The final episode of the good fun Strong Bad’s Cool Game For Attractive People series is out now, with a demo available. It’s the second best of the five (the fabulous Episode 3 beating it), with some top-notch nonsense, and Mike Stemmle Chuck Jordan on puzzle duty, with Mike Stemmle at his side. And of course features the mighty Trogdor, as well as many other favourite Videlectrix characters, including the world of 20X6. A tip-top episode, well worth your money. However, there was briefly some controversy afoot in that regard.
It’s not that the series never featured Ol’ Timey H*R at any point, even though it should be. And it’s not the devastating news of the Telltale/Videlectrix spat. It’s that if you want to buy Episode 5: 8 Bit Is Enough on its own, you, er, can’t.
In a very confusing decision, Telltale have stopped selling Strong Bad episodically. If you want to buy Ep 5, you have to buy an entire season pass for $35. Which is a teeny bit more than the $9 the other episodes cost.
However, after quite a brouhaha on the TT forums, there’s been a swift response to fend off the angry mobs. If you bought the first four episodes, Telltale will have already automatically upgraded your account to have a season pass, and thus give you Ep 5 for free. Which is a bit good. However, if you bought multiple episodes individually, but not all four, Telltale will be sending you an email that has a really rather splendid offer in it. You’ll be able to fill in the gaps in your collection for just the price of one more chapter.
Previously the best offer available was the “upgrade“, which lets you convert to a season pass for $26. Of course, that options still available to anyone who bought just one episode previously. So in the end, fairness has happened to all (unless you want to gripe that someone gets more free than you do – but then you should have bought a season pass if you bought them all individually, you dimwit).
It does leave the question: why would a company who have made their name selling episodic adventure games for years suddenly stop selling their latest series episodically for the final episode?
Meanwhile, regarding the far more volatile controversy over the Telltale/Videlectrix bust-up, tomorrow we will have a world exclusive interview with Videlectrix as they dish the dirt on Telltale in full.
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2:06AM? Does no one sleep on Tuesdays?
I literally stayed up this late to get this story finished. The news about the new offer only just happened, and I was waiting for its announcement.
That’s the level of dedication you get from RPS. You just count yourselves lucky.
I just counted myself lucky good sir.
hm, does this count for the wii versions?
Thanks a lot for covering this, guys. I’d hardly call their response prompt though. A full two days after launch they offered a solution for buyers who weren’t in the one episode or 4 episode camp.
I am counting myself lucky as we speak. Dedication for all.
I can’t wait to hear Videlectrix’s side of the story :D!
Spam, on MY RPS?!
RPS is so famous, it has WoW gold spam!
I wish I were one of those 90’s movie super hackers. I would spend most of my time trashing MMO gold spamming websites and subscribing their owners houses to nasty things.
I’m not though =(
I was going to wait for the whole season anyway so this doesn’t effect me, wish they didn’t do episodes there. Why can’t you just release a whole entire game?
The only logic I can think of as to why they would decide to do that is that the series has not been selling very well, particularly on an individual basis, to a degree where they felt it wasn’t worth their while to offer the final episode. Kind of disappointing when you think of it that way.
Whatever reason they have for this, it is a bit cheap of them to implement this change just before the last episode of the season. This is the kind of thing they should either do from the start, or not at all.
It seems pretty obvious to me. They implemented the change silently right before the last game to cash in on the Trogdor name. Telltale is going to sell a lot of copies to a lot of people who love Trogdor, but aren’t terribly interested in the game. They figure that if they can squeeze 35 bucks instead of 9 out of those customers, they might as well. Unfortunately their regular customers also had to suffer to make this happen. I regretfully won’t be buying from Telltale again. Their poor choice and cavalier attitude in the face of the problem they created disgusted me.
I would consider making the purchase if and only if it were the one episode. I have been a long time H*R fan, even when I thought it was only mildly amusing because I wanted to kill time. I played the demo for this, and I got more amusement out of it than the other episodes’ demos that I’ve played. I would definitely throw down $9 (if my budget wasn’t so tight) because I love Stinkoman and, to a lesser extent, Trogdor.
This is good news! wow gold