Kill The Spartan

Kill The Spartan is not really a game in the sense of having rules, and that is the most interesting thing about it. It is a menu. Seven credited contributors — CRAZYJAY, Supranova, Endo-K, Hyun, Miccool, Drifts and -Hawk- — each animated a short cartoon sketch, and the Flash file exists to let you pick which one to watch. Understanding it as a collaborative animation showcase rather than a challenge explains everything about how it plays.

The Newgrounds collab, explained

For most of the 2000s, Newgrounds ran on a culture of group projects. An organiser would post a theme, animators would sign up, and each would submit a self-contained segment built to a shared spec — same character, same canvas size, same intro. The finished file was compiled into a single submission with a selection screen, and every contributor got their name on something with an audience far larger than their own following.

That structure produced a whole category of "pick a scene" titles. They were portfolio pieces first: a way for a hobbyist to show a few hundred frames of their own work next to six other people's, get scored by the front page, and maybe pick up collaborators. Kill The Spartan is a straightforward example of the form, right down to the credited handles instead of real names.

Why a Spartan

The character choice points at the influence of the 2007 film adaptation of 300, which dominated internet humour for a solid year or two afterwards. Spartans were everywhere: the shouted quotes, the slow-motion parodies, the reaction images. Picking that character meant an animator did not have to establish anything — the audience already knew the reference, which is exactly what a short sketch needs.

Cartoon slapstick built around one recurring character has a long lineage, from theatrical shorts through to television, and Flash inherited it directly. These pieces are exaggerated and consequence-free by design, in the tradition of an anvil falling on a coyote. Worth stating plainly: the content is cartoon violence played for laughs, aimed at a teenage and adult audience rather than children.

What you actually do

Clicking is the whole interface. You choose an entry from the selection screen, the sequence plays out, and you return to the menu to pick another. There is no scoring, no unlock order, no failure state and no reason to replay beyond seeing the segments you have not watched yet. Total runtime is a few minutes.

Controls

Watching it as a piece of animation

If you approach this as a game you will be finished and unimpressed in ninety seconds. Approached as a collection of seven animators' work, there is more to notice:

• Style breaks between segments. Line weight, colour palettes and framerate change from one entry to the next, because no two contributors worked the same way.
• Skill gaps are visible and part of the charm. Some segments are confidently timed; others are clearly early work. Collabs deliberately mixed experience levels.
• Timing over drawing. The good entries land because of pause length and anticipation, not detail. That was the craft skill Flash rewarded.
• Sound is homemade. Effects and music were pulled from shared libraries and personal collections, which is a large part of why these files sound the way they do.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who made Kill The Spartan? It is credited to seven contributors: CRAZYJAY, Supranova, Endo-K, Hyun, Miccool, Drifts and -Hawk-. Each handled a separate segment.

Is there any way to win? No. There is no score, timer or progression — the selection screen is the entire structure.

How long is it? A few minutes to see everything, depending on how many segments you sit through.

Why do the segments look so different from each other? Because different people drew them. Group Flash projects shared a character and canvas but left the art and animation entirely to each contributor.

Is it suitable for kids? No. It is cartoon slapstick made for the teen and adult audience Newgrounds catered to, and it was never intended as children's content.

Are the contributors known for anything else? They were Newgrounds handles active in the portal's animation community. Tracing individual back catalogues is difficult now, since much of that work only ever existed on the portal.