BACK TO LEVEL FOUR
BACK TO MAIN ADVENTURE DENNIS PAGE
After a couple years of problems with the Contains2 website falling apart, I finally introduced my comics from there to the Book of PDR in September 2009, including finally putting up the fifth level, which I’d been working on sporadically. With this chapter finally online, I would go on to make the effort to get it all done within 2009. Spoilers: I would succeed.
Dennis’s outfit in this level is primarily just because I thought a white suit could turn completely red with all the blood, but in another reference to my beloved genre of adventure games, it also alludes to Leisure Suit Larry. He’s got his magic belt, though.
Page 1: I don’t know that this being a “mountain level” is a reference to anything in particular. I know I wanted Dennis on top of a mountain and I guess climbing the mountain is the best way to accomplish that, but it isn’t something I associate with platform games.
It is very true that Adventure Dennis needs no crampons.
Page 2: Dennis kills another presumably innocent animal.
Page 3: They cyborg future warrior and his head being on Dennis’s sword are not references to anything as far as I can tell.
Page 5: The pirate yeti and unicorn yeti and various other kinds of yetis are intended to call to the different types of enemies in games that are basically the same enemy with a mild cosmetic difference. Goombas and Paragoombas, that sort of thing. That said, I think a more specific inspiration for me was the Foot Soldiers in the TMNT arcade game. They’d come in different colours and do different things. That appealed greatly to me.
Page 6: The spaceman is a reference to the NES game Captain Comic, though the astronaut in that was the protagonist not an enemy.
Page 7: This lizardman feels like a move back to the earlier levels when I was just putting in enemies that felt appropriate to a fantasy game, like the skeleton and the dragon. This guy does have more of a chameleon look than I would expect of a lizardman in Castlevania or Zelda or something, though.
Page 8: A lore tidbit I have always considered true but never had a way to tell: the giant floating head that Dennis defeats here is the first cousin to Hover Head. This was George, who inherited the same condition has his cousin Joe, but fell in with bad people. George found himself among the hordes of King Demonevil and that life led him to Adventure Dennis’s magic blade. A tragic tale.
Page 9: The helicopter boss is a reference to the times when a boss would be a big vehicle or something and it would come in from the side and the protagonist would have to pick off the red-flashing weak spots and stuff. It feels like a Contra thing to me, but I also associate it with Double Dragon. That said, Double Dragon 2 also has a more 1-to-1 comparison with a helicopter that flies in and shoots and enemies drop out of it. Double Dragon 2 was a big game for me as a kid.
