Game Theory: Play and be REBORN! (Courage The Cowardly Dog ARG) (2023)

Introduction

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Theorists, it's time to go down another creepy rabbit hole... Welcome to the "cancelled" Courage the Cowardly Dog game that seems to be hiding a scary secret. What is hiding in this lost game? I think this is going to be scarier than a Courage the Cowardly dog episode...

Find the game here ► neithernathan.itch.io/courage-the-video-game

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More THEORIES:
FNAF, The FINAL Timeline ►► bit.ly/2MlHYFe
FNAF, The Monster We MISSED! ►► youtu.be/_ygN8HLCaJg
FNAF This Theory Changes Everything ► bit.ly/2JUQUn6
FNAF, You Were Meant To Lose ► youtu.be/7bn8hM9k0b0
FNAF 6, No More Secrets ► bit.ly/2LVCq4u

Credits:
Writers: Matthew Patrick, William Ryan Sheehan "El Fodder", Zach Stew and Tom Robinson
Editors: AbsolutePixel, Ryan Foley • KingCorphish, Pedro Freitas, and Danial "BanditRants" Keristoufi
Assistant Editor: Caitie Turner (Caiterpillart)
Sound Editor: Yosi Berman

#CourageTheCowardlyDog #Creepypasta #ARG #Scary #OldWind #CourageARG #OldWindARG #Explained MatPat #Theory #GameTheory

Video

Hello internet.

Welcome to game theory where it's another day another fnaf episode that's, right, even though we might have just squeezed security, breach, drya theories.

It doesn't mean that the fnaf train is slowing down.

Anytime soon case in point, felix the shark, the surprise bonus book in the fazbear fright series.

Yup, your eyes don't deceive you that is an animatronic shark on the cover go figure.

I make a joke about it.

And now somehow I've manifested it into being the only thing that would make this more sharky would be if it suddenly introduced a shark animatronic.

They have they haven't done that yet right? Right? Okay? Well, there's still time.

Anyway, although it's slated for release in april an audio version of the book leaked, early allowing us to see what's inside of this thing.

Let me tell you while all the other books in the series have hinted at lore this one just spells it out for you stop.

What are you doing talking about fnaf? Like I always do it's been almost two weeks.

I feel like I'm going through withdrawals.

Well, I am the theory lord.

And I command you to stop, you know, with the name like theory, lord, it seems kind of off-brand to tell me to stop making talk about something else seriously, there are so many things that you can cover, uh, like what elden ring would be cool.

But if your name isn't vatividia, you're gonna get flamed there's, a new kirby game.

You'd think right, but kirby fans, they're surprisingly, aggressive, what about uh him over there in the corner? Uh, I would point him out to you, but I'm just a floating head.

So, uh, let me just nod in his general direction.

Okay, over there that one courage the cowardly dog did he even have a game shouldn't that be over on film theme, talk about him now or face.

The consequences theory lord has spoken.

Hello internet.

Welcome to game theory today, we're talking about the absolute classic animated series, courage, the cowardly dog.

This thing was pure nightmare fuel bottled up and iv directly into kids eyeballs back in the late 90s.

Now I want you to open your mouth and say, ah, if you aren't familiar with it, the show is about an elderly couple, sweet, muriel and grumpy eustis who live near the fictional town of nowhere, kansas with their easily frightened dog, courage every episode the three would end up encountering all sorts of horrors ranging from spirits aliens monsters.

Even terrifying.

Relatives alone was I with tender courage.

And all his fur is very foolish, which I say did encourage me to be quite naughty.

Courage, honestly, if you've never had a chance to check this one out, I highly recommend.

It there's.

A reason it holds the record for the highest rated premiere on cartoon network.

And even though it ended years ago, it's still kicking around.

It got a scooby-doo crossover movie last year, which at first I'm like what why.

But when you think about it, it actually makes sense.

I will say, it's been neutered a lot, not nearly as terrifying as the original courage series.

But you know, it's passable for a character that I haven't seen in a while.

Anyway, why am I talking about it here on game theory? Well last year, a game designer named nathan gabriel went online to claim that he had found an old hard drive at a yard sale containing the only known copy of a courage game for the ps1 a game that went unfinished and unreleased, ladies and gentlemen, we got ourselves.

The classic creepypasta story.

Boy goes to yard sale.

Boy, finds haunted game scares and sue rather than release 24 let's plays here on youtube nathan and his partner chico games decided to pull together the assets they found and put it all on ichio for everyone to experience.

But before even hopping into the game, I did some research, even though courage seemed like the perfect cartoon to turn into a video game.

Back when every successful show had its tie-in, courage only ever got a few browser games.

No official standalone title was ever planned.

So with my theorist senses tingling, I decided to give it a go on gt live.

I don't buy that for a second.

Yeah.

So I was gonna say if it's on ichio, I I don't know, okay, we'll we'll see we'll.

We'll, see.

I have a feeling that this is something more than what it seems and boy was I right on the money, constant crashes, haunting imagery and a soundtrack that screamed put me through a spectrogram.

So you know what time it is theorists time to break out photoshop and our base64 decoders.

We've got ourselves a scary arg to solve this game.

Isn't telling us the truth, there's, a hidden story inside the code and we're about to find it.

The only thing I wonder is whether we can survive to tell the tale firing up the game.

We take control of courage wandering around the bag house and that's.

Basically it not a lot to interact with other than a few question marks that basically do nothing.

However, after exploring the second floor, when you go back downstairs, the living room is bathed in red, oh things are getting creepy up in courage's house, going back upstairs.

You get your first jump scare.

Oh, hey, this terrifying face which it's worth noting isn't, actually, just a jump scare it's from the show.

This is the spirit of the harvest moon from the episode, the house of discontent respect your land, you must leave it.

I ain't going nowhere.

Then you will suffer the consequences told you this show is pure nightmare fuel.

The game is only mildly more upsetting than what they decided to give to kids on tv.

The giant floating head tells us to find them while three paws circle the screen.

Now I know it's a courage game.

But this moment's really giving me some solid blues, clues, flashbacks.

So finally, armed with a mission.

We go explore the house again, only to suddenly be teleported onto a carpet made of rotting flesh.

You know, the usual for the games that we cover here.

If it doesn't have a decaying carcass, texture, ain't.

Nobody got time for that at the center of the area are 16 red chairs with an odd, looking pentagram symbol in the middle.

If you look close enough, you can see that the line is actually meant to map out a path following it and clicking on each chair.

As you go triggers a sound that you know would be great.

If you knew what it did after mashing, my body against every wall that I could find because what else do you do when you're stuck in an indie horror game.

I found a spot that I could phase through.

I realized after the fact that there were also birds chirping to hint that it was there.

But of course, I had to do it the hard way.

And on the other side of that wall was nothing.

But another question mark that didn't do anything at a loss.

I did the only thing that I could think of okay, got another question mark.

What if I jump off? And we've crashed the game.

Fantastic turns out it wasn't, a bad decision.

When you relaunch the game all the furniture in the living room is gone.

And we get treated to a music track that absolutely slaps.

Oh, this doesn't bode.

Well, oh, this is definitely morse code.

Obviously, the music bed is a code, morse code to be precise, which at the time of filming, I couldn't look into.

But afterwards I was able to translate to learn the way of the old wind old, wind isn't, a reference to the show as far as I can tell, but it does seem to be important considering that it's a phrase that gets repeated throughout this arg.

Look back at the ichio page for the game, perfect grammar in all the game's descriptions, except for two randomly capitalized words in the middle of the sentences old and wine, mom, it's wind.

Well, I've only read it in books.

However, to understand what it means we have to keep digging by heading upstairs.

And then back down you'll find that the bag's grandfather clock has moved to the center of the room.

If you let it chime 12 times the game crashes again.

And this time you have to restart from the beginning, which is definitely what happened to me the first time.

But if before the 12th time you head to the kitchen, you get a datum missing screen.

Now this is important because when you first boot up the game we're told that there are quote at least three levels connected to completely broken sections.

We couldn't find how to access them, but we were able to put data missing screens on them.

So we just found the first of these screens, but so what's, blank, it doesn't tell us anything or does it at this point? You know that when an arg presents us with a black screen it's photoshop time by messing around with the brightness and contrast levels, we find a hidden message within the black void that says, quote, father wasn't home, which admittedly doesn't tell us a whole lot.

But there are still at least two more clues to find.

So hopefully this will paint a clearer picture for us after getting that screen.

We delete the save file and go back to the start.

So we do it all again, click.

The question marks talk to the creepymoonface guy, go outside follow the pentagram path.

Slam my body against all the walls, find the hidden ledge and click on the question mark out there.

But this time we don't leap to an untimely and premature end.

This time we go back into the main section of the game and we're rewarded for that.

Big brain move with this.

Wait was this here last time, oh no, wait, oh, no, muriel.

Muriel's, dead it's, a funeral memorial for muriel, naturally, you click on it, and it crashes eat your heart out cyberpunk.

But don't worry in this game, it's a feature and not a bug.

This time when you restart, the game you're dropped into a pitch black room.

So as you might imagine, I took my time and thought carefully about my next move.

Okay, oh.

Hello.

You know, life is all about failing up trying again and looking closer, I was able to identify based on the textures that there was an invisible path.

You'll.

Notice that the texture here is different.

Watch.

I bet if I walk on this, yep, there's, an invisible path to get to that chair.

But with it being invisible, there was really no way to move forward or was there you see if you actually pay close attention to the music in this section you'll hear some deep creepy, tones with a high pitched ping.

It was enough to set off my theory senses yet again, the grandfather clock scene as well as that sound are very reminiscent of like the sounds that you would hear if you put something visually into a spectrograph, or if we were to do it, the audio file in some way would give us something back.

And I was right tossing this audio into a spectrogram gives you something that looks a lot like a map gotta give it to the puzzle.

Makers, it's, an awesome clue.

If it actually worked, I tried really hard to do this level legitimately.

But I just couldn't without any sort of landmark to tell how far you've gone it's really difficult to estimate exactly where you need to turn.

And stop.

Luckily, there's, actually, a far easier solution to this and that's messing with your computer's rendering settings, twitch streamer, the beard, dude had the idea to use a program called reshade, which made the path, visible and possible to navigate it's also worth pointing out that while I was installing reshade.

I noticed a text document among the game's files that read she followed the rules.

He broke the rules.

The ow was all the way to the right with the words being censored there.

Thanks to the morse code from earlier, though I think we have a pretty good idea of what that's trying to say the ow is obviously the old wind.

But what is it saying about being all the way to the right? Well going back to our invisible maze? We actually get a choice in our path, going left or right so to learn the ways of the old wind.

I started by heading right at the end of the path you're teleported to a dark corridor with a house behind the house.

You find a second memorial picture.

This time featuring a man named robert w half burnt.

And without any of the decorations that we saw around muriel's clicking on, it will surprise surprise crash.

The game this time when we reload we're back in the bag's house, only now it's dark and eerily quiet.

However, things take a turn when you go upstairs.

Suddenly the game locks you into place and we're forced to confront robert w.

His realistic face stapled onto a wisp-like body that slowly floats towards us with a digital whale.

Thanks.

I hate it.

But what I don't hate is that it gives us our second data missing screen adjusting the brightness and contrast of the screen reveals the phrase.

Mr wheeler was there to greet me.

So our storyteller's father, wasn't home, instead he was met by a mr wheeler considering that this floating entity is robert w.

It's, not much of a leap to assume that the w stands for wheeler.

But to absolutely confirm.

I went to match the fonts times, new roman wasn't, too hard.

And sure enough, it turns out that wheeler is a perfect fit for the rest of that burned image.

It's also worth noting that the asset name for the horrifying creature is real wheeler seems pretty confirmed robert is mr wheeler.

But what are we trying to say about him? Well, there's still at least one more data missing page to find and hopefully that'll start giving us some answers last time we went right.

So this time at the spotlight, maze, we're, actually gonna go to the left away from the old wind after a long walk, we make our way to a single chair clicking on the chair does what you'd expect at this point crashes the game.

And we end up back in the bag house.

This time, though it's full of coins, notice that the pattern on the coins actually matches the earlier chair puzzle as you collect the coins, a player two slides onto the screen, which would be weird enough considering it's a single player game.

But things get real uncomfortable when you realize it's muriel, you know that dead woman whose memorial we paid respects to earlier.

Yeah, no, biggie collecting all the coins causes muriel's face to go dark, the music stops.

And we get our final data.

Missing screen.

Contrast down exposure up.

It reads.

It was her, eleanor, father, wasn't home.

Mr wheeler was there to greet me.

It was her eleanor, okay.

So we found all our data missing screens, but what's it all mean, well, based on the evidence we've collected so far, I think I've got a decent idea of what the story is about.

Our story has five people, eleanor, mr, wheeler, father, muriel and us.

The storyteller who is clearly the son of father, we know that we call out the fact that father wasn't home, which to me suggests that father probably should have been home.

His absence was unexpected leaving us to ask the question of why why wasn't he there.

Mr wheeler was there to greet me implies that mr wheeler wasn't part of or close enough to the family to be on a first name basis with our storyteller, like maybe a neighbor or co-worker or some other.

Trusted adult the phrase it was her.

Eleanor implies that eleanor was closer to the family than mr wheeler.

Hence, why she's referred to on a first name basis, she's also, not the mother of our storyteller as most children would call their mother.

Just mom just like father was called father.

All of this would suggest that eleanor was maybe a neighbor or a stepmother or a sister, but that's, not all we're working with here.

Each time we rebooted the game to start down a different path.

We were forced to delete the save file this to me felt like it could hide.

A clue like we were intentionally being led to those specific files.

Why else would you force players to do that without giving us some sort of a payoff? And sure enough when opening up the save files in notepad? We find plain text phrases, like I don't or was good.

I tried to collect as many of these as possible, but to confirm that I hadn't missed anything.

We extracted the plain text that the game looks for within the files to get this.

Do you remember a time when the world was good and fair? I don't manually changing the phrases inside the save files would allow us to load different parts of the game.

So I went back and did it with each of the phrase chunks.

Only the phrase do you loaded a part of the game that we hadn't previously found a gray version of the bag's home with nothing to do, except endlessly interact with your computer.

I feel seen creepy arg game.

I feel seen anyway, the game's assets have a few more clues, hiding in plain sight, there's, a file called old wind, which it turns out is the symbol that we saw under the chairs and on the coins.

So the old wind is the symbol.

Interesting there's, also a file named eleanor, which is worth calling out because eleanor is the image that we see at the memorial.

But one that was attributed to muriel makes it seem like maybe the two are actually one of the same, bringing our character count down to four father, mr, wheeler us and eleanor muriel.

So taking all of our evidence into account, we might be able to explain why father wasn't home.

It was her eleanor considering.

We see her memorial in the game.

It implies that dad had to leave to see her in her final moments before she dies.

Do you remember a time when the world was good and fair, I don't certainly sounds like the sort of question, someone would ask in the wake of a tragic unexpected death, but it still feels like something's missing right like why are traces of all of this left in the game? And what does any of this have to do with the seemingly important phrase, old wind that keeps getting repeated? Well, remember that text file from earlier? She followed the rules.

He broke the rules.

The old wind was all the way to the right wind in the courage, the cowardly dog, show tends to be linked with the passage of time or death in some way.

The episode little muriel, for instance, involves a tornado that sucks up muriel and turns her back into a child and courage has to find a tornado that spins the other way to age her back up, I'm, only three and a half years old, who are you another episode titled windmill vandals has a windmill that stops things rising from the dead.

The old wind.

I suspect operates similar to these it's, a wind that makes you grow.

Either younger or older, eleanor, followed the rules.

Well by dying, she followed the rules of nature.

But upon seeing this, robert wheeler begins to realize his own mortality and looks for ways to become immortal breaking the rules of nature and refusing to die by being involved in some sort of ritual or cult.

I mean, look at that symbol and tell me there, isn't something cultish about that the lack of memorial when we find robert's burned picture seems to suggest that he isn't dead.

This is actually backed up by the game's ichio page on the day.

The page was created.

There was also a user profile created r, wheeler, 1998.

And for now that's as much as I can piece together about the courage game a ps1 era game riffing on mascot themed platformers back in the day that hides a family tragedy under the surface, maybe having to do with a death or cult rituals, attempting to be immortal and see this is why courage was such a clever choice for the game.

The occult demons, courage has faced them all much like the windmills in the show which stop the dead from rising.

The old wind will ultimately be our key to stopping the immortal monster that tries to cheat death.

And there does seem like there will be more added to this story as nathan the guy who quote, unquote found the game tweeted that he's been able to locate another mysterious hard drive with more courage content on it.

In the meantime is this a perfect solution.

No obviously not there are plenty of holes here in the story.

But as a wise show once said, there's, no such thing as perfect.

Huh? You're, beautiful as you are courageous with all your imperfections.

You can do anything, but hey, you can do anything.

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Thanks for watching.