be finished making their product, scramble to get it done by that date, get to that date with an unfinished project, and then either move the date forward, or release their unfinished product, and then charge money for "additional content" they forgot to add the first time.

WE AT BALLOON CO. THINK THIS IS A BRILLIANT IDEA!

And so, we have decided to set in stone our forecast for the next Matt of Ultimate Might (ie, Mighty Matt) update!  And that date is, MIDI drum-roll please, JUNE 7th 2011 AD UNDER THE Gregorian calendar!!!!!!!!

Hold on, I've got a phone call from our marketing firm (I'm fired if let it go to voice mail)

 

...

 

I have been informed that our release date is the same as that electronic entertainment exposition.

 

E3?!  More like, lamE3!

 

What good is a video game convention meant to show off the best video games have to offer, if they won't include THE GREATEST VIDEO GAME COMPANY THERE IS TO OFFER.

(We suspect a conspiracy that involves lots of cold coins if you catch our drift)

(If you don't catch our drift, then you need a better drift catcher)

(We think there's bribing involved)

 

As usual, we have to resort to our MUCH BETTER Electronic Media Showcase.

As longtime fans of Balloon Co. [gaming division] know, every sometimes-years we use our EMS show off the GREATEST OF THE BEST OF THE MOST MAJESTIC GAMES cut due to various reasons EVER!

Here is a large sample of the double-plus un-games that will be featured:

 

3 Portals: NOT a cheap attempt to cash in on a popular franchise, this game will force you to think outside the space-time box.  Instead of using merely 2 portals, our game gives the hero (who we are going to advertise as a woman, but in the game is actually a man) a portal grenade launcher capable of creating three portals: Red, Green, and Purple.  When you enter one portal, you come out both the other portals!  Control your clones simultaneously or individually with easy controls!  *This game was canceled for multiple reasons, with the copyright infringement suit being the least of our worries.  If the player got caught in a portal loop, it created so many clones the game crashed within seconds.  Also, the computer we were using to program the Evil Computer That Hates The Main Character suddenly was taken over by an evil computer who hated us, so we had to blow it up.  (It was going to be so cool too!  Can you think of a better voice for an evil computer than Microsoft Sam?!)

 

Custodial Crackdown: A Janitor's Journey: Get ready to clean some glass and take some change!  YOU are the greenhorn custodian at South by Southeast High School, and you're ready to rise through the ranks.  Wander the halls picking up random pieces of trash (double points for cleaning gum).  Get your cleaning material ready with the innovated chemical mixing minigame, but be careful not to spill any on your skin, or you could get a chemical burn fatality (We were going to try to trademark that term).  Manage your resources well: you only have a limited number of "Slippery When Wet" signs!  Resist attacking that freshman punk who mocks you!  (Don't worry, if you're careful, you can get your revenge during the Night Shift by opening his locker and stealing some of his valuables. Shhhh.)  After a good day's/night work, hit the town and decide how to use your hard-earned/ below average paycheck.  Will you decide to bling out your uniform (within dress code policies)?  Will you be able to afford to replace your worn-out gloves for better hand protection?  Will you go from lowly mop to riding an electric carpet cleaner truck?  Forget sandbox game play: if you encounter a kid with the stomach flu, you'd better be ready for SAWDUST GAME PLAY!  Before long, you'll be head of the custodian heap.  *Apparently, test subjects were not fans of cleaning toilets or wiping up vomit spills.  Also, due to our lack of funds to hire custodians, we really didn't know how their jobs worked, which lead to reviews of "UNREALISTIC" from actual custodians.  With both the public and niche audience against us, we had no choice but to close this game down.

 

Cooking Your Mama: *Our attempt at the M rated market (or at least the MMM rated market).  Apparently, nudity and gore filled violence are OK subjects for video games, but matricide and cannibalism are not.

 

Video Game Challenge:   YOU like video games!  Ever wish there was a game where YOU could play as a gamer? Well now there is!  Start with a Commodore 63 (we had some licensing issues) and upgrade to an HD3DHD Super Plasma UltraGamer 9001 by earning major dough in video game tournaments.  Be sure to save some money to pay your rent, or it's back to your parent's basement.  Decide how much time you'll devote to each genre of gaming.  Will you evenly space out your shooting, driving, and sports games, or go all out on Globe of Fighting: The best Massive People with Too Much Time On Their Hands Online Experience (aka, a MPWTMTOTHOE).  Crush annoying sleep with ENERGY DRINKS.  Go for the record of being able to function in society without taking a shower.  Fight your way to the top: Game tester for Balloon Co.  YOU want to be the very best!  Like no one ever was!  *Gamers were unimpressed with our representation of their lifestyle.  Also, apparently people thought they would be able to play actual games instead of directing an avatar to play a game and watch said avatar slouch down on a beanbag with a controller in hand.

 

And, now that we have a release date, we're off to another meeting.  This time we're going to learn about something called "Dead...Lines."  Sounds like a new programing trick!

 

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Email 8


Subject: What's black, and white, and a mystery color all over? IT"S ANOTHER MIGHTY MATT UPDATE!!!!!!

Dear customers we think are loyal and not cheating on us,

Long time no email, right?  Well, we have a few apologies to make.  After our deferred success in getting you your game update in time for that deadline, we had an email all typed up covering our butts for failing to deliver as kinda-sorta-promised.  We were just about to hit the send button when suddenly our manager came running in screaming about a fight outside between a muskox and a walrus.  So, as you can logically understand, we had no choice but to abandon our computers so we could run out there to whip out our cellphones to record it.  Therefore, we hope you can forgive us for completely forgetting about that email for our customers while we tried to get in contact with one of those nature networks like National Worldgraphic or Shark Planet to pawn off our high quality footage (They never got back to us.  You'd think there'd be a bigger market for this journalism.  Oh well, at least we got a fresh supply of Walrus blubber)

 

We at Balloon Co seem to have had a slight bit of a misunderstanding.  We worked day and night to finish programing the boss levels and the not boss levels for our baby in video game form, Might Matt: The Video Game.  We finally finished our programing just as our computer's clocks struck 12:00 AM (wait, how can a computer clock strike something?) and sent it to our boss, patting ourselves on the back.

Then the phone rang.

We assumed it was a huge raise for finishing our job by the due day, and fought to be the one to answer to receive all the praise.

It's wasn't praise.

It seems the boss wanted a completed update.  He had expected us to finish BEFORE the deadline so we could send it out to other Balloon Co gaming departments in foreign countries we use to outsource the high quality music and cut scenes you all enjoy.

So anyway, no update now, but...

THE WAIT SHALST BE TOTALLY WORTH IT!

We think.



'||\   /||`             '||       ||            

||\\.//||   ''          ||       ||            

||     ||   ||  .|''|,  ||''|, ''||''  '||  ||`

||     ||   ||  ||  ||  ||  ||   ||     `|..||  

.||     ||. .||. `|..|| .||  ||   `|..'      ||  

                   ||                   ,  |'  

                `..|'                    ''    


_//       _//            _//    _//

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_//  _//  _// _//  _//   _//    _//

_//   _/  _//_//   _//   _//    _//  
_//       _//_//   _//   _//    _//

_//       _//  _// _///   _//    _/

 

:::    ::: :::::::::  :::::::::      ::: ::::::::::: ::::::::::
:+:    :+: :+:    :+: :+:    :+:   :+: :+:   :+:     :+:       

+:+    +:+ +:+    +:+ +:+    +:+  +:+   +:+  +:+     +:+       

+#+    +:+ +#++:++#+  +#+    +:+ +#++:++#++: +#+     +#++:++#  

+#+    +#+ +#+        +#+    +#+ +#+     +#+ +#+     +#+        
#+#    #+# #+#        #+#    #+# #+#     #+# #+#     #+#       

If this newfangled formatting our programmers thought up* worked (they tried the same thing on the title screen, but it didn't turn out right.  If you see a bunch of gibberish on the online version of Mighty Matt: The video game title screen, then pretend it is not a bunch of gibberish and that it says "Mighty Matt: the Video Game"  We didn't let them touch the rest of the game, so the text there should be fine), then you should all know that after a huge hiatus/required vacation time/laziness/evictions/court battles/victory parties/hangover breaks, we've finally gotten around to updating THE GREATEST currently FREE GAME YOU'LL EVER PLAY EVEN IF YOU LIVE TO BE OLDER THAN RIP VAN WRINKLY: MIGHTY MATT: THE VIDEO GAME!

Now, as a company that makes under minimum wage by providing the best in free entertainment, we can't help but be ashamed of some of our "for profit" peers.  For example, we hear that there's a game series that recently came out with 2 games.  However, these games only come in two versions: Black and White.  HOW DO YOU PLAY A GAME WHEN IT'S COMPLETELY BLACK OR WHITE!?  YOU CAN'T SEE ANYTHING WHEN EVERYTHING IS ONE COLOR!!!!>:[!!!!!!

That's why we at Balloon Co. [gaming division], we always make sure our games have at least two colors so you can actually see what's going on!  For today's update, we're 1-up-ing our competitors by not only giving you the colors BLACK and White FOR FREE, we are also including a mystery color, but we're not going to tell you what it is.  You'll just have to find out for yourself.  Here's a hint: It's not black.  Here's another hint: It's not white.  Here's our last hint: It's not gray.  Oh wait... we do have gray in this update... but it's not the mystery color we're talking about.

So, if your eyes are ready to be blown out of their sockets by these colors, head on over to

http://balloonco.angelfire.com/mmtvg.html

 

And, if you are new to Mighty Matt, remember to download the required plug-in to play.  It should download automatically for people exploring the internet with internet explorer when you try (and fail) to play the game at the above link.  Otherwise, you can get more info for using foxes on fire or being a CROME-er by clicking on this link: http://www.clickteam.com/vitalize4/download.html

 

Also, since it's been a while for some of you people who play our games, our marketing expert person told us to remind our fans who have reached the super enriched uranium level fan-membership levels that they can skip all the levels and go straight to the new ones by clicking on Nic's head on the title screen 3 times, then navigating the secrete level select screen for the level next to a black box.  They also think it would be nice if we reminded our uranium level fan-members to pay attention to the order of the passwords on the level select screen/ what order they were given while playing the game for a certain "puzzle" they may or may not encounter in the update.  They also told us to make sure this does not get to aluminum members or below, so if that describes you, please don't read this.

 

* Our lawyer just called and told us that, if we want to avoid another possible eviction, we are legally obligated to add this footnote to explain that, when our programmers say they "thought up" the logo for Mighty Matt Update, they really just used this website: network-science.de/ascii

 

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Email 9


Subject: Prepare to Redive into an exciting new announcement!

 

Greetings loyal fans of the game with the super hero who jumps, shoots, and gets blasted out of cannons from your super best friends at Balloon Co [gaming division].  Long time no see email update, right?  Well, this time only 75% is due to us sledding of Mt. AHHHHHHHHH instead of working on our video games (though, 15% was recovery from said mountain, STILL TOTALLY WORTH IT).  The other 10% was due to some stupid bug that infected our computers.  No, it wasn't one of those fangled new computer bugs: some buzzer wedged itself between the rusted outer layer of one of our most important computers: the one that programs Mighty Matt! (Although, the computer we programed to make sure our heating, lighting, and water runs smoothly is probably almost as important) ajksldhfajksdh (Oh, and don't forget the computer that controls the toaster, that's pretty important too.) fiuhsilfhs  (HEY, IT'S MY TURN TO WRITE THE EMAIL TO THE FANS AND I, Oh look what you made me do!  With the delete key broken, now I have to either keep all this nonsense or restart the entire email!).

It took us half a year for the exterminator to get here.  By that time, the Creepibus Dungflyroachia (We're pretty sure that's its scientific name) had already laid eggs, raised a large family, and died, leaving a computer full of bugs.  The exterminator tore open the computer, and started spraying out our precious hardware!  And then he had the nerve to charge US MONEY for RUINING OUR EQUIPTMENT WITH HIS STUPID LEMON SMELLING LIQUID!!!! (for the record, I usually only use three !'s when I'm angry).  After kicking his sorry butt out of there (apparently, our lawyers were smart enough to trick him into signing a promise not to destroy anything agreement in fine print before he came, so we were able to not pay him not illegally.  Thank you lawyers!)

However, we were still able to use the other computers to work on other games. Unfortunately, as usual, none of them had what it takes to make it into the free retail market.  But that didn't stop us from showcasing them in our showcase we call our annual Electronic Media Showcase #EMS #Showcase

*Game testers reported that our game was a giant turd

*Somehow this was copyright infringement

*SOME PUNK FOUND OUT HOW TO WIN BY HIMSELF WITHOUT COLLABORATING BY ORDERING BOTH A AND B, AND BOUNCING A CHECK SO WE NEVER GOT HIS MONEY!!! Also, the restaurant got complaints about paper in their combo meal 13, but that wasn't much of an issue after they went out of business.  That kinda ruined the game.

*Our higher-ups said they would only release a kart game if there was multiplayer included cause that's what all the other kart games do.  We tried, but either the person playing the racetrack dominated the kart racer, or the kart racer was untouched on its way to the finish line.

*We couldn't get our president to sign a check big enough to fill our accountant's estimated budget for this expensive game.

 

Due to the damage that bug murderer did to our Might Matt computer, we lost the extra hard drive memory we needed to expand the game.  When we tried to program more than we already had, we got the orange-with-blue-polka-dots-screen-of-deathdoom.  However, everything we already programed was still ok, and we were even able to improve some of the old levels.  We just couldn't add any new ones.  That didn't stop us though, and using a different computer, we were proud to debut our work-around at the EMS.  Here's our press release.

Mighty Matt is now a two-part adventure.  Balloon Co is the greatest company in the world.

So, if you've been following us for a while, and you've already played everything we've programed before this for the millionth time, you can experience the new stuff right here: http://balloonco.angelfire.com/part2.html

That's not all!  We've also added, like, 2 whole brand new never before heard sound effects to the original game, and ported the ever so popular He-He Pistol Ammo Counter (Trademark/Copyright pending, as soon as we find out whether we want a copyright or a trademark) from the submarine levels to every level where you used the He-He pistol before!  No longer will keep pressing Y not knowing if anything will come out.  Now you'll know!  And if you're new, well, then, it'd be confusing if you played part one before part two, so play part one here!  http://balloonco.angelfire.com/mmtvg.html

And as usual, to play these games, you'll need the special plug-in somebody made to play this game.  Internet explorer should download it automatically when you attempt to play the game (after asking you nicely of course), but if you like fighting the man by using those hipster browsers like fieryfox of Chrome-domy, then you can download the plug-in here: http://www.clickteam.com/vitalize4/download.html

 

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Email 10 (Never actually sent)


Subject: Whatever I want to call this update email

Greeting fans and people we email who ignore us!

 

It has been a LONG time since we last emailed you about what the haps happens around these parts.  Well, I am here to tell you put your mind at ease by telling you that, yes, we are alive.

 

Ok bye!

~A Balloon Co [gaming division] member.

 

~Who apparently has to write more if he doesn't want to get fired.

 

Re-Greetings all of you people who read!  So, we have had lots of adventures here in the [gaming division] that you do not know about but you WILL now know about because you are reading this email!

 

We were able to scrape together the necessary wood and animal hides to go on a little sailing adventure.  After that we used our 7331 HitchHikingSkillage to do some traveling.  But don't worry: this was not an excuse to use up vacation hours we don't have and thus don't expire at the end of the month without being carried over to next year because we don't have those!  Nope, it was strictly business.  (Ok, it wasn't strictly business, it was kinda more leniently business.) BUT WE STILL DID SOME BUSINESS STUFF!!!  We thought we could improve our work load by a bazillion percent if WE WEREN'T THE ONES DOING THE WORK BUT WE STILL SOMEHOW GOT CREDIT FOR IT OR SOMETHING!!!  So, we infiltrated a grade school, and were successful in starting up a MAKE COMPUTER GAMES FOR BALLOON CO. [gaming division] CLUB!!! Ok, so that's not quite what the organization was called, but that's what we liked to call it.  Unfortunately, the 4th grader we put in charge as a puppet president DIDN'T TURN OUT TO BE AS PUPPETABLE AS WE THOUGHT SHE WOULD BE!!!!  Instead, she took over the club she was officially in charge of and started making computer games... BUT NOT FOR BALLOON CO [gaming division] INSTEAD THEY STARTED MAKING THEM FOR THE SCHOOL!!!!!!

 

But fear not, for although we were schooled by those snot nosed school-goers, we were also schooled more in how to school code to into getting us out of detention and into gaming recess!  *TRANSLATOR'S NOTE:  This statement is difficult.  Basically, they learned more from the kids than the kids learned from them*

 

So, before da police could ask us questions like "Hey rebellious punks, what are youzz guyzz doing hanging around dat school?" and "How did you awesomely evade detection from da immigration department," we jumped town like the Titanic and sailed away like hop scotch!   And we made it back to Home Bitter Sour Home just in time for the ELECTRONIC MEDIA SHOWCASE!!!!

And this year was a very unique and special and unique year, because it was so dramatically tragic!  This may come as a shock to you, but Mighty Matt: The Video Game is NOT our dream job game.  We at Balloon Co. have long dreamed of the fated day when we can stop slaving away working on our original intellectual property about a superhero kid and instead get the rare opportunity to BE LAZY WORKING ON A LICENSED GAME WHICH HAS MUCH LOWER STANDARDS!!!!!

So, last year we started putting on lab coats and researching making games based off twitter posts by celebrities, hoping the cash in on the blue bird's bucks.  Unfortunately, all our attempts added in failure, so enjoy this presentation of our broken and smashed dreams, the EMS:

The French Fries from HELL: Based off the Kanye West quote "French fries are the devil", we were ready to make a turned based real time RPG first-person salty demon exorcism game.  You would start in a middle of nowhere fast food restaurant and work your way up to a 6-star restaurant serving demon French fries to the UNITED NATIONS of COUNTRIES. Armed with a limited supply of holy oil, you had to battle wave upon wave of demon possessed food, until you worked your way to the Fried in the French Way Bosses!  Watch your hunger meter, but also watch what you eat, because sometimes YOU BECOME WHAT YOU EAT (Pro tip: Being a salad can be useful for slipping behind locked doors, but nobody wants to be a Chicken Nugget).

~Game was canceled because both Kanye West and BurgerKingMcDonaldsDairyQueenArbiesWendiesRedLobsterUncleBilliesBurgerShackiHOP never contacted us back.  For some weird reason.  But Auntie Sal's French Fry Cart gave us a very nasty letter (Luckily it was soaking in oil so it was easy to burn.  Thanks Sal!).

 

From another musical person, we had this quote to work with, "Problem 4 me with pointy teeth hrs.?! Drag my ass in day! Give wrong answers , don't care bout ?'s ! Wii game suffers ! Haha" ~ Cher (No, we did NOT make this tweet up.  We are not nearly that talented).  So we made Pointy Teeth Interrogations (For the Xbox and Atari 2000).  In this game, you have been dragged into police custody, and must answer their questions.  However, answering their questions is very difficult BECAUSE YOU MUST AVOID BITING YOUR TONGUE WITH YOUR POINTY TEETH!!!!  However, if you don't care about their questions, or if you get them wrong, it's ok, because you can also win by BITING THE POLICE AND EATING YOUR WAY THROUGH THE PRISON BECAUSE THE PRISON IS MADE OF CANDY BUT THEN YOU HAVE PROBLEMS AVOIDING GINGIVITIS!!!!!!  (Gingivitis was actually a boss we carried over from the canceled The French Fries from HELL.)

~We were tempted to release this game without asking Sher for permission, since we seem to have a problem of never getting permission when we ask for permission (Still waiting on our "skydive on top of the American White House" permits), but then we saw this tweet from Sher "ONE THING WILL WORK BOYCOTT ALL  #Japanese GOODS ! DONT BUY 1 THING FROM #JAPAN TILL THEY STOP MURDER OF #DOLPHINS #JAPAN GOODS NO GOOD."  Now, we don't live in Japan, but many of us grew up with high quality knock-offs of Japanese video games, and therefore have been indirectly influenced by them.  Therefore, our Sher game was probably going to be mistaken for a Japanese game, and therefore

would be boycotted by our target audience of Sher fans who are willing to paint targets on their shirts.  So, despite our shared irrational hatred for dolphins, we decided not to release the game.

 

And finally, we attempted to get into the lucrative Fashion Games with Glasses that are Used for Nerd Eyes Deluxe.  Why aren't there more glasses and nerdery simulation games out there?  Probably because people usually aren't smart enough to think it up.  And to be completely megahonest, we were not that smart until we received the following wise tweet "Do these eye glasses make me look nerdy? 👓😉lol" from the almighty sage: Paris Hilton.  Take command of the Doland Tramp fashion industry [glasses division] and recruit teenage girls (and guys, we don't discriminate based on gender here at balloon co, we only discriminate based on the ability to belch the alphabet song backwards.  It keeps our lawyers busy).  You also get to make the glasses yourself!  Prepare and pimp the perfect pair to propagate the prestigious and proper point Dexter prestige.  But watch out!!! Your competitors are also trying to make geeky models but WITHOUT GLASSES!!!!  Strike back by training your models in nerdy activities and to sabotage your competitors at conventions by releasing compromising tapes of rival models doing everyday tasks that are NOT NERDY  (And get bonus money for selling glasses to voice actors and people who are famous on the INTERNET OMG BONUSBONUS POINTS BECAUSE THE INTERNET IS AWESOME).

 

~Despite being such a smart and talented... um... whatever Paris Hilton is, she never found out about our game.  However, some weirdo called Donald Trump and the very cool creator of the Dolan comics DID find out about our game, and as soon as some of our lawyers found out that they were about to go up against the legendary force of the Dolan lawyers, as well as a few of that Trump guy's, they flew all the way over to the Trump tower with a white flag, and we never saw them again.

 

Back on the telling you what we've been up too instead of what we've been not up too, we have a big announcement!  It's so big, we threw together a press release for it.  (Oh yeah, another announcement, we were really busy trying to figure out how to put together a press release: after five weeks, I think we nailed it)

TO BE RELEASED TO THE PRESSES!!!!

Balloon Co [gaming division] is charting new territories in videogame creation after announcing that they have upgraded their game creation engine from Game Factory 2 to Multimedia Fusion 2.  We asked the super awesome team how they were able to afford the money for such a walrus sized upgrade:

"Making games that people can play for free makes it difficult to purchase engine upgrades.  However, when we saw how people on the internet were willing to give people money WITHOUT THEM EVEN MAKING A GAME YET... well we knew we had to get in on that.  So, we started up our very own Punchintheface starter.  Money wise, we thought we'd merely get a yet, or maybe a yen if we were super lucky.  Imagine our surprise (which is very hard to imagine, but I believe in you) when we got a WHOLE AMERICAN PENNEY!!!!  As soon as we got that sweat cash, we instantly splurged on the first engine we could purchase for a penny: Multimedia Studios 2 through some sort of bundally thingy."

However, change comes with its changes, and not always to good changes.  There are bad changes. EVIL changes. Changes that get together on Mondays and laugh about all the trouble they caused.  "When we play tested Mighty Matt part 1 with the new system, our bug detecting counter blew a fuse.  After we fixed it with some spare wiring and some duct tape, it counted over 50 bugs before starting the smoke and melt the duct tape.  So we have currently split our team: One half will procrastinate fixing all the bugs, and the other half will delay working on the new material"

Balloon Co [gaming division] is a gaming company that makes games.  It is the best gaming company in the multiverse.

 

Don't you think that that was the best press release ever?  Well, then you are WRONG because right after we finished that press release, another news item happened so we were able to use all of our press release practice to write an even better press release, behold:

GIRLS AND GUYS, WE NEED TO RELEASE THE PRESSES!

Once upon a time, there was a company called Balloon Co. [gaming division].  They put a videogame on a website.  Then that website kicked them out.  So thus they wandered in exile until an angel of the web came upon them.  And the angel's name was angel fire, because it came from angelfire.com.  "I shall let you dwell in the land of angelfire.com for free, and you may bring your game and edit your page's html code to your heart's desire. Thus did balloon co remain in the land of angels who were on fire.  But alas, while they pitched their game tents in the promised land, they did not visit often.  This made the fire angels sad and angry.  And the head angels said unto the other angels, "We promised them land for free, and we cannot take their land away, for thus the commandments of the user account would be broken.  But let us steal into their tents into the night and take away their html editing tools, so that they will no longer be able to host any updates to their game here." And thus the angels did what they just said and we won't repeat it again 'cause you'd get bored.  So it came to pass that on the fortnight of the return of the chosen gaming company, carrying with them a game update of 3,000 kilobytes by 200 cubics, a great uproar was heard throughout the internet when they found that the angels of fire had betrayed them.  Therefore, and thusly so, the brave game creators started their great wandering through the desert of the internet as electronic hobos once more.

Balloon Co [gaming division] is a gaming company that makes games. It is the best gaming company in the multiverse.

Whew.  I'm going to give your eyes a break after reading such majesty.  When your well rested, you may continue reading the next announcement.

Are you ready?  Ok good, so, since we have lost our website, we have become desperate.  And since we're desperate, we've decided to do what all game companies do when they are desperate... PUT A BUNCH OF GAMES TOGEATHER IN A BUNDLE AND SELL THEM DIRT CHEAP FOR THE HOPES OF ATTENTION!!!!

So, without further ado, except for maybe one.  Adieu, OK NOW I"M REALLY READY TO ANNOUNCE THE

 

The Full of Pride Balloon Co Bundle Bundle

Its pay no money,

What's DRM?

Windows only,

and it helps you and me!

 

We're going back to our roots!

For one low easy payment of emailing us, we will send you a direct link to download the old game factory versions of Mighty Matt Part one and Might Matt Part the next one, as well as download links for the Game Girl Adv. Games.  And, if you beat the average by also telling us what you think about Mighty Matt, we'll also compile all of the midi music into a folder and send you the full soundtrack of Mighty Matt!!!!

This is the FIRST time we have ever offered our soundtrack, so don't delay order someday!

 

Ok, that should be everything.  Until next time... there won't be an email.  But there will be...

Next time,

A Person Who Works Here.

 

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Email 11


Subject: Balloon Co actually finishes games! But it's not Mighty Matt :(

Do you believe in magic?

Do you believe in miracles?

Do you believe in kicking fate in the posterior region?

Well, even if you do, get ready to doubt our incredible miramagiclishious smack down of unproductivity and half-baked wheat products.  (In this metaphor, wheat products means VIDEOGAMES.  And baking means WE BAKE OUR VIDEOGAMES WITH ONLY THE FINEST OF INGREDIENTS!)

In all started one day when we traveled to the main land on a nice we-accidently-let-in-a-bunch-of-critters-and-killed-them-so-it-was-going-to-take-a-while-to-get-the-carpets/furnature/ceiling-cleaned vacation to the mainland.  But before I go any further:

LEGAL DISCLAIMER FROM THE BALLOON CO. [gaming division] LAWYERS: Kids, gambling is bad for you.

...

BUT IT WAS GREAT FOR US!

We won the equivalent of an ENTIRE US ONE DOLLAR BILL/4 US QUARTERS/10 US DIMES/20 US NICKLES/100 US PENNIES/200 US HALF PENNIES from a scratch card that was sticking out of that dudes pocked enough for us to snatch it!

LEGAL DISCLAIMER FROM THE BALLOON CO. [gaming division] LAWYERS: No Balloon Co. [gaming division] employee stole anything from any person, alive or dead.  This story is fictional.  Any resemblance to reality in just your imagination and therefore not punishable by any authorities that have jurisdiction over Balloon Co.

 

So, after we got our hands on that sweet sweet loot, we headed back home just as they were finishing cleaning the fish guts from the bathroom and told our lawyers the great news.  (The lawyers wanted to stay behind to see if the house cleaner did anything we could sue them for).  That's when the lawyers told us that, since we were on a company trip, we had to spend the money on something that would help the company.  So, feeling lazy, we went out and splurged on a BRAND NEW GAME ENGINE WITH PREMADE SPRITES AND ANIMATION AND SONGS AND CODING!  It says its good for making something called an RPG.  We don't know what that is.  Not only that, we don't like "the game" telling us what we can or can't make out of it, just like how we hate how "the boss" tells us what our division can and can't blow up within a 5 km radius of our office.  So, instead of making an RPG, we decided to make a JRPG THAT"S NOT MADE IN JAPAN!  WE ARE MASTERS AT THIS REBELLING THING!!!  So, any way, there we were, putting off working on Mighty Matt by messing around with thing new game engine, and before you knew it WE ACCIDENTALLY FINISHED IT, LIKE, WITH A BEGINNING MIDDLE AND END AND CREDITS.  WE HAVE NO IDEA HOW IT HAPPENED BUT THERE IT WAS!

We quickly called up the Balloon Co. [gaming division and other division] headquarters to share the good news.

AND THEY GOT MILDLY ANNOYED AT US!!!!

They said we "didn't use company resources in a way approved by them" and how they were "disappointed by the lack of custom Balloon Co resources applied to this game" and as punishment we had to "polish the game with help of outside testers" and "do something to add some originality to it."

 

To check the originality requirement we only added a few sprites home made in our sprite kitchen (man, all these food references remind me how hungry I am.  I'm going to get a snack.)  (Yuck, protip Balloon Co. fans: never EVER try to cook walrus tail inside a backing pan lined with crab-apple sauce.  That stuff is GNasty with a capital G and a silent G and also a capital N).

 

We then had to send our game out to Balloon Co fans who the bosses liked so they could rip into the heart of our game and tell us how to replace it with a better heart that doesn't leak blood all over the place.  Which we did.  BY SLOGGING AWAY AT THE KEYBOARDS SO HARD WE LOST COLLECTIVELY LIKE 3 KILOGRAMS OF BODY WEIGHT!  THAT"S GOING TO BE HARD TO GAIN BACK, ESPECIALLY WHEN SOMEONE WASTED OUR SUPPLY OF WALRUS TAIL MEAT!

 

After working over overtime, we sent the finished product to our boss, ready to forget about it.  TURNS OUT THAT WAS A BAD THING TO DO! Apparently, as more punishment for telling them we had completed a game without their knowledge, we had to take care of "marketing" and "public relations."  WE HATE THAT SORT OF STUFF, WHY DO YOU THINK WE RETREATED TO OUR ABOVE GROUND BASEMENTS TO WORK ON COMPUTERS AWAY FROM THE GENERAL PUBLIC!!!?!?!?

 

By the way, did I mention we were still internet hobos?  In desperation, we went back to our you-have-to-download-the-game-to-play-it roots.  But we decided to take what we learned from our field trip to that school for people who's legal age is a lot smaller than ours to UPDATE OUR ROOTS WITH ROBOTIC ZOMBIE VAMPIRES PARTS TO APPEAL TO THE KIDS WHO LIVE IN THE DAYS THAT ARE THESE!

We made a Balloon Co Tumblr [sic] (seriously, even WE know how to spell "tummble", and we never graduated nursery school! (Translator's note: spelling error left in for accuracy).  So, if you want to play our first finished game, here is address you can command your internet browser to go to: http://balloonco.tumblr.com/  And if you want to see the super fancy press release we made for it, YOU DON"T EVEN NEED TO CLICK THE LINK, WE CAN COPY AND PASTE IT RIGHT HERE.  Oh but first we should tell the title of our game.  We called it "One Boss Showdown", or OBS for short, but its nickname is Onesie Bossy.

 

Hello world, we are Balloon Co. and this is our first finished game-that-isn't-a-minigame-inside-another-unfinished-game! We are very sorry to all of the people who just lost their lunch and/or dinner money investing in "Balloon Co. will never finish a game" wagers. (We ourselves lost some money in the deal, but we regret nothing for our art!). Oh, you want to know about the game? Um, it has a boss battle.

 

Dang, our poets must have been up late into the morning typing up that masterchuck of literary brilliance.

 

However, there was another downside to completing a game while not working on our main game.

WE HAD NOTHING TO SHOW FOR OUR UPCOMING

ELECTRONIC MEDIA SHOWCASE!!!!

So, we had to work fast to make a game or two that would be canceled, as is tradition.

And we came up with three.

But it ended up being two.

Here's why, WE ACCIDENTALLY COMPLETED ANOTHER GAME.

We thought we could easily whip up a cancelled game by ripping off a popular game, then having our lawyers devour our game with their "oh no, we are going to get sued, wah wah" tears.   So we made a game called "Floppy Fish."  BUT THEN THE POPULAR GAME WE RIPPED OFF DISAPPEARED, AND OUR LAWYERS GAVE OUR GAME THE THUMBS UP WHEN WE WANTED THEIR THUMBS TO GO DOWN INTO THE GROUND.  WAH WAH WAAAAH.

Still, we learned our lesson from telling our bosses about "One Boss Showdown" and secretly released it at this website under a pseudonym username we stole from one of our fans when we tested our security by hacking our own databases and were able to steal a whole username from ourselves.  You can play it here, at this not tumblr site where the higher ups won't see it, but shhhh don't tell our bosses.  http://gamejolt.com/games/arcade/floppy-fish/22254/

 

We first tried to make a stealth game called PAYDAY PAYBACK PRANKSTER. You are an employee who just got his paycheck, and ITS LESS THAN YOUR OLD PAYCHECK DUE TO SOME STUPID COMPANY PROPERTY DAMAGE YOU ACCIDENTALLY DID WITH YOUR INK PEN AND A NAILGUN.  So, in order to get your revenge, you have to get past your boss' home's security system and play a prank on him to feel better.  Do you dip his hand in warm tuna water?  Or do you vandalize everything with his kid's crayon set? (A tip full of pro-ness: as great as your crayon/body art is, resist the urge to sign your name)  Maybe you put a bucket of whipped cream above his bedroom door, or change his clock so he thinks that ITS MIDNIGHT WHEN ITS ACTUALLY 12:00!!! Hire neighborhood kids to help you out, but careful: if the poopoo popo catch them, they'll squeal like Squealy the Squealing Fakomon (Which is a future game of ours that will probably be canceled).

~Game was canceled because we could never figure out how you break into a house without setting off the alarms/waking up the neighborhood/ getting fired.

 

BALLOON SHOOTER: FREE DAT HELIUM.

~Game was canceled as soon as we told our bosses the name of the game we were going to start.  Something about "clashing with company image" or something.

 

So, what are you waiting for!  Go throw a party to celebrate Balloon Co's newest and currently onlyest completedest games: One Boss Showdown and Floppy Fish (Seriously, throw that party, we can't afford to).  Oh, and if you have Steam and the game engine RPG VX Maker Ace (dang, we need to start taking name creation classes from these peeps), you could also enjoy the game by subscribing to this link (which is different than subscribing to a magazine, which we discovered the hard way).

 

Enjoy!  Or get frustrated and angry!  Or get sad!  Just get an emotion of some kind so we know you are not a robot.

~Balloon Co [Gaming division]

BREAKING NEWS: Our boss just ordered us to enter our brand spanking new game into a contest to "promote."  We will have more details for you soon.  And yes, our "soon" could be your "long time" depending on what time zone/dimension you live in.

 

line

Email 12


 

Subject: Balloon Co enters their first contest in the most professional way possible.

A THING TO READ IF YOU HATE READING AND WANT YOUR REVENGE ON READING!

This is our longest email we have ever created.  As such, if you are a person who is poor in the amount of time you have available for important things, such as our updates, we are offering you this limited time sale!  For this email only, we are putting the most important announcement before the email.

 

We are in a contest.  We will not win.  But if you want to see our game in said contest, link is here!  http://contest.rpgmakerweb.com/game/view/id/115#.U7MhuBBTuRM

 

And for those of you who like this sale and want us to do it in the future, TOO BAD!  We are only doing it because our boss forced us to make a This Email Is Too Long For My Eyeballs To Comprehend version, or a TEITLFMETC version for those of you who feel that was too long to read, or T version for those of you who still make up nicknames for things by simply using the first letter.

AND NOW FOR YOUR REGULARLY SCHEDULED BUT STILL FIVE MINUTES LATE TO DINNER EMAIL.

 

OMG everybody, O   M   G!

(For those who don't know, OMG stands for Obliterate Mute Gamers, and should only be shouted when you are too excited to filter yourself from staying things that would offend mute gamers)

And our filters are FULL to the BRIM because Balloon Co has entered into a real world contest.

There are over 450 entries we are competing to the hopefully-not-death-bceause-we-forgot-to-take-out-life-insurence-policies-this-year.  We decided to check out the competition.

We are scared.

Very scared.

And we hope you get some sick thrill out of being terrified, because we are about to unleash the terror of quotes.

Quotes, from actual game descriptions of our competitors in this contests.

If you are reading without lights on, you should turn them on.

If you are reading with lights on ITS NOT ENOUGH QUICK RUN TO THE STORE AND RENT SOME SPOT LIGHTS TO SHINE IN YOUR ROOM.

Ok, now that you are prepared, OUR FOE'S FEROCIOUS AMMUNITION!!!.

"im lalalupsi i make a plataformer game of hard mario"

OH SHOOT, HE WAS ABLE TO LICENSE MARIO!? WE WEREN'T EVEN ABLE TO LICENCE MIGHTY MATT, AND WE OWN THAT IP.  How can we fight against such star power?

 

"Thank you for visiting the page and checking out the game; I hope you enjoy your time.

 

We really appreciate your time so far and would like to ask you a few questions and we shall credit you for them of course:

- What was the most thing you liked in the game?

- In your opinion, what was the worst thing in the game?

- Was there something missing that you were expected/wanted to have and didn't find?

- Can you describe your experience (and feelings) while playing the game?

- Anything else you would like to say that I haven't asked about?"

Wait, don't put this email in the spam folder! This is the actual opening to the game description, and is longer than the Story part that's under the development thread section.  So, this person is expecting people to play their game because they gave a questionnaire similar to the ones businesses attach sweepstakes to in order to milk their customer's gambling addictions to tell the businesses about themselves... SUCH GENIUS WE HAD NO IDEA WE HAVE SO MUCH TO LEARN!

*Note to self, send out questionnaire before we send out the next game update to promote said game update.

 

"This game has two different possible endings based on how you decide to go about getting the pants back. So there is a slight amount of replay value. To get both endings shouldn't take you longer than an hour and a half."  SHOOT A WALRUS!  If only our hero had pants, we could have dominated the pants based multiple ending genre.

 

"Peter's Song is an atypical exploration (and non-horror) game with a strong emotional background where you progress through your journey by manipulating the sounds and the musics of the rooms you're in to change their ambiance and solve puzzles"

Ok, interesting.  We are not a fan of horror games because we only make quality games.  Now to take a nice long sip of hot co-co while I continue reading the description...

. "You embody the inspector Philihert Remnant, a forty years old man with a quite bad reputation in the police station who's trying to catch the serial killer known under the name of 'PETER' " BOLIUFLODSBFLSFGBOFDSGPSFP

 

There, now that's the keyboard is all cleaned up (and caplocks unstuck), WHAT THE HECK GAME DEVELOPER!  YOU SAID IT WASN"T A HORROR GAME, YET YOU HAVE A POLICE OFFICER IN IT! THOSE GUYS AND GIRLS ARE SUPER SCARY TO PEOPLE LIKE US WHO HAVE NEVER DONE ANYTHING ILLEGAL IN THE LAST 3 MONTHS!

 

"When your computer system crashes, the only way to fix it is my activating the "Backup Randomizer". Only problem now is that everything is randomly generated, but hey, a challenge isn't that bad."  A GAME THAT CRASHES OUR COMPUTER!?!?!?! I'm surprised you didn't claim it's "not a horror game" so that you could be a liar like the person above you.

 

"You may be thinking to yourself, "this game has got it all!" Well, you'd be right, but don't take my word for it - download Plato and unwind the perilous mystery which lies deep within a nameless city in a timeless place."  How do you beat a game that LITERALLY HAS IT ALL?  Wait, if it has it all... then it has OUR game in it... which goes against our pretend copyright... LAWYERS DO YOUR DUTY!

 

"

Erik's Quest is the first "complete" game I have ever made with Rpg make VX ace. I say "Complete" because I wanted to add

more into it however I just didnt have enough time. It is entirely made with the standard RPG maker VX ace kit.

The game itself is a bit short and the story is a bit dodgy. Most my efforts went into creating the world map and some of the locations. I dont realy think I will win anything with this game but hopefully it will entertain someone.

(Also in the begining of the game dont walk untill after you exit the house for some reason you can do that and it totaly breaks the game. Spent a long time trying to fix it but I just simply dont know how to.)

UPDATE: I fixed the fact that your first party member actualy doesnt join your party and I made the world map a bit easier. Since people complained that they were killed. The encounters on the world map is based on where you are. Stay on the field in the begining and you should be fine."

The entire game description is about how bad the game is... CURSE OUR AWESOME PRIDE PREVENTING US FROM GIVING PEOPLE LOW STANDARDS WE CAN SOAR ABOVE!!!!

People love an underdog, and we'll NEVER be able to be underdogs.  Does that make us under-alpha-awesome dogs?

"Though it's an RPG there's no experience, leveling, stats or such. It's a complete linear RPG."

Shoot, we're competing with Modern Day Circle Eni-meeny-mini-moe-ix in an RPG contest.  And they have FANS!

 

"Help Peter get throught his boring Routine" OH NO PETER IS GOING TO KILL US ALL AND ITS GOING TO BE BORING FOR HIM!

 

"You are Aline Kilmer, and you are dead. " WE WERE PROBABLY KILLED BY PETER!  CALL THE SCARY COPS NOW!!!

 

"Black Galax: Blood Legacy is an original story of the main game series 'Black Galax: Revert'. You do not need to play the main game in order to understand this. This game was originally not meant for any sort of competition as I intend to complete it only after my main game. But I thought since this is a 'Background Story' and now that there is a competition, I thought maybe I'll give it a shot..." This game wasn't even MEANT for the contest.  STAY OUT PUNK, WE ONLY WANT TO COMPETE AGAINST GREEDY PEOPLE LIKE OURSELVES.  Oh no!  One Boss Showdown actually plays a critical role in the Mighty Matt games, and vice versa.  NO ONE WILL UNDERSTAND OUR ART.  Which, makes us true artists.

 

"The feeling is a bit like in "pokemon". To the story: A bad wizard steels the princess and you have to go to save her!"  SHOOT, JUST LIKE POKEMON!  And they've been able to feel pokemon and use that knowledge to their game making advantage.

 

"What happens if you let ants play with guns?" How did they know about last Thursday?  Time to check the cabin for hidden cameras again...

 

"You are a employee that likes playing games when he/she is suppose to be working."  OK, time to break out the metal detectors, THERE'S DEFINITELY HIDDEN CAMERAS AROUND HERE.  Ohh, a hidden warhead behind the kitchen sink, nice find.  BUT KEEP LOOKING FOR THOSE CAMERAS!

 

"is the worst game ever. It features awful custom music, awful custom graphics, awful gameplay and awful story.

 

This was originally supposed to be a serious project, a real contender for the top spots. But it went remarkably wrong. So, ladies and gentlemen, I present you this bullcrab. It's amazingly short, but it is complete. "  *Sniff* this reminds me of my mother's review of the first time we put Mighty Matt on the internet *Sniff*

It still stings, Mom, it still stings.

 

"The game is based on a dream I had a few months ago."  Hey, if OUR dreams were rated PG-13, then WE could put OUR dreams in this contest too.  Stupid people who get to have dreams appropriate for a general audience.

 

"Slime Paradigm: an Element of Slime Is the first game I have tried to make since highschool."  Wait, our game stars a slime, and this game has slime in its title... but they thought of it in highschool... WE ARE COMPETING AGAINST SOMEONE WITH A TIME MACHINE!!!  WE MUST HAVE WON THE CONTEST IN AN ALTERNATE TIMELINE SO HE STOLE OUR PROTAGONIST IDEA TO WIN IN THIS TIMELINE!!!

 

"you can shoot down a living porn magazine!"  STAY OUT OF OUR DREAMS!

 

"A best mind reading game."  Oh, so that's how everyone stole our ideas.  They played the best minding reading game while we must have only played sub-par ones.

 

"Slime's Turn is a retro metroidvania style game about a baby slime, which family was slaughtered by a random guy for some loot." One person made a sequel to our game, and this person made a prequel.  There must be more time travelers than we thought... OR ARE WE THE TIME TRAVELERS!?!?!

 

"We started making this game since thrid week of June so we don't had much time."  Don't have much time?!  You found a hidden week of the month we never knew about! That gave you a whole extra week!

After we find those hidden cameras, we will start searching the 4th dimension for the thrid week of every month.

 

"In No Manatees Promised you'll be playing a bunch of minigames and enjoying a lush underwater world full of life. You want some kind of story? Too bad, because there is none."  Hmm, don't give people what they want... dang, we should have submitted a not-RPG and said 'You want some sort of RPG? Too bad, enjoy your desktop background/calculator'

 

"In Peace of Mind, you play as a white mage stabbing phobias out of a person's brain and tell off bosses for how terrible they're being.

 

...Sorry, that was a bit too abrupt, wasn't it?"  Yes it WAS too abrupt... too abrupt to fail to dominate every other game in existence including ours! OMG we have no chance in this contest....

To make it up to us, could you please come insult our bosses for how terrible they're being.  (Our bosses aren't actually that bad, but in our imagination they are, so rip them to shreds!)

 

"Ever been bored in class? Well, Leon sure has! But he wonders off into lala land when he is." STOP INVADING WHAT WE CALLED DAYDREAM LAND IN MIGHTY MATT BEFORE THE TELITUBIES THREATENED TO SUE! (those things are visious, especially Dipsy.  Do not cross Dipsy.)

 

"Voidwalker is an old school RPG with some new-school elements injected in. You won't find any mini-map's or flashing arrows pointing to your objectives. Rather, you will actually have to look. With your eyeballs. I know, perish the thought."  Man, this person must shout OBG a lot.  (Obliterate Blind Gamers) what a ice-fishing hole.

 

"IGN will be payed to give this a 1 star!"  Wait, you can PAY for a one star review?!  We need to start making money somehow.  Too bad we wasted that dollar. :(

 

"

Hello and welcome to Evil Productions! We're the best in cut scene production, making only the most realistic of cut scenes by using real actors! That's right! They're real! Our specially trained villains will play their role in a game world of our choice, and cameras behind the scenes record and publish their interactions with the local heroes! Aren't you interested in-

What's that? An actor fell off the volcano? Oh no, that's out of the filming set!

DUN DUN DUNN

Play as D'Vil, the Dark Lord... Actor."  SHOOT we were just about to contract you to do cut scene work for us (worst part of any videogame) and NOW you tell us you only exist in VIDEO GAME WORLD?  Well... time to redouble efforts to leave the real world and enter the virtual one.  WE THINK THE RITUAL INVOLVES CHIPS, POP, AND YELLING ON SHOOTER GAMES!

 

"ATTENTION: Do not worry about Chrome warning, when you try downloading the file, just avoid and enjoy the game. Its virus and malware free!"

The best way to hide a virus that secretly votes for your game.

 

"

This is a non-combat puzzle-solving RPG.  Blow up enough stuff, and you win the game!  But be careful not to blow up too many things . . ."  So, if we blow up the game on our computers, do we win or was that too many things?  WAIT, they WANT us to blow up our computer so that we can't VOTE FOR OURSELVES!  Whew close one.  WAITPUTTHATMATCHOUTRIGHTTHIS

 

"Doridon's Vault is a (very) short platforming game about a Wizard clearing out some slimes in his basement."  We get the message.  Our next game will be about a slime clearing out a wizard who was trying to win AN ONLINE CONTEST BY SLIME/MUD-SLINGING THE COMPETITION!!! [angry face]

 

"About the Game: It's not an early access game!"  Dang, they're started a late-access game before it becomes cool.  THESE PEOPLE ARE TOO SMART FOR US!

 

"So why Veg vs Fruit? Well my skill is programming, and we all know programmers can't do arty things. I don't have an artist, so I thought combine my favorite game genre with an idea that is simple to draw... veg and fruit are very simple shapes for me to handle ha."  Wait, programmers can't do artsy things?  But you made a videogame, which is art... OMG WE ARE DEALING WITH A PERSON WHO CAN DO IMPOSSIBLE THINGS!!! (Our lawyers are not forbidding us from using the offensive OMG, so we will replace it with OMGee.  Just remember what we really mean.)

 

"Using technical terms, Dictionary might be described as a "light, story-driven, adventure-RPG"." Technical term technology: our worst PG-68/3 rated nightmare.

 

"D is for Dungeon is a dungeon crawler where you play as a baby."  The only person who would program this would be a baby, which means BABYS CAN NOW MAKE RPGS.  WE HAVE NO CHANCE AGAINST RUG RATS/MICE THAT HAVE MORE FREE TIME THAN WE EVER COULD BECAUSE THEY DON"T HAVE TO HUNT THEIR DINNER!!!

 

"The plot is pretty cliche"  We think Cliche' is French for something which means they have a plot written by a French dude which means it was probably written by a mime which means we probably offended them with our outbursts of OMGees which means this game is probably their revenge.  Which means we're in trouble.

 

"It's the story of a pixel trying to escape from a computer." DON"T GIVE THEM ANY IDEAS, THEY NEED TO STAY IN THEIR PLACE.  (I know this seems harsh, but we've had some troubles in the past with rogue computers).

 

"Critics are calling POOP IN SPACE the fecal frenzy event of the summer."  Lucky... people... critics... notice... their...crap...ignore...our... SHIning examples of what videogames can do.

 

What the, HEALTHQUEST SUBMITTED THEIR GAME TWICE! THAT GIVES THEM TWICE THE CHANCE TO WIN!  If only we had submitted our game 100 times...

 

"This game it's easy / GsUhPpPp  Try playing it to the end... Thank you so much for play..."  Dang, so much for our attempt at the "game description that tells you nothing about the game in hopes the mystery causes intense curiosity" award for game description we gave ourselves.  Now we have to give it to this game... as soon as the paint dries (we made the paint ourselves.  It's been drying for 3 days now).

 

"Combat may seem unfair but trust me you can finish the game with ease."  We find it unfair that you can finish the game despite the game being unfair. All unfair games should be a slog to get through, otherwise the PROLETARIANS WILL NEVER RISE UP AGAINST THE UNFAIR SYSTEM UGGG WHY DO THE PROLETARIANS NEVER RISE UP IN REVOLUTION AGAINST UNFAIR SYSTEMS OH YEAH ITS BECAUSE PEOPLE ARE STILL ABLE TO COMPLETE UNFAIR GAMES WITH EASE WHICH LEADS TO MORE UNFAIR GAMES UGGG

 

This next quote isn't from a game description, but a website the game description links to:

"In this book, Bogost analyzes the history of rhetoric and argues that videogames are part of a new form of rhetoric since their procedurally involves interaction. He calls this new form of persuasion Procedural Rhetoric, and develops his argument by comparing videogames to the characteristics of computers and by analyzing the influence that videogames can have on politics, advertising and education."  We didn't understand most of this mumbo-jumbo-wumbo-lumbo-sombo-kombo-pombo-bombo, but we did understand the last part: apparently, OUR VIDEO GAMES AFFECT POLITICS!!!! WE HAVE POLITICAL POWER!!!!  You heard it right folks, when you've been playing Mighty Matt, not only have you been enjoying the greatest game in all creation, you have also been taking a glimpse of the FUTURE OF GOVERNMENT.  I, for one, welcome our vigilante superheroes/princesses/slugs/fish-thing overlords.

 

"This game does have some mayture themes that would probably be around a "T" rating for "Teen"."  Hmmm, this gives us an idea.  Our attempt at a mature game may not have been very successful, but I bet in May we may be able to make a mayture game. (Maybe)

 

"In 2014, mankind discovered a sentient form of gumballs with moustaches." THAT"S THIS YEAR!  Why did nobody tell us about this discovery?  We could have trained our gumballs we had last week to code our videogames, instead of having them confiscated for having what the person sent by our landlord called "mold"  Now that we know it was probably a mustache, we should sue for our gumballs back!

 

"A SAO fan game I created on my own, which does not follow the original story at all. [...] While the theme is inspired from SAO, the main source of inspiration have been the D&D games (like Baldur's gate) and Japanese mythology, and this shows."  Sneaky, this person snuck in a Doorbells and Doorknobs (Baldur's gate) fan game by disguising it as a Save All the Olives game.

 

"A rapidly changing rpg in terms of gameplay and graphics. Current development time: 100 hours, not including gameplay testing."  Not including gameplay testing in development time?!  Looks like someone needs to learn how to fool the boss by clocking in "gameplay testing" as "really hard work" time instead of "actually just playing some video games made by other inferior companies" time.  (Protip: you get paid more for the first thing than the second thing)

Also, we can beat you there.  We've been working on Mighty Matt for more than 7 years.  That beats your measly 100 hours... SHOOT WHY DIDN"T WE ENTER IN MIGHTY MATT WE WOULD HAVE WON FOR SURE!?

 

"Enjoy slimes getting ripped to pieces!" YOU STAY AWAY FROM OUR PROTAGONIST YOU HEARTLESS NOT-SLIME MONSTER!!!

 

" I died? Wait what!?   You have died." Wait, so are we both dead? Oh, I get it.  It's one of those "baseball jokes": the character's NAMES are I and You.  And they are telling What, who is playing 2nd base, to wait.  Still, baseball is popular in some countries, so this game will be tough to beat.  BUT WE ARE GOING TO DESTROY YOU, I AND YOU, YOU HEAR THAT?  I WILL BE DESTROYED BY US AND SO WILL YOU, YOU!

 

"Note: Best game experience in normal resolution (not full screen)."  WRONG, the BEST game experience is playing a game after consuming a lot of sugary beverages that have started fermenting and then daring someone to complete the game with only one eye open and two fingers with an upside down computer monitor.  

 

"In The Making is about a game within a game. It starts off with a guy named Johnny that gets invited by his friend to playtest a game. And that game is about a princess trying to escape her prison."  Phew, we were worried we would have to compete with a game about playtesting a game about selling a game about proposing the idea of a game about collecting games about writing online articles about games about suing someone over their game infringing on your game about making clones of games for phones.  That would have been a hard game to beat.

 

"Based off of Boy Scout Troop from East Mckeesport, Pennsylvania, in the US. This game uses an Action Battle System to make a fun dodgeball experience."  We know very little about the outside world, but we do know two things.  1)Dodgeball can never be fun.  First off, the only people who have fun are those who THROW balls: those of us trying desperately to cling to our mortality with feeble attempts at DODGING are not having a good time.  2) Boy scouts are horrible people to play against because they TRY to WIN in order to earn some brownie point badge or something... WHICH MAKES IT EVEN LESS FUN FOR THOSE OF US TRYING TO STAY ALIVE TO SUPPORT OUR BEST FRIEND WHO IS OURSELVES!!!

 

"You can feel the dirty soil bellow you. Lying down struggling to remember what happened and where you are. A loud grinding metal sound wakes you up as you listen to the ravens flying away. You are in the middle of nowhere, lost and confused." Oh, great, now the hidden cameras know about our morning wake up routine.  That does remind me: we forgot to feed our pet ravens last night.  At least now we know the cameras records sound... LETS POP THOSE MIKES BY SCRATCHING LOTS OF CHALK BOARDS!  *note to self, put chalkboards on the list of things to borrow from people without them noticing*

 

"This is a game about not getting things done in time. I made it in two days after not getting my other game done in time. (There is a theme here; can you guess what else was not done in time?)"  Darn, I hate riddle games.  We are not very good at them.  But we DO hope that, if our Boss finds this game, he/she/it (we don't remember) doesn't remember the time we tried one of those "deadline" things and didn't release on schedule.

 

"How weird can feeding a cat make your life?"  Looks like someone's never had to deal with Great Aunty Agnes's snow leopard before.  I'm just glad I never have to wear the feeding time/vaudeville costume ever again. Yeesh.

 

"Warning: This game screen size is 3x3 pixels!" Dag-darnit!  Now that we've been warned, we can't try to discredit/sabotage the game by spamming troubleshooting comments about how big the game is!

 

"so don't be surprised if a carpenter crush your bones manipulating wood, a psychologist wakes your inner demons and rip your mind or an executive producer buys your soul, literally."  Meh, souls are pretty overrated anyway.  And besides, you want to sell them early before they're prices plummet once you get a few miles on them, like ours.  We've all been trying for YEARS to sell our souls, and you made a game where some producer walks up and buys it immediately!?  YOU ARE INSULTING OUR HARD WORK!

 

"This is a little horror RPG, not the kind of harsh found in the market, but a smooth homebrew one." We homebrew horror too, but we call it ice cream shake surprise and it's much more harsh than what people buy on the market.  We use actual ice we harvest ourselves!  And we don't use cream! And we harvest our own surprise!  (it makes your body shake)

 

"Samuel's Save Point is an RPG starring an unlucky scientist and a host of other interesting characters who have all wound up dead, special thanks to Samuel." WE'RE NOT FALLING FOR THAT RED HERRING WE KNOW IT WAS PETER!!!!!

 

"A visual novel/dating sim exploring the origins of Thomas Wheeler's position of FCC Chair... and a forbidden love."  Oh dang, this must be one of those video games specifically DESIGNED to affect politics! We are so behind the curve here.  Will we ever catch up?

 

"You play as a schoolgirl who must avoid falling into the traps of "shoujo" cliches." Oh no!  Now we're competing against french japanese video game creators! That covers story AND gameplay.  We've only covered game (still working on the play part).

 

"This is a Baby Announcement Game, or other Announcement game, like for Graduation, a Newsletter, etc.  You take the time to create a customized game and send it via Facebook to family and friends."  Lots of people have babies/announcements they make, which means a lot of people will play would play this game.  Luckily, we've never heard of this Bookface thing, so it must not be very popular, so I think we're still safe.

 

So, as you can see, our only hope of winning is if everyone's game hosting website goes down and ours is the only one standing.  Sure, we've probably got a better chance winning the lottery, but we've already won a US dollar from the lottery, and I think you only get to win those once, so here's the next best thing!

Wish our opponents bad luck,

~Balloon co [gaming division]

 

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Email 13


Subject: Another announcement that isn't about everyone's favorite superhero game in development. (Unreleased)

 

We regret to inform you that we have finished another game that doesn't star a hero that wears a green and blue cape.

In our defense, IT WASN"T OUR FAULT IT WAS OUR BOSSES FAULT THEY MADE US DO IT WE CAN"T BE HELD RESPONSIBLE!

So, remember that one RPG we made for a contest?  Well, turns out that not only did it finish two months after the judges said it would (which confirms our previous theory that "deadlines" are supposed to be missed in order to allow for the superior undeadlines to roam), we got a gift card prize for participating!  However, after taking two more months to research how to use it, and another 3 weeks on what to spend it on, it expired, AND UNLIKE DEADLINES EXPIRED GIFT CARDS DON"T COME BACK FROM THE DEAD!!!

Our bosses were not happy to hear we squandered our prize, so they ordered us to enter a different secret contest.  For this contest, we had to make a game that could be completed in 60 seconds.  And we actually finished!

But it was over 60 seconds.

So we had to cut.

OUR AWESOME DEEP LENGTHY BACK STORY WE WROTE FOR THE GAME!

So, here is the super important story that is very important to understanding and playing this video game.

"Long ago, in the far away future, the past has come back to present a problem to the future perfect's present.  You are an alien from Balloon Co. [planet division] with a very important mission.  The planet YAYA-OUOU has gotten its planet hands on wealth gems due to their stupid game playing device that TAKES AWAY FREE-TO-WIN BUSINESS.  And thus, it is up to {$}#</: (that's your name), to trek to that dreaded planet and steal the wealth gems for the glorhonory of the greatest planet in existence! (Hint: IT ISN"T YAYA-OUOU!)

But the not-balloon co planet has some tricks up its robosleeves: They are held in an alternate dimension and only appear in the normal dimension room one at a time!   Not only that, but transferring the gem into your pocket dimension storage pocket activates the RED CIRCLE SECURITY!  What are these red circles?  Electric flying tomatoes?  Sentient killer polka dots?  Symbols of your guilt for breaking your monk vows not to steal even from people who TOTALLY DESERVE IT?  Who knows?  All we know is that if you touch it YOU WILL BE VAPORBURNED OUT OF EXISTENCE!  Quick, the return ship is coming back to teleport you back in 59.9999999999737485749999 seconds!  Loot as much stealing as you can $<! (That's your nickname you got from a class bully but re appropriated into a term of endearment)"

 

We entered our severely butchered game.  We knew it would fail.

AND IT WAS TRUE WE DIDN"T EVEN BEAT ANY OF THE OTHER GAMES ENTERED.

But we still won the prize.

Nobody else entered.

We wish we didn't win though.

The prize was a 900 hour course on learning some dumb programing language named after some stupid rock: Amethyst.  So now our bosses are making us learn this new "make videogames with a programming languages only weird foreign immigrant computers speak."  And if our lawyers didn't currently have knives pressed against my neck right now, I'd have some choice words to say about foreign computers that don't speak C+-/%, the greatest programing language of all OUCH Inmypersonalopinionnotfacttheviewsexpressedherearen'tofballoon co.

 

What I'm trying to say is that it's gonna be a while until we get back to the Matt that is mighty.  Our fortune teller says summer will be good for crops, so we think that might be when we get back to the mighty one.  In the kinda nice kinda mean time, here is a link to a pirated version of our contest winning-and-losing game: http://gamejolt.com/games/arcade/electrogem/44934/

 

Well, time to start chipping away at that 900 hours.  Super sigh.

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Disclaimer Footnote


Appeared at the end of most emails:

@For more information about the ratings of the games covered in this newsletter, do NOT  visit the ESRB's website, they have no clue this game exists

 

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