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The Five Main Characters of Bonus Stage...(Elly is Hidden Behind Joel)
Welcome to the Bonus Stage Fansite. Many of you may be asking, "What the hell is Bonus Stage?" Bonus Stage is an internet cartoon created by Matt Wilson, which is based on his earlier comic strip/webtoon, "High Score." Originally, it centered around three characters: Joel Dawson, Phil Argus, and Elly Strife. However, Matt decided to bust a Simpsons and kept adding new characters as episodes went on. Two new additions to the main cast were Jessica Argus, Phil's mom, along with Rya, the lovable, cynical, humanoid robot. The episodes revolve round avid video gamers Joel and Phil, and the wacky adventures that they get thrust into...at one point, they were sucked into a real life MMORPG (Massive Multiplayer Online RPG) kinda like Final Fantasy XI, but not really. A lot of Bonus Stage deals with video game and anime parodies, such as the World Gems, which are actually the Chaos Emeralds from Sonic. Recently, especially episode 53, BS has begun to establish it's own, non-parodical storylines, which shows more development in the show.
Bonus Stage started out as a High Score spinoff. Rumor has it that Joel Dawson, a High Score character, after seeing the success of many internet flash cartoons, such as Happy Tree Friends and Homestar Runner, wondered why High Score had no weekly update (which was true. High Score tended to update once every six months). So, he based a cartoon on his life and the lives of his friends in the seemingly quite New Jersey town of Charismaville. And so, with very basic geometric designs, Bonus Stage was born. In reality, Bonus Stage is a cartoon within a cartoon. After a while, Bonus Stage became an entity of it's own, seeing as how Matt Wilson stopped production of High Score, and shifted focus on Bonus Stage. Rumors suggest, however, that Matt is working on the 5th and final High Score episode, High Score #5: Joel vs. America. There is a High Score #6, but, in reality, it's really Bonus Stage #25, which features the characters in their High Score forms at the very end.
Bonus Stage has a "Team" of writers. Originally, Joel wrote the episodes for season 1-2, all the way up to BS #25: Gruffo. There, Elly suggested that the three of them, Joel, Elly, and Phil, team up and re-tool the show. Different episodes are credited to different characters. Elly is credited with all "Character Based" episodes, Phil is credited with "Parody/Referential" episodes, and Joel is credited with "Adventure Based" episodes.
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