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We’re back out into the open air, green land kinda landscape. In the years since it feels like a cheat to not do a more specific reference for this level, coulda been a sky level or a factory or a desert or something. Coulda been a world where everything is huge if I wanted. But, based on this offhand reference in a post on the 13th of December, 2009 I was really trying to cram the conclusion in before the years end. And anyway, the Mario games had you come back to surface levels so it felt fine to do this at the time.
Since I knew I was making the penultimate chapter, I was throwing in as many references as I could to get them in before the end. And yet, I don’t think that the cop costume is a specific reference to anything, beyond being a kind of protagonist who thinks that killing everything that stands in your way is a virtue.
Page One: I said I was trying to get all the references in, but then I start with this pigman? The videogame pigmen I think of first are the Pig Cops in Duke Nukem’s first 3D game (but not his platformers), but they were dressed as cops, which Dennis is here. I am sure they were at least partially in mind when I did this, but more specific to my life is a toy I had as a kid that was, I believe, an orc from Dungeons and Dragons but he had a pig-head instead of what we think of as orcs nowadays. He was like one of those green army men toys, just a hunk of plastic with a built-in base except he was kind of dark red instead of green and also, as I say, a pigman. I suppose there’s also a bit of Moblin to him.
Page Two: I’ve definitely had Dennis encounter a lot of standard monster foes, and this mummy could be that, but there was a “Mummy Man” in Castlevania that this was supposed to more specifically represent.
The street toughs are Double Dragon, and games like Rampage, but Double Dragon II was the one closest to my heart.
Page Four: I genuinely don’t know what this Giant Lobster is a reference to, but I’m certain it actually IS a reference to something. I have a memory of deciding to change a crab (in the thing being referenced) to a lobster to pretend to be subtle. There is a crab boss in Super Mario Bros 2, and those tiny crabs in the original Mario Bros game I suppose, and I did play those games a lot, but I’m not confident that was it. I wonder if it was a game I played closer to 2009 and not in my childhood that has therefore not burned itself into my brain.
Page Five: This alien is a direct reference to Commander Keen, which had little enemy aliens of a similar, but smaller design.
Page Seven: The ninja is the only foe that Dennis kills in here that we never get to see while it is alive. Ninjas were, of course, ubiquitous in the videogames (and comics and cartoons) of my youth. I wanted to have Dennis kill at least one enemy by landing on it, as that was a traditional method for killing foes in this kind of game.
The gorilla is a Donkey Kong kinda deal, but instead of throwing barrels, he’s using a chainsaw because that is another manual labour sort of thing.
Page Eight: I think the fairy, a reference to the Zelda games most directly, is one of the best jokes in this thing.
Page Nine: I got this lava river in at the very last second because I knew I couldn’t finish the comic without some lava in there, since it was such an important part of platform games. Honestly there’s still not enough lava.
The monster in there directly meant to reference the lava-swimming Blargg in Super Mario World.
Dennis can walk on the lava because it is my understanding that that is how lava works. You don’t sink in it, you’d just be on top burning to death from the heat. Luckily for Dennis, he doesn’t care about burning to death.
The Brain Boss is meant to be like something from Metroid and the fireballs going around it in a pattern is supposed to be the sort of thing where you’d need tp learn the pattern to avoid the fire and hit the boss, but Dennis doesn’t care about fire.
Page Ten: After Dennis slashes the brain’s tank, the liquid leaks out and pools on the ground below. Strange detail for me to have got in there.
Dennis wins the Magic Boots. When he got the Magic Belt, he was wearing it in the victory panel. Here, he is not wearing the boots. I assume it is because if he had the black boots on against the black background it would look like he has no feet. If 2009 PDR simply forgot the precedent that had been set, I can’t respect him.
