The game features many elements of the Penny Arcade universe in a 1920s steampunk setting.
The comic debuted in 1998 on the website loonygames.com.
Profanity and violence are common in Penny Arcade and the strip is known for its surrealism; zombies, a talking alcoholic DIVX player called Div, Santa Claus, a robotic juicer called the "Fruit Fucker 2000", and Jesus, among others, are known to drop in often and for petty reasons.
It was written as a thank-you by Frontalot for the creators of the webcomic linking his website to their front page and declaring him their "rapper laureate" in 2002.
The reality web series described as "our version of America's Next Top Webcomic" titled Strip Search arose from the $450,000 stretch goal. Krahulik and Holkins created a comic strip which compares the 7th generation consoles that appears in the December 2006 issue of Wired magazine. ==Penny Arcade events== Every Christmas since 2003, Penny Arcade hosts a charity called Child's Play to buy new toys for children's hospitals.
They have also sponsored a three-day gaming festival called the Penny Arcade Expo every August since 2004. ==Legal issues and controversy== ===American Greetings=== Krahulik and Holkins received a cease-and-desist letter from American Greetings Corporation over the use of American Greetings' Strawberry Shortcake and Plum Puddin' characters in the April 14, 2003 Penny Arcade strip entitled "Tart as a Double Entendre".
They have also sponsored a three-day gaming festival called the Penny Arcade Expo every August since 2004. ==Legal issues and controversy== ===American Greetings=== Krahulik and Holkins received a cease-and-desist letter from American Greetings Corporation over the use of American Greetings' Strawberry Shortcake and Plum Puddin' characters in the April 14, 2003 Penny Arcade strip entitled "Tart as a Double Entendre".
On November 13, 2005, the website was given a facelift in celebration of their seventh year running and to match the designs of the Child's Play Charity and Penny Arcade Expo websites.
An official list can be found on the Penny Arcade website. === Collectible Card Game === On August 8, 2005, Krahulik announced that Penny Arcade, in partnership with Sabertooth Games, would be producing a collectible card game based on the Penny Arcade franchise.
An example is The Elemenstor Saga (ELotH:TES), a parody of the written-by-committee fantasy fiction used as back-story for a wide variety of games: originally a one-off gag in the Penny Arcade comic, in late 2005 this was expanded into a complete fantasy universe, documented on a hoax "fan-wiki".
ELotH:TES first appeared in the webcomic of February 7, 2005, and has subsequently been featured in the comics of November 7, 2005 and November 30, 2005.
Holkins stated in the accompanying news post that "it seemed like an incredible opportunity to relive the days of yore." ===Jack Thompson=== On October 17, 2005 Krahulik and Holkins donated US$10,000 to the Entertainment Software Association foundation in the name of Jack Thompson, a permanently-disbarred attorney-come-activist against violence in video games.
Krahulik and Holkins donated the money in his place, with a check containing the memo: "For Jack Thompson, Because Jack Thompson Won't". Thompson proceeded to phone Krahulik, as related by Holkins in the corresponding news post. On October 18, 2005 it was reported that Jack Thompson had faxed a letter to Seattle Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske claiming that Penny Arcade "employs certain personnel who have decided to commence and orchestrate criminal harassment of me by various means".
Holkins defended the site by saying that the "harassment" Thompson referred to was simply "the natural result of a public figure making statements that people disagree with, and letting him know their thoughts on the matter via his publicly available contact information". On October 21, 2005 Thompson claimed to have sent a letter to John McKay, U.S.
According to Holkins, the website in 2006 handled more than two million pageviews daily (excluding forum traffic).
Tycho also has a drinking problem. In Poker Night at the Inventory, Tycho is voiced by Kid Beyond. ==Podcast== Krahulik and Holkins began to record and release audio content on March 20, 2006, titled Downloadable Content.
New episodes were released irregularly, with six month gaps not uncommon. Although the shows were initially published weekly, Holkins stated in a May 2006 blog post that they have found difficulties when trying to produce the podcasts on a regular basis.
The resulting Penny Arcade "battle box" was released in February 2006 as part of the Universal Fighting System. There are also a few spinoffs from the main comic that have gained independent existences.
Several elements of the ELotH:TES universe are featured on the cover of their second comics collection, Epic Legends of the Magic Sword Kings. === ESRB ad campaigns === On May 31, 2006 Krahulik announced a new advertising campaign for the Entertainment Software Rating Board.
The ad campaign was rolled out in the summer and fall of 2006 and a second campaign was released in 2012 featuring a mother, a father and a gamer describing the tools employed by the ESRB. ==="The New Kid" film=== Announced on June 2, 2011, Paramount Pictures had acquired the rights to produce an animated film, via Paramount Animation to make this, of the one-off strip The New Kid which was published on October 29, 2010.
The reality web series described as "our version of America's Next Top Webcomic" titled Strip Search arose from the $450,000 stretch goal. Krahulik and Holkins created a comic strip which compares the 7th generation consoles that appears in the December 2006 issue of Wired magazine. ==Penny Arcade events== Every Christmas since 2003, Penny Arcade hosts a charity called Child's Play to buy new toys for children's hospitals.
At Sakura-Con 2007, Krahulik announced that the suit had been dropped. ===Rape/dickwolves controversy=== An August 11, 2010 comic entitled "The Sixth Slave" wherein an NPC pleads with a player to save him from being raped nightly by monsters called "dickwolves", drew criticism from many commentators, including from The American Prospect and The Boston Phoenix.
The first episode was released worldwide on May 21, 2008, and the second on October 29, 2008.
The comics are accompanied by regular updates on the site's blog. Penny Arcade is among the most popular and longest running webcomics currently online, listed in 2010 as having 3.5 million readers.
The duo planned to keep recording podcasts occasionally. Since airing the first episode of the new PATV in February 2010, the podcast has not been updated.
In 2010, Krahulik and Holkins announced that the remainder of the series had been cancelled, to allow Hothead to focus on other projects.
The fourth and final episode was announced in January 2013, and released to Steam and Xbox Live in June 2013. A teaser trailer released by Telltale Games on August 28, 2010, revealed that Tycho would appear in an upcoming game alongside Team Fortress 2's Heavy, Homestar Runner's Strong Bad and Sam & Max's Max.
The game, called Poker Night at the Inventory, was officially revealed on September 2, 2010. "The Last Christmas" and "The Hawk and the Hare", two stories that were published on the site, were released as motion comics for iOS developed by SRRN Games. The North American release of Tekken 6 has a skin for Yoshimitsu based on the Cardboard Tube Samurai.
Evil for iOS in 2012. ==Penny Arcade: The Series== Penny Arcade: The Series first aired online on February 20, 2010.
The ad campaign was rolled out in the summer and fall of 2006 and a second campaign was released in 2012 featuring a mother, a father and a gamer describing the tools employed by the ESRB. ==="The New Kid" film=== Announced on June 2, 2011, Paramount Pictures had acquired the rights to produce an animated film, via Paramount Animation to make this, of the one-off strip The New Kid which was published on October 29, 2010.
At Sakura-Con 2007, Krahulik announced that the suit had been dropped. ===Rape/dickwolves controversy=== An August 11, 2010 comic entitled "The Sixth Slave" wherein an NPC pleads with a player to save him from being raped nightly by monsters called "dickwolves", drew criticism from many commentators, including from The American Prospect and The Boston Phoenix.
At PAX Prime 2011, however, it was announced that the series would be revived and developed by Zeboyd Games, with a retro style similar to Zeboyd's past titles.
Evil in 2011, and followed it with the expansion pack Penny Arcade The Game: Rumble in R'lyeh in 2012.
The ad campaign was rolled out in the summer and fall of 2006 and a second campaign was released in 2012 featuring a mother, a father and a gamer describing the tools employed by the ESRB. ==="The New Kid" film=== Announced on June 2, 2011, Paramount Pictures had acquired the rights to produce an animated film, via Paramount Animation to make this, of the one-off strip The New Kid which was published on October 29, 2010.
The series was launched on August 9, 2011 and featured new strips every Tuesday and Thursday, usually accompanied by a "Tale from the Trenches", which was a short piece submitted by a reader detailing their own experiences in the game industry. In September 2012, Kurtz stopped illustrating the webcomic, due to lack of time, and was replaced by Mary Cagle, a former intern of his, and the creator of the webcomic Kiwi Blitz.
They later lampooned the incident by portraying an American Greetings employee as a Nazi. On June 15, 2011, a strip entitled "Reprise" revisited the issue, due to the release of Madness Returns, another American McGee game.
The third episode was released on Steam and on Penny Arcade's web store June 25, 2012.
Evil in 2011, and followed it with the expansion pack Penny Arcade The Game: Rumble in R'lyeh in 2012.
Evil for iOS in 2012. ==Penny Arcade: The Series== Penny Arcade: The Series first aired online on February 20, 2010.
The ad campaign was rolled out in the summer and fall of 2006 and a second campaign was released in 2012 featuring a mother, a father and a gamer describing the tools employed by the ESRB. ==="The New Kid" film=== Announced on June 2, 2011, Paramount Pictures had acquired the rights to produce an animated film, via Paramount Animation to make this, of the one-off strip The New Kid which was published on October 29, 2010.
The series was launched on August 9, 2011 and featured new strips every Tuesday and Thursday, usually accompanied by a "Tale from the Trenches", which was a short piece submitted by a reader detailing their own experiences in the game industry. In September 2012, Kurtz stopped illustrating the webcomic, due to lack of time, and was replaced by Mary Cagle, a former intern of his, and the creator of the webcomic Kiwi Blitz.
A new segment has since appeared on PATV called "The Fourth Panel," which presents a fly-on-the-wall look at comics creation much as the podcast did. On May 8, 2013 Penny Arcade launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund the continuation of Downloadable Content.
The fourth and final episode was announced in January 2013, and released to Steam and Xbox Live in June 2013. A teaser trailer released by Telltale Games on August 28, 2010, revealed that Tycho would appear in an upcoming game alongside Team Fortress 2's Heavy, Homestar Runner's Strong Bad and Sam & Max's Max.
In late August 2013, illustration was taken over by Ty Halley (Secret Life of a Journal Writer) and Monica Ray (Phuzzy Comics), former contestants of the Penny Arcade series Strip Search. The Trenches was ultimately abandoned.
In September 2013, on the last day of PAX, Krahulik told a panel that he thought that "pulling the dickwolves merchandise was a mistake", to cheers from the crowd.
The last comic was posted January 5, 2016, while the last Tales is from September 10, 2015. ===The Decideotron=== Krahulik and Holkins have also released an application for iOS devices called The Decide-o-tron, presented by Eedar and developed by The Binary Mill.
The script was written by Gary Whitta and would have been produced by Mary Parent and Cale Boyter. At PAX Australia in 2016, during a Q&A session, Holkins revealed that changes at Paramount resulted in the movie rights being returned to Penny Arcade and the project canceled.
The last comic was posted January 5, 2016, while the last Tales is from September 10, 2015. ===The Decideotron=== Krahulik and Holkins have also released an application for iOS devices called The Decide-o-tron, presented by Eedar and developed by The Binary Mill.
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