Rise of the Mushroom Kingdom - Parts III & IV || VGDC HD LEGACY REMASTER

This video is a Full HD render of the second half of the Rise of the Mushroom Kingdom Flash movie series by Randy Solem, originally uploaded to Newgrounds as two separate parts in 08/04/2004 and 03/14/2005, now seamlessly combined into one video.

The original uploads can be found here:
Part III: https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/vie...
Part IV: https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/vie...

And there's also a posthumous, video-converted "Disc 2" submission from 2013, which now hosts this remaster instead:
https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/vie...

-----

It's 2003, the middle of the golden age of Flash animation. Randy Solem had already been turning heads around Newgrounds.com and beyond with his pixel-based animations for about three years. He was among those pioneering this style of Flash animation, repurposing pixel art assets (or sprites) from 8-bit and 16-bit videogames to make parodies, and it was blowing the minds of many young ones, turning them to art, animation, and sprite editing. Suddenly we could breathe our own life into the videogame characters we all knew and loved, and tell our own stories with them. This changed the landscape of Newgrounds submissions for years to come.

Although others would go on to take this style to new levels before it faded from popularity, the release of Rise of the Mushroom Kingdom in 2003 positioned Randy Solem as the undisputed king of sprite Flash, setting a new bar for quality with its sleek presentation, smooth animation, innovative shot composition, and dramatic story, as well as earning Solem a place among the Newgrounds pantheon of its most recognized Flash animators. Over the next couple years, he went on to release three more parts, each more ambitious than the last.

Randy Solem died suddenly on March 16, 2012, survived by his girlfriend, daughter, and mother, and mourned by his legions of VGDC forum members, as well as artists in the Newgrounds spheres, and many fans who remember his animations fondly.

His legacy remains through his original website domain, his Newgrounds profile, a Facebook memorial group, and an active Discord run by veteran members of the old forums, as well as this YouTube channel.

VGDC Website:
http://www.videogamedc.com
VGDC Discord:
  / discord  

This remaster was carried out by VGDC Forums veteran Neo Link as part of the VGDC Community Legacy Project, with the goal of converting and remastering all of Randy Solem's VGDC Flash movies to HD video for viewing on YouTube.

The original .SWFs were rendered into HD videos with Swivel and put together in HitFilm Express.

Swivel:
https://www.newgrounds.com/wiki/creat...
Newgrounds:
https://www.newgrounds.com/