Welcome to my second crappy comic! By Kurt Kalata Page 1: To begin with, an explanation of the title. One of my favorite Goemon (Mystical Ninja) games is the fourth game on the Super Famicom, called "Ganbare Goemon: Boku ga Dancer ni natta wake" (which is what the Japanese beneath the English title reads) which translates to "The Reason I Became a Dancer". Why did I pick this? Throughout the entire game, it never ddressed the reason behind the subtitle. Well, maybe it did, but since I can't understand a whole lotta Japanese, it got lost on me. And the only thing remotely related otherwise was the Goemon Impact doing a disco dance at the end. Maybe that had something to do with it. Anyway, the subtitle has absolutely nothing to do with the actual comic. Get the joke? Ha ha! Also, this comic was originally conceived about the time I was playing Suikoden 2. Therefore, I got the idea: what if Count Dracula and Neclord, the evil Suikoden vampire bad guy, were bitter rivals and were caught up in a war with each other? And there came the plot, and several of the references, for that matter. The Bacterion Galaxy is the location of all of the Gradius games. Also, "Operation N313" is the codename for the infiltration mission in the original NES Metal Gear. The line "Your mission is to infiltrate" was meant to be reminscent of one of the lines from Big Boss over the transceiver. For some reason, I find a robot whose brain is an abacus to be extremely funny. Page 2: Here's Neclord and his henchman, Rovert Belmont. When finding new things to poke fun at in Castlevania, there was always the trademark "Belmont walk", because they are always hunched over. And, of course, Rovert is Trevor spelled backwards (much like Alucard -> Dracula). I gave him a mustaches and pirate-speech, but mustaches are silly and pirate-speech sounds like the Sea Captain on the Simpsons. Arrrr matey. Sierra is also from Suikoden 2 - she's just a cool vampire chick. Figured I'd make her part of the Dracula family, for sake of storytelling. I apologize for the crappy drawing of Sierra. I couldn't grab a pic from the game of her. Sorry. Page 3: In determining a new wacky sidekick for this comic, I decided to use a Slogra, the classic Castlevania dinosaur skeleton thingy, and one of fellow Castlevania webmaster Eric Roman's favorite enemies. British accents are always funny, and I gave him a top hat and cane and there you go! I wanted to put in a dance routine, but that doesn't work well when it's not animated. Plus the subtitle would almost make sense at that point. Hikaru is one of the characters from Gokujou and Sexy Parodius. Originally it was meant to be Vic Viper, but by Eric Roman's request, I put the bunny girls in. Also made it more interesting on a whole. Page 4: That is just the stupidest looking Gradius-type bad guy ever, what with the toenail weakspot (for those who have never played the arcade Gradius games or Gradius Gaiden, a voice would speak out of nowhere to tell you the weak spot of the boss), typical core and antennae on its head. Here Rovert collapes after doing nothing, and Akane, as you might guess, is Hikaru's sister. Page 5: Koranot is, of course, the level 4 boss in Super Castlevania 4. And I REALLY hate "I Am the Wind" from the end of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. The vocal isn't bad, but the instrumentation is horrible! This was sorta inspirted by the end of the movie Dogma - you know, the whole God thing. ^_^ The alien egg is, of course, Red Falcon from the Contra series. Page 6: I love how Neclord blurts out "I am evil!" to no one in particular. Anyway, many Parodius games feature armies of evil penguins, so I figured I'd keep up the tradition. The katakana under their picture (taken from the intro of Jikkyou Oshaberi Parodius) reads "Penguin Force Strike!" Page 7: Bill and Lance are obviously the chaps from Contra. And I couldn't resist that gag. ^_^ The line "I am here, mortal" is what Sierra says when you pick her in Suikoden 2. BTW, as for the final idiotic joke, in anime, whenever someone gets turned on, their nose bleeds. After seeing Hikaru and Sierra together, this is why Slogra is bleeding. I couldn't resist.