Ah, what a super story it is. I’ll go from the beginning to the end. It all started in June 2006 when fans received their first email from the Oddworld Fan Club, which contained a username and password to access Alf’s Comoddities & Tea. The contents included a teabag wrapper to print out and fold:
Atushi’s Tea
And the now famous and beloved Oddworld Map:
The Oddworld Map
It was actually
Anna (One, Two, Middlesboogie) who first started pointing out inconsistencies, or rather a single inconsistency, which was the distance between RuptureFarms and Necrum in relation to the knowledge that Oddworld is 10 times the size of the Earth. Alf rebutted, and added “Our mudokon fact checker, Buddy is on vacation. Geez, better talk to him about the map when he gets back!” which was really the beginning of the end for poor Buddy. Alf soon admitted it would be “the last time I have Buddy ask a Slig for help” and said a new version of the map would be made. Kesiah added another observed error, relating to the path taken by Abe and Munch in
Munch’s Oddysee and its representation on the map. You can read all of this in the
original thread, which was started by Xavier.
The second update to Alf’s Comoddities & Tea included a second map, marginally updated:
Oddworld Map 2
At
Nate’s request, I provided a list of all the apparent discrepencies with the Map, and after some persuasion from Xavier, I emailed the list to Alf. And that, good people, is how I became
Fan of the Month in February 2003. I have provided a link to that page (which, strangely, was the only way to access the third version of the Oddworld Map (below)), even though the picture of me on there is so aweful. So awefully aweful I want to kill it.
Oddworld Map 3
It’s also the origin of Buddy’s story, which kept us going for a few more editions of
The Daily Deception Online.