Today marks the first anniversary of Takeover Tuesday, which quickly became one of my favourite Newgrounds features. I haven't missed posting an entry yet, so I thought it'd be a fun idea to give a retrospective on each of my TT picks over the past year!

#1 - Oct 8:

https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/751186

...unfortunately, this list starts on a bit of a downer, as my very first pick has since been deleted :( It was a goofy little short about a deadly toy gun that shoots wieners, and was animated with live-action paper puppets used in some clever ways.

The rationale behind this pick being my first was to start with something by a lesser-known user on the site. The user in question is ProOblio, who had graced the front page and snagged a Daily 4th with another papercraft short, Fear of the unknown, which is what had introduced me to their work. Sadly, that short is also gone, since ProOblio's entire account has been deleted, which is a bummer since they had made some interesting stuff. You can see for yourself from what's left of it on the Wayback Machine.

The best way to describe the animation style of these papercraft shorts is to compare them to the only other submission I've found that uses a similar technique, a Slice of Anxiety which, appropriately enough, turned up while searching the web for wiener gun (though I'm unaware what connection ProOblio has with Slice, if any).

Speaking of searching the web, even just finding wiener gun in preparation for this retrospective was a bit of an adventure -- I could find no trace of it on NG (not even from the TT archives) or anywhere else, and had to find it in a backup of my browser history. You never know when you'll need your backups, folks.

#2 - Oct 15:

For my next pick, I wanted to post an audio submission, with the goal of spending my first month of TT picks on one of each category of submission (movie, audio, game, and artwork). Since the prior week had Rush 2 ++ featured (by @SolidV and @OneLuckyTimeBomb), I thought it was a good idea to feature a track that was used by another entry in the same series, Gravitaxis ++, and is one of my old favourites.

#3 - Oct 22:

The next pick is a game submission, and I wanted to dedicate my first game pick on one that I still get the urge to dip into every now and then. And thanks to Ruffle, I can! It was published in 2009, and at the time I thought its control scheme would be a good fit for touchscreens...and it dawned on me just now that I can finally try that out!!

*5 minutes later*

...well, it doesn't work quite as well as I had hoped, but hey! The fact that it worked at all is pretty sweet.

#4 - Oct 29:

To close out the first month of TT with an art piece, I decided to go for something with a Halloween vibe, it having been 2 days to the big spooky day. I felt this comic fit the bill quite well, despite technically not being about Halloween.

#5 - Nov 5:

With October passed, I regretted not having posted an entry from @ClmPaper's Metroitober series, which was their daily series of (you guessed it) Metroid illustrations for October (or more accurately, Inktober) in 2023. So to make up for it, I picked one of them for my first November entry.

With that said, Metroitober only made it up to Day 20, and ClmPaper hasn't posted anything else since, which is a shame because their artwork was consistently top-notch. Hope they're doing fine, wherever they are.

#6 - Nov 12:

This week was around the time news about the various wars going on was really heating up, which made me want to post something with an anti-war/anti-antagonism message, as glib as it may be in the current circumstances...

#7 - Nov 19:

Picked in response to my local(-ish) government's then-recent attacks on bike lanes. Another good pick would have been Blame It On The Bike!, but that was on the front page already ;)

#8 - Nov 26:

Chosen to commemorate the anniversary of a loved one's passing. I wanted to pick something with an uplifting outlook on death.

#9 - Dec 3:

Speaking of death, this pick was spurred by @BrandyBuizel's call to honour the passing of Squize.

#10 - Dec 10:

Picked in anticipation of the release of Monkey Wrench 4. This cartoon features an older incarnation of the Monkey Wrench crew, and it's been a real treat to see how much @Zeurel's work has grown over the years!

#11 - Dec 17:

Picked in anticipation of the release of the Sonic 3 movie.

#12 - Dec 24:

Picked to honour the passing of BlackDevilX.

#13 - Dec 31:

Picked to ring in the new year.

#14 - Jan 7:

Picked in celebration of the week of my uncle's birthday. He had shown this cartoon to me when I was a kid, since he knew I was into Flash animations. I loved it, but since he had found it on somewhere other than Newgrounds (where exactly that was, I can't recall), my first reaction was to posit aloud that it was probably on NG, as even then it was my favoured place to find Flashes. Looking back, that was a bit of a jerk move on my part, but at least I was right :D

#15 - Jan 1:

Picked in celebration of the week of my dad's birthday. As a kid I was obsessed with the Kermit Kombat series, and as kids are wont to do, I wondered whether my dad would get a kick out of it too and wisely decided to show it to him. Not a split second after Rocky called Kermit a bastard, my dad looked at me straight in the eye and said I was to never visit this website again. That wasn't quite the reaction I expected, but it taught me a few valuable lessons. (And I really did stop visiting NG for a while, or at least the more spicy parts of it :P)

#16 - Jan 21:

Picked in response to Trump 2.

#17 - Jan 28:

Picked in honour of a loved one's passing.

#18 - Feb 4:

It was the middle of winter by this point, so I wanted to pick something with a winter-y feel, and this is what came to mind.

#19 - Feb 11:

Picked in honour of Valentine's Day. Because what's more romantic than putting whole big, warm, moist foods in your mouth?

#20 - Feb 18:

This was around the time I decided to participate in the NG30 Collab (stay tuned for it!!). I made my pick for this week an NG collab in the spirit of that.

#21 - Feb 25:

Picked in honour of Black History Month.

#22 - Mar 4:

Picked to ring in the start of Lent.

#23 - Mar 11:

Picked in honour of MAR10 day.

#24 - Mar 18:

Picked in honour of St. Patrick's Day.

#25 - Mar 25:

Picked in anticipation of the release of the ENA game this trailer is about (no, I haven't played it yet ;_;).

#26 - Apr 1:

Thought this was a good pick for April Fools. Make sure to watch it all the way to the end!!

#27 - Apr 8:

Picked in honour of the Portal's 25th anniversary. I felt posting the very first portal submission was a good way to celebrate that.

#28 - Apr 15:

Picked in honour of Homestuck Day (4/13).

#29 - Apr 22:

Picked in honour of the passing of Pope Francis.

#30 - Apr 29:

Nerd alert: April 29 = 4/29 = 429, which is the HTTP status code for "Too Many Requests". So for this week's pick, I looked for an art submission that fit the theme of "too many" or "too much". I had considered picking something from the Too Much Jam, but figured those had got enough attention already.

#31 - May 6:

Picked in honour of May the Fourth.

#32 - May 13:

Picked in honour of a loved one's passing. If that seems like an insensitive choice, there's a little story behind this one. As a kid, when visiting relatives, I often spent a lot of time on their computer because they had better internet than I had at home. On one of those visits, I was playing this game, and soon after, the recently deceased came by to visit too. This person holds the record of the oldest person I've known, and I slowly came to the realization that playing a game about beating up old people while this person was over was perhaps in poor taste, so I quit playing it and did something else. So now this game always reminds me of that moment.

#33 - May 20:

Picked in anticipation of the local big anime convention I always go to around this time of year, Anime North.

#34 - May 27:

This was around the time of the original deadline of the NG30 Collab, which I was getting stressed about meeting. Since the subject of time was on my mind, I decided to feature a game about time, and this one is what came to mind. (Thankfully, the deadline was extended quite generously...)

#35 - Jun 3:

Picked in anticipation of the King of the Hill reboot.

#36 - Jun 10:

Picked in celebration of the Switch 2, and/or as a farewell of sorts to the Switch 1.

#37 - Jun 17:

This week marked the 10th anniversary of my first full-time job, so I chose this to fit the theme. I considered holding off picking this one for another 2 years to have the same anniversary as Bill, but didn't think I could be that vigilant. Besides, unlike Bill, I haven't worked at the same job for 12 years; if I ever do, maybe I'll pick this again.

#38 - Jun 24:

Went for this to get into the swing of summer.

#39 - Jul 1:

Picked in honour of Canada Day.

#40 - Jul 8:

This was the week of Newgrounds' 30th anniversary, so in honour of that, I decided to feature the first Newgrounds submission I ever saw. It was introduced to me via a friend of my brother's, who was fond of puzzles, as was I. Little did I know there was a lot more to this site than puzzles :)

#41 - Jul 15:

This week marked the 20th anniversary of my account, so in honour of that, I picked my favourite childhood NG game. I have some deeply fond memories of playing this one, which occupied a good chunk of at least two of my summer breaks, and was a major factor behind getting me interested in making my own Flash games (which never quite panned out, but led me down the career path I'm in to this day).

#42 - Jul 22:

Picked in celebration of the week of my mom's birthday.

#43 - Jul 29:

Picked in celebration of the week of my friend's birthday, who is the author of this submission.

#44 - Aug 5:

Come August, I tend get the blues about summer having peaked, so I picked this to remind myself that it was still summer, dagnabit!!

#45 - Aug 12:

Picked in honour of Clock Day. This was one of my favourites in the early days.

#46 - Aug 19:

Chosen to commemorate the anniversary of a loved one's passing. I looked for an art piece that was about a funeral, and this one struck me, so I went with it.

#47 - Aug 26:

Picked in honour of Robot Day. This was also the first time that someone else made the same pick as I did; they got to it before I did, too. @RipperRogerRoo, you have exquisite taste.

#48 - Sep 2:

Picked to commemorate the first day back at school. (But not for me, suckers!! I've paid my dues.)

#49 - Sep 9:

Picked to commemorate the anniversary of the Dreamcast's North American launch (9/9/99).

#50 - Sep 16:

Picked in celebration of the 40th anniversary of Super Mario Bros. Fun fact, I recently stumbled upon the fact that the exact date of the American launch of the game is somewhat of a mystery! Read up on it here.

#51 - Sep 23:

Picked in honour of Madness Day, as this track was notably featured in Madness Accelerant. When looking it up to post it, I was surprised to learn that this track was actually made for a Pico Day submission.

#52 - Sep 30:

Picked in celebration of the release of Monkey Wrench 5. This one lined up nicely with the end of the first year of Takeover Tuesday, which I wanted to have a special pick for. What else makes this one special is that Zeurel's EFN entries were my obsession back in high school, and still hold a place in my heart (it's where my PFP comes from). IMO the general time period this was submitted is the turning point of when web animation started to consistently be really good.

#53 - Oct 7:

Finally, for my pick in honour of the first anniversary of TT, I had it all planned out: I wanted to pick something to make a cheeky joke about being exhausted after making a year's worth of TT picks, and settled on I'm Very Tired by Kevin Temmer, whom you perhaps know as the lead animator of the Amazing Digital Circus.

I didn't have the link for it on hand, so I searched the portal for it -- but to my surprise, it wasn't showing up anywhere. At first, I grumbled that NG's search had a lot of improving to do, but then every other query I tried also failed, and I couldn't accept that the search was that bad. Which led me to consider...no...it couldn't be...?

That's right, Kevin deleted his Newgrounds account :( I mean, I get it, but it's still a bummer, especially since he had a pretty decent presence on here. It's also somewhat poetic that my two TT picks that would belong to deleted accounts wound up being separated by almost exactly 1 year...

In response to this, I decided to pivot to picking a movie about the feeling of loss. I couldn't pull one up from memory, so I did some searching and settled the one by @Benlitzler, which really matched the mood I was after.

And that's a wrap! Hopefully this served as a fun tour of but a fraction of what Newgrounds has to offer -- which is what Takeover Tuesday is all about.

Now to get back to my NG30 submission......