Part of our salute to Gary Gygax:

Most of us would love to be featured in a great cartoon like Futurama, and, as I discussed, Gary Gygax did just that.  But that’s not the only awesome animated series that Gary Gygax has appeared on.  No, he also had a wonderful guest star spot on my favorite 8-bit style animated series about crazy game designers in the 80’s.  I’m speaking, of course, about Code Monkeys on G4TV.

If you haven’t seen Code Monkeys, it’s a hilarious series with a ton of geeky in-jokes centered around the employees of GameaVision, a wacky video game company.  I always have a great time watching it when I catch it on, but it doesn’t rise to the level of Futurama for me.  I just don’t seem to care about the characters as much as I should.  And sometimes it seems to be more a collection of hilarious skits than a story.  But I still definitely recommend giving it a try.

Gygax appeared in one of my favorite episodes, “Todd Loses His Mind,” which is Episode 9 of the first season.  In it, Todd, the nerdiest of the programmers, goes upon a quest (as his alter-ego Pardue) to kidnap Molly Ringwald (”the red-headed sorceress”) as an offering for his ”great master” Gary Gygax.  Will Gygax (who apparently lives in a giant 20-sided die) agree to raise Todd’s stats in sexual stamina?

The only place I could find the episode online is at Veoh.  It looks like the Season 1 DVD is being released on August 5th.

Oh, and a little trivia for ya: Do you know who sings the great Code Monkeys theme song?  That’s right - Jonathan Coulton, famed for the amazing “Still Alive” from Portal.