so does anyone want to hear the story of manegg and why it’s a childhood memory of mine despite me never being a part of the long-dead internet community it was born in
hell?? yes???
OK so flash back to 2008 where i was a dumb child on mario fan games galaxy’s old message board. at some point someone from a community that was a splinter offshoot of mfgg posted the following video on mfgg itself:
this video has about 554 views at the time of this writing and includes a dead link to a sonic sprite comic that manegg comes from. there is also the related video “I am the Manegg Remix” which is essentially the same thing from a couple years later and has even less views.
at the time i was completely unaware that the context of this was limited to one person’s shitty sprite comic, so child-me assumed it was a much, MUCH bigger thing that must have been well-known across the whole internet, and not just an in-joke from a community that i never even learned the name of. i just thought manegg looked really cool because he was ostensibly supposed to be a bug or something but i knew next to nothing else about him besides that.
pictured: the three comments of “I am the Manegg” including the character’s enigmatic creator who i’m pretty sure also frequented mfgg back in the olden days.
what little relevance manegg had quickly faded after that, but i never really forgot what i had watched. i might have even drawn fanart of him around that time, but i never posted any of it.
now, return to 2018. mfgg’s forums have undergone a few wipes over the years and half of its userbase was exiled to a different mfgg splinter community called minus world around 2010. i was thinking about old sprite comic nostalgia and then my manegg memories came flooding back, so i shamefully asked around on the minus world discord if anyone else remembered it, and i got the context and backstory i needed for this weirdass childhood memory of mine:
and at that moment i finally had closure for a decade-old personal mystery that no one else cared about. except, of course, that i had to be the one to make the first piece of manegg fanart in almost ten years:
which brings me to this piece of shit right here, whose memory lasted beyond its long-dead internet birthplace that i never actually involved myself in. long live manegg
i am the MAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANegg
the thing about manegg is that this video is the only remaining proof that this one kid’s sprite comic ever existed. everything else about it is gone except for the panels that are shown here
the part of the video where it says BACKGROUND CHANGE was an honest to god thing the sprite comic author did. i don’t entirely remember the context but they literally were just having a scene play out and then one of their characters were showing off their power and to do so they shouted “BACKGROUND CHANGE” and changed the scenery like that
Hello! I’m the guy who made the Manegg video(s). I cannot believe this thing had a comeback 15 years later and got me credited in Dr. Robotnik’s Ring Racers.
I was so surprised when my friend showed me this screencap, I had no idea what I could’ve done that would lead to that, thinking maybe some of my old sprites I posted on some forums a long time ago were found and added to the game, then she tells me that Manegg is in the game and even has a clip of his theme song playing and it all starts falling into place. The comic isn’t actually down, it’s just that DrunkDuck changed its URL to TheDuckWebcomics, and this video is so ancient I never bothered updating the link. For context, these are the three comics he appeared in:
I admittedly didn’t know Bungalo created him when I first made the video. The funny thing is, after I made that 3D Manegg pic in Photoshop for the video, he informed me afterwards that he wasn’t supposed to be a beetle, but it ended up inspiring him to create a new form for him that I used in the remix, and that he later used in his own sequel comic.
Sequel to the comic, Comico The Hedgehog http://www.drunkduck.com/Comico_the_hedgehog/5033538/ For full understanding, this is required.
He even made a few Flash Animations for it (Most of them are down, sadly, aside from this exciting battle with Manegg) and kept this silly comic going for a fair bit. I remember even being invited to his Skype Group back when this was updating.
And that’s where I thought this funny little injoke between my friends and I ended, until lo and behold I realize he’s been revitalized in Ring Racers. Friggin’ crazy that he’s been brought back after so long, I still can’t believe it.
Anyway, here are some pics I used in my videos, plus some bonus ones:
Long live Manegg!
