50: Penny Arcade

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Penny Arcade

Title text: Of course, Penny Arcade has already mocked themselves for this. They don't care.

Explanation

Penny Arcade is a popular web comic that focuses on the video game culture. The character above is Tycho, one of the two main characters of Penny Arcade. Penny Arcade has a reputation for making obscure references to video games without explaining, expecting the reader to be as well-versed in gaming culture as they are. Hence, the attitude shown in this comic.

'Seiken Densetsu' as mentioned in the strip probably refers to Seiken Densetsu 3, an Action role-playing game (Action-RPG) released for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) in Japan in 1995. The game was never released in the North American region or officially translated to English. However, many North American game players may recognize Seiken Densetsu 2, the predecessor in the series, by its North American name: Secret of Mana.

Thus the sentence Tycho says can be translated to: "You know what? If you've never played the 1995 Super Nintendo Entertainment System role-playing game 'Seiken Densetsu 3' don't even bother reading today's strip. We don't need your kind here."

As the title text admits, they know they behave like this, and have this reputation, but they don't care, and even refer to it in their own comic.

Transcript

[A color drawing of Thyco, a man with wild brown hair in blue and cyan colored shirt. He has a big open mouth and holds one arm up while the other may be in his (unseen) pocket. He has two speech bobbles,]

Tycho: You know what? If you've never played the 1995 SNES RPG 'Seiken Densetsu' don't even bother reading today's strip.

Tycho: We don't need your kind here.

Trivia

• This was the 47th comic originally posted to LiveJournal.
  • The previous was 49: Want.
  • The next was 54: Science.
• This comic kept it's original title: "Penny Arcade"
  • It was the first comic to do so since 46: Secrets four comics back.
  • And apart from that comic, it was the first title to do so as well as to not include the word "Drawing" since 31: Barrel - Part 5 ten comics further back.
• It is the first of the last 6 comics on LiveJournal which all had a title without the word "Drawing" in it.
  • Five of these had exactly the same title on both sites.
  • Only 11 comics have the same title on both sites.
• Original Randall quote: "I'm actually pretty fond of Penny Arcade, when I get the jokes."
• This comic was one of the last 11 comics posted on LiveJournal.
  • These 11 comics were posted both on LiveJournal and xkcd after the xkcd site opened on the 1st of January 2006.
  • This comic was posted on the same day on both sites.
  • They were not all posted on the same day though.
• During the start-up of xkcd several of the comics were released on days that deviated from the normal Monday, Wednesday, Friday scheme.
  • This one was thus released a Tuesday.

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Discussion

Should we perhaps mention that it's available in the US as of 2019-06-11? Release announced on Nintendo Direct E3. 172.68.34.4 00:32, 12 June 2019 (UTC)