January
The start of the new year brought a lot of new faces. In January, we were introduced to three very memorable Portal contributors. Brian Beaton uploaded his first episode of "Scrotum the Puppy."
Jeremy Mills hit the scene with his quirky Rainbow Bright parody, which would be followed by some great games.
The elusive Will Stamper also made his mark with the very Will Stamperish movie, "Koke". Will would later be known for the classic game "Street Life". He later died of stomach cancer, came back and announced it was a hoax, then left the scene completely. He came back in 2003 with a redesigned NG layout, got hired and spent almost a decade on the NG staff.
January was also the debut of Bentframe comedy on Newgrounds. "Yoda's Blowjob" featured audio by the comedy star of MP3.com and would soon by followed by the famous "Star Wars Gangsta Rap" (later sold to Atom Films).
February
This was the month of often overlooked hits. AEvil was a fun shooter and one of the first Portal entries to feature bonus rounds for added fun. Sloth TV was a hilarious music video that had fans of Reading Rainbow especially entertained. Pregnancy was a short and funny skit by Rogerio, who later vanished.
My favorite movie of this month was probably Snarlie Brown, the EvilDave classic that was removed due to pressure from the late Charles Schultz's lawyers.
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AEvil
by Larzshoot stuff, relieve some stress! -
Sloth TV
by JeremyLokkenSloth's got his own music video! SLOTH TV
March marked the introduction of another favorite contributor, Ben Apgar of 512productions. In this same month he submitted Souped-Up Civic (very underated in my opinion) and Chinese Restaurant.
Rogerio also submitted "Walk my Plank", the most perverted Portal at the time.
Brian Beaton submitted another classic, his movie about Tupac.
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Souped-up Civic
by rush22A tribute to all those guys who put $50,000 into an $8,000 car. -
How Tupac Was Murdered.
by Brian-BeatonHow tupac was really murdered.
Months earlier, I hired my friend Ross to program an automated system for accepting Flash submissions. My mailbox was flooded with files and I was still rejecting most of them. I was creating individual pages for the submissions I chose to showcase, and found myself frequently updating files and information for existing entries. It was becoming hard to keep up with everything!
We launched the automated Portal on April 6th and it was the first of its kind, the only site where artists could submit their games and movies to a real-time system. Submissions were instantly available to the public, who voted on their outcome. When a submission crossed the low score threshold, users would receive a message stating, "Blam! This submission has been deleted", now known as "Blamming." It would be a few years before other sites started ripping us off!
We launched with Scrotum the Puppy, as it was the biggest hit at the time. This is why Scrotum has a submission ID of "1", even though it wasn't the first submission we ever received. Looking back, I wish we had put through all the original submissions in order. I was probably too busy with schoolwork at the time, or something stupid.
Stamper may have been the first to submit a "new" submission through the automate system:
Doomhammr soon made his debut with Uniwar, a great game at the time.
The fun kept rolling in...
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BlunderCats
by BAHArtsThis is a parody of the ThunderCats. -
Fukemon 1- The original!!
by PirataCobra -
Do you Yahoo?
by Chuck -
Unsuitable Submission
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Luis would also make his debut during the first month!
Still in the first month, we were joined by Sean Bonner and his viral hit, Elian Wazzup! A spoof on the popular Budweiser commercials, Elian sparked a movement that resulted in a large collection of Wazzup movies.
Idiots Anonymous was one of the best series to appear on Newgrounds early on, with awkward pauses and lots of silly dialogue.
It wasn't long before artists were starting to criticize the number of crappy submissions, as Doodler pointed out in "Peanut."
May
The Pox brought a taste of England to NG when they submitted The Pygmy Shrew. This is one of those cartoons that made me think Flash could look just as good on TV as it looks on the web.
Doughguy Bloopers, released the same month, also kept the promise alive, while Trapped showed gamers that Flash had excellt Zelda potential.
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The Pygmy Shrew
by POXA short look at the short life of the most spectacularly useless animal in the world. -
Doughguy Bloopers
by abe-d -
Trapped
by MakeItSoGamesSolve puzzles and find keys.
Anime fans started to take a liking to Newgrounds, thanks to visually impressive submissions such as The Bard's Song.
Big Black Ben combined funny audio with a great cartoon, as opposed to a lot of submissions that combined funny audio with horrible cartoons.
Clark Lybeck gave birth to one of the most common themes on Newgrounds: Sprite movies! For a moment he was the king of all things sprites, if only he had stuck with it! His once great domain name is now owned by squatters who snatched it up when his registration expired.
We also attracted plenty of perverts when The Romp submitted an inventive game about X-Ray glasses.
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The Bard's Song
by CharlieZeroA simple storyteller sings his favorite song. -
Big Black Ben (NEW)
by zipzipBIG BLACK GUY NAMED BEN (NEW and IMPROVED) -
Duck Hunt: Target = Mirth
by visionomud -
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Inspired by Clark Lybeck, Randy Solem submitted his first sprite movie to Newgrounds. Randy would go on to become the king of the sprite movies, on both Newgrounds and the Internet as a whole.
Barnyard Shenanigans was the funniest movie on Newgrounds and would remain the funniest for a good while.
Meanwhile, Sirkowski submitted the first of what would be many great Miss Dynamite episodes.
McFretN raised the bar for shooters, introducing his Combat Instinct series.
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Mario Gets Lucky
by Randy-SolemMy very first vg parody done entirely in screenshots. -
Barnyard Shenanigans!
by PandemoniacShenanigans in a barnyard. -
Miss.Dynamite VIII
by Sirkowski -
Combat Instinct
by McFretNA space shooter
Jose Ortiz, aka MindChamber, blessed us with what remains the coolest Transformers movie on Newgrounds. MindChamber would later redesign Pico and become part of the official NG staff.
September
MindChamber brought the urban flair to Newgrounds and The Little Jamurai kept it going the following month.
Forum regular Fourchinnigan submitted the first episode of Miracle Explosion, one of the earliest series on the site.
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The Little Jamurai
by dreadslickTwo thugs learn you don't mess with someone following the Deadly Path of the Jamurai. -
Miracle Explosion-Ep#01
by fourchinniganpart one
Stuart Hart raised the bar for hilarious stick antics with Dangerous Olympics.
The Mystic Island kicked off with its first episodes!
We received a lot of submissions celebrating Halloween. This was an early taste of what would become yearly collection pages for major holidays.
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Dangerous Olympics
by Stuart-Hart -
Mystic Island 1
by GolemCCMystic Island... part 1 in a series of 4.
Randolf Dilamanta made a single appearance on Newgrounds this year. His movie, The Final Task, was a true inspiration. I still check in occasionally with Randolf, hoping he will some day Flash again.
Stuart Hart continued to amuse with Angry Hill Billys.
Zeebarf felt right at home, tossing Buttplug into the Portal. This same month, Zeebarf and I started development on Disorderly, although it wouldn't be finished until almost a year later.
Talk about a busy month, we also saw the birth of Marcus Peblo!
For better or for worse, the dress-up game trend skyrocketed thanks to an appearance by Britney Spears.
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The Final Task
by chefboyrdA samurai completes his final task. -
Angry Hill Billys
by Stuart-HartMovie #3 -
Unsuitable Submission
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Marcus Peblo!!!!!
by ericblakMarcus Peblo -
Unsuitable Submission
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The year came to a close with some great artistic works, such as T. Bailey's Corporate Puppet. I also got a kick out of the Toy Story spoof by Razzo, and the Star Wars spoof by Scott Torment.
We finished the year with a Merry Christmas!
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Corporate Puppet
by ebaileyA corporate puppet. -
Toy Story Cinemargh
by Raz"IT WAS SO FUNNY I DIED TEN TIMES!" -
Star Wars : Lo Mein
by tormented-soulStop calling me buttmaster.