In the beginning, there was Bandito, but it wasn't always that way. Essentially Bandito came about as an experiment in crazy artificial intelligence. When Bandito One was written in 2003, only Bandito was capable of speaking, and the sole functionality was talking to Bandito himself through the text box labeled "You Give Me Troubles". A user would see a random Bandito quote, in the appropriate scenery. They would then answer with a quote of their own that would be immediately added to the database of quotes. The server then responds with another random quote. The goal was to add so many quotes that one day, Bandito would be able to pass the infamous Turing Test, the test for true artificial intelligence. To pass the Turing Test, someone has to be fooled into thinking that they are talking to a person with human intelligence, and not a computer.
The current state of Bandito is highly evolved from it's humble days as a wee lass on it's uncle's cheese farm (aka the old RippedProductions.com server). Early additions to the design were first the desert scenery, then the winter scenery, then the rare butterfly, then the gray stripped kitty cat (which was also meant to be rare), then the error scenery. The saloon was designed way back then, but only implemented in the current Bandito. In it's original run, Bandito enjoyed many months of play until the RippedProductions.com server account had to be given up.
It looked bleak for our hero, but time comes to the rescue. Bandito was brought back in late 2004, now on the RogerKenny.com server. The focus had switched from artificial craziness to open cartoonery, though the AI ability is still theoretically there. The saloon was added, then the ability to link Bandito's quote to something, then the moon was added, then the cat was given the ability to speak and link commemorated in this classic panel: 1442, the domain names thebandito.com and banditoloveskitty.com were registered, the cafepress store was added http://www.cafepress.com/thebandito, the slideshow and navigation abilities were added, then the ability to choose or create your own background, then google search and ads were added, and finally the Top 20 and vote system were implemented. Future additions include, different Bandito images, more backgrounds, more easter eggs, and whatever my diseased brain comes up with.
Bandito is created by vagrant New York City madman Roger Kenny. Co-founder of Ripped Productions, Ripped Magazine, the Buffalo Readings, and other so-called holy wastes of time. The major contributors to the database of panels include David Acevedo, Stephen Deninno, Jackie Vaccaro, Roger Kenny, and of course, people like You. Bandito is entirely supported by ads and merchandise sales.