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Little Gamers | |
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Author(s) | Christian Fundin, Pontus Madsen |
Website | http://www.little-gamers.com/ |
Current status/schedule | Weekdays (3 times/week) |
Launch date | December 1, 2000 |
Genre(s) | Video games |
Little Gamers (sometimes shortened as LG) is a webcomic made by Christian Fundin (founder, illustrator) and Pontus Madsen (writer, illustrator). It began on December 1, 2000.
The cartoon series revolves around Christian, Pontus (mainly known as Mr. Madsen) and a friend of theirs called Marcus; their friends, girlfriends, life events, and mostly, video games. Special strips are sometimes released during certain news events (e.g. September 11th, US and European elections, Pope Benedict XVI), etc. On occasion, a small storyline is introduced, mostly using fictional characters. Also, there are some occasions where the cartoons are drawn (and started) by other webcomic artists. There was also a short-lived Little Gamers Macguardians Edition (in German) with a Mac-Theme.
The characters are drawn, as described in their second comic, to be "bastard children of Hello Kitty and Bomberman." Arguably, Little Gamers, together with Megatokyo and other webcomics, helped immensely in popularizing the use of leet speak.
This comic and its authors poke fun at people who poke fun at them. About the comic and its storylines, Pontus Madsen says: "I personally don't see LG as a webcomic, since we have no '2 months ahead of schedule in comics and storylines'.. I see it more as a blog, about what happens in our lives, and exaggerated to be a bit more fun than cnn. I don't see Penny Arcade as a comic anymore either, I see that as a 'blog' too, which unlike LG has something drawn to illustrate the posts - LG is the otherway around."
In 2005, Little Gamers published its first collection of comics in book form. As of February 2008, four collections of comics have been published. [1]
Released in 2005, this was the first Little Gamers book. It contains comics one to three hundred. Like books Two and Three it is printed in Sweden. So far the book has been printed in two editions and is one hundred and twenty-four pages.
Book One features five forewords by
Each Little Gamers book features two pages at the end of the book following the album like thanks page. Book one's two-page special features a collage of all the characters, as well as several key props such as an Apple Macbook, from the comic at varying sizes.
Released in 2006, this is the second Little Gamers book. It contains comics three hundred to six hundred. Like books One and Three it is printed in Sweden. It is one hundred and twenty-four pages, like Book One.
Book Two contains four forewords by
Book Two features two end specials.
Released in February 2007, this is the third Little Gamers book. It contains comics six hundred to nine hundred. This is the first Little Gamers book with all the comics in colour. Pontus Madsen redrew most of the comics for colour.
Book Three features forewords by
Unlike the two previous Little Gamers books, this features two end specials. The first of these is two issues of hand drawn comics produced in response to an issue arising at the Comixpedia as to why Pontus Madsen and Christian Fundin made Little Gamers. The second two-page special is a collection of Little Gamers readers' mugshots organised by continent.
Book Three features, unlike previous Little Gamers books a small one page dictionary at the end of the book to define vocabulary feature in the book. The included words are predominantly internet slang, including words such as " lol ", "stfu" and "omg".
As described by 1UP.com, Little Gamers is "critically lambasted but rabidly popular comics," comparable to "million-selling, mass-market [video] games that no one actually seems to like." [2]
Belgian indie developer Loïc Dansart created a side scrolling adventure video game based on Little Gamers in 2008. Developed using XNA Game Studio 2.0, Dansart released the game for Xbox 360 on the Xbox Live Marketplace on February 20, 2008. [3]
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