I’ve been meaning to make this Pico Day follow-up post for a few days but it’s been hard to put it all into words.

So Pico Day started in the forums in 2006 as a day to celebrate Pico but ever since has been embraced as the official Newgrounds holiday. We even had a bunch of Pico Day parties at the office:

As time went by, it felt strange to see people make Pico stuff every year, so I had been increasingly nudging Pico Day as a day to celebrate everything on Newgrounds, not just Pico. I even intended to change the name to Newgrounds Day but never formally did it because Pico Day rolls off the tongue so well. I had, however, dialed it back to just being an art contest last year.

A lot changed this year. Friday Night Funkin’ came along and became one of the most popular games in the world. FNF is a sort of celebration of Newgrounds itself and has brought a lot of renewed interest in NG lore, interest far beyond what has ever really existed in the entire history of the site.

It’s been both exciting and terrifying because NG has grown and evolved over several decades and now everything old is suddenly new again. We raised almost $8,000 in prizes for Pico Day 2021 and despite another effort to make it a day about all things Newgrounds, this was a very Pico year.

The art category has been mind-blowing, with what looks to be over 1,000 entries. Movies, games and audio are impressive as well, all with big turnouts.

@ARAMort made an entire EP inspired by Newgrounds and it’s freakish how well it captures the essence of the site; I’ve been listening to it a lot this week.

@Noodle aka 2 Left Thumbs made a video about Pico, exploring the history surrounding the game and NG itself.

It’s been surreal and I’m trying to flow with the river of what is happening because most of it is out of my control. My hope is that lots of cool people are coming here and getting inspired to make a whole new era of great stuff. NG is at its best when you are seeing, playing and hearing things that feel like a peek at the future.

Things have been pretty non-stop ever since FNF Week 7 launched. We put 100 tankmen up for sale on SharkRobot and they vanished in less than an hour without any big effort to even announce them. It’s all so WEIRD. Life is funny, how you can work on something for years without many people caring about it, then suddenly it seems like EVERYONE cares about it. It’s like a smaller version of what happened to @PuffballsUnited and the Among Us team this past year, when suddenly the entire world was in love with their two year old game.

If you’re worried this new attention will somehow ruin NG, I’m pretty confident we’ll be able to navigate through it just fine. Most likely we’ll fumble a bunch of big opportunities for the sake of staying true to what the site is about and I say that in a good way.

It will take some time to sort out the winners for Pico Day and we’ll continue featuring entries in the days ahead.

Thank you everyone who participated and made this week special!

FNF Jam

The FNF crew is still working their way through the Funkin’ Jam entries and are planning another stream where everyone watches together.

Newgrounds Player News

Later today we might be launching an update to Newgrounds Player that will finally solve the issues with it not working in Windows! I’ll make a note here when it goes live.

UPDATE: The new build is now on our NG Player download page, under Preview / Beta (Version 1.0.7). Here's a direct link to download the NG Player Beta. We'd love to know if it works / doesn't work for you and also if you're a 32 bit Windows user in particular. NG Player is Windows only, btw. You can play Phoenotopia to test it!

Some background: Newgrounds uses Ruffle to run a lot of classic Flash content in the browser but for Flash not yet supported by Ruffle, we have a desktop application called Newgrounds Player. When Flash was removed from browsers at the start of the year, Windows made a series of updates that also broke NG Player. The new version should solve these issues and keep Flash running on the desktop while Ruffle works towards total compatibility in browsers.

There's a lot of great stuff on Newgrounds and I'm proud we've been able to keep it all running. I'm looking forward to seeing what else will be added to the mix!

this year was a very good pico day

cant wait to see what next years looks like

if there even is one next year probably will

Great to see NG getting more of its due for being a great place for artists run by a dedicated staff.

I only have one criticism: *peek

Thanks so much for the shoutout Tom! I know sending people to YouTube is icky.

But Newgrounds has always been where my heart is. It is my genuine hope that I am sending more people here than I am taking away!

The Among Us comparison is a really apt one!

People have been calling Among Us a "dead game" for like a year now. Yet it's still one of the biggest games in the whole world. So I think we can all safely ignore anyone who thinks this is some bubble bound to pop.

Really, FNF is just a gateway! We have a new generation of incredible creators who will quickly discover how much amazing content Newgrounds has to offer, and how supportive and wonderful the community can be. Ya gotta love to see it!

Thanks for all your hard work and perseverance over the years Tom!

Thanks, I hate typos! And maybe I would have spelled it that way forever if it hadn't been brought to my attention.

OMG has this been a known thing for a while?

i've come partially because of FNF but i've known newgrounds for years, and quite frankly never really gave much attempt to integrate myself in it despite having made an account 2 years ago.

this is pretty rant-ish but i love newgrounds, and even if i prefer the more edgy past (tom, if you're reading this the fucking "The problems of the future, today!" in the old newgrounds was golden) even today it is perfect. i love the lore, the artists who hang here, i love the history of this site and overall the games are amazing, even though i only played madness and things like that LOL

seeing newgrounds getting such notoriety to the point it's being flocked by a wave of newcomers gives me hope for new artists, game makers, etc. maybe we could get a new game developer like The Behemoth or InnerSloth?

i just wanna say i'm thankful for the work the newgrounds staff (and Tom) have done to maintain the site up to this point, and for hosting such an amazing number of content creators.

I think this year's Pico Day has encouraged me to be more active on NG and appreciate it even more.

Ain’t that neato

"Hi there! In case you didn't know, I created newgrounds. No, it wasn't made by some giant company - just some dumb kid who now has help." -Tom's NG bio

Hey, I'd take some dumb kid over a giant company any day.

Expect this site to grow further once nostalgia for the 2000s seriously ramps up!

Tom, I have a question, how do you feel about the reappearance of Piconjo after 16 years of inactivity and his supposed death?

The main thing that brought me here was Friday Night Funkin, but when I dug deeper in the history of Newgrounds, I started to like the other original content too. Then I remembered that I have been here a long time ago, but didn't have an account.

Back when I was 8 to 10 years old, I have seen a lot of video game parodies, that made me know a lot of figures, and I'm grateful for that.

The thing I've known Pico was the Rock paper scissors roulette game, my cousins have shown me that.

Newgrounds is the coolest place on the internet, and I hope it stays that way.

Thinking about it, I may have noticed it in a previous post and not said anything. Sneak Peak could be right if you were referring to sudden ecstasy!

I joined newgrounds after i played fnf back in 2000. It held up well.

Also first post.

This year's Pico Day was awesome. I was probably here for previous ones but didn't really celebrate it until this year. Just so much great content was posted. Here are just some of my personal favorites from this year.

Movies:

Games:

Art:

Audio:

I should probably listen to more stuff in the Audio Portal, I realize. Either way, fantastic stuff all around! I hope this momentum keeps up for next year's and for even more Pico Days beyond that!

Well i can say that If one thing This pico day feeling has captured the one from 2006 pretty well, it fells like a reimagined version with a fuckton of extras and secrets (Hell even my doom mod where you play as pico has them, i have hidden a lot of these and yet there are some that are yet to be found.)

granted while that analogy isn't extremely 100% correct (I have yet to see Metal arm pico being topped.) i am quite hopeful that next year Picoday's can also be as great as this one (I do hope for more Pico Games related animations though, not to say the newgrounds multiuniverse stuff is bad, but i am kind of growing tired of it.)

This year's Pico day was incredible, once again.

So yeah, see those guys who whinge on about newgrounds being dead? I'm gonna go laugh at them like the Spanish Inquisition guys.

"HAH! HAH! HAAAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHA!"

Like that.

Great to hear it.

Awesome! Well-deserved attention imo!

The FnF NG revival is REAL!

I'm really enjoying watching it all play out... I hope this is some kind of "tipping point" for the whole NG community! NG has tons of features, puts creators first, and has overall been doing stuff "right" for a long time... let's see that karma wave grow!

Pico Day was really fun! Thanks for the FP, too. I haven't had so much attention at once in ages.

Now that I have an account and have explored more than just the dank videos of 200X, I wish I had joined sooner. This is the most creator-friendly site I've been on since like the old days of dA. 👍

ROFL, just watched the "What is Pico Day?" toon... not too far off from the truth... proof:

https://bomtoons.newgrounds.com/news/post/838922

This year you're going to make NG lots of money -- and still maintain the integrity you want for the site! 10K tankmen would sell, just sayin'.

Among Us, Friday Night Funkin', Binding of Isaac, all games that were born from NG. Just 3 games out of thousands of games. And that's just games! There's visual art, animations, and music too! NG is the doorway.

THE GOLDEN RENAISSANCE OF NG HAS ARRIVED.

Newgrounds day makes more sense

Honestly, even tho I only got an account bc ninjamuffin was raving about how great the community was - and boy did I miss my days on deviantart back when it was still good - these past couple of months have unburied A LOT of memories from the deepest confines of my brain.

I guess newgrounds has had a greater influence on me than I remembered!

This Pico Day was amazing, here is to many many more!

Hell yeah, this was really productive PicoDay for sure...

was a blessed pico day!

I for one couldn't be more happy to see NG thriving again. I've always been loyal here, and it's always been one of the most welcoming communities to artists and creators. I've made life-long (so far) friends on here and ALWAYS pop in to see what is up. To my, NG has always felt like a pirate ship circumventing rules and corporate BS manned with friendly creative pirates. Sure, sometimes we steal and break the order but in the end it seems like most everyone means well. I miss that I don't have the time I used to spend on here giving art crits and shooting the shit on the forums. I sometimes see the 'newest' post form old friends and it was 10 years ago. I hope they're doing well. A lot of history on here for so many people and it's been damn cool. Damn... getting misty-eyed here haha, I'm gonna go eat an orange. Take care everyone.

Im so happy I was able to participate this year!

even by drawing a Pico head!

not to mention being apart of the Pico Clicker game!

It's pretty wild!

Its really nice to see so many people chatting about newgrounds. It always felt so...there and present but not talked about