Learning Flash 4 action script a thousand years ago, I made this game, stealing off the idea that Frank and Gruno are steel workers (although Frank isn’t even in this game). I didn’t even have a guitar riff for the Family Pants theme yet, so all you’ll hear is the bass thumping away. I was pleasantly surprised the minimal scoring actually sounds intentional.
[Click on the image below to open a URL to another page that has the game:]
Back in mid 2001, I wanted to learn Flash 5 programing. Well, the best way to learn programing is to make something and learn as you go. So I came up with a game for Family Pant’s Gruno and Frank: “Gruno’s Rhode Island Red Rescue!”
The idea was an inspiration of one of my favorite arcade games of old, JOUST. The story was that Frank, being an iron worker, just finished building a skyscraper and upon setting the American Flag a top the building, resembling The Empire State Building, a gust of wind blows it off the top. Frank pulls out his cell phone to call Gruno for help only to be a victim of the strong winds himself. He flails about like a flag himself clinging to the building’s antenna. Eventually his pants comes down and we zoom down to the street.
On the ground stands Gruno. He hears Frank’s cries for help and in Superman fashion changes into a chicken costume. (Identical to the Chicken man of “Hole in ‘Da Roof!”) Then the game begins. Like “Joust” you navigate Gruno to the top of the building to meet and rescue Frank. You had to avoid hitting the ground and buildings around you as well as flying paper thrusting around in the strong winds. If a sheet of paper hits Gruno, you had to fight to get the paper off his face by quickly hitting any key repeatedly. All the while plunging to earth. If you removed the paper in time, you could recover your decent, otherwise, game over! Another hazzard was if Gruno traveled too high, an airplane would run him over, sending him back to earth as well. In the process I changed the danger to Gruno getting struck by lightning, drawn by a dark swirling cloud over the top of the building.
Now all this sounds fun and making it gave me a better understanding of ActionScript at that time, but the game was never meant to be.
Think of 2001… Think of tall buildings… American Flags… paper blowing around… dark clouds… airplanes… people in need of rescue… geez…
I told some friends about this game in progress after 9/11 and they tried to figure out what statement I was trying to make, and whether I was trying to make one at all. Being my friends they were polite, but I could tell by the look on their face that this game was meant to be shelved permanently, so I never even finished the artwork!
I told a few friends recently of the coincidence and they couldn’t believe it. Looking back now, realizing my innocence found the whole thing incredibly funny!
So without further ado and lots of editing, here’s a couple of screen shots of the game:
This was a design I did to learn the programing aspects of Flash 4, back in the day. The idea was to use a character I’ve had for years, Gruno, as the interface and sole design to Gruno.com. Originally it would have no instructions forcing the user to explore and play with the character to get him to “cough up” cartoons. The design would hide content in the site, disguising how much work I’ve done to hopefully keeping the site fresh. Perhaps I had a dozen cartoons, perhaps only two. Gruno would “think” for himself whether or not he’d show it to you. (And depending on in what order you teased him, he acted as a sort of combination lock.)
Although it worked, it was too confusing for most people. Plus the amount of work to create these interactive elements rivaled making actual cartoons! I’ve scripted a similar design for Frank for another Family Pants website that perhaps I’ll use.
[Click the image below]
In the beginning of my site, I tried to write the standard paragraph descriptions of who these Family Pants characters are. But eventually, I thought actions describe character better than words, so I created this make believe phone. By listening to Frank talk, perhaps you’d get a better understanding as to who this guy is.
Well, I don’t know if it worked, but it sure saved me from writing stuff!
[Click the image below]
