Hidden Details: Super Smash Boahs

Hi all! Lemme start with clarifying some things:

One: I have not yet played Red Dead Redemption 2. I finished the first Red Dead Redemption a few months ago and I REALLY want to play 2, but I wanna play GTA V first, because I want to see how Rockstar's games evolve. I'm a sucker for stuff like that. So this comic (and any potential upcoming RDR2 comic) is a complete bluff, just like I did with the Young Adult Red series (I started playing Ultra Moon a few days ago, all those comics I made about Moon where based on stuff I saw on the internet). But hey, bluffing fits the theme of this week's comic nicely so I don't feel too bad about it.

Two: the title "Super Smash Boahs" is based on Arthur Morgan's way of pronouncing "boy", which he apparently does very frequently if you have a male horse in the game.

With that out of the way, let's dive into the hidden details in this week's comic!

I was afraid it wouldn't be clear that Arthur and the other characters are playing a poker match that lasts quite long. A comic like this could easily be interpreted as if it's happening in a few seconds, so I tried my best to put some stuff in the panels that show the passage of time, like the clock in the background, Arthur's beer and the poker chips he keeps losing to the psychic opponents.

The playing cards that the characters are using have a cool stylized Smash logo on the back!

I put a little background story in this comic as well, because originally, there weren't enough hidden details to write a blog about, haha. When that happens, I shoehorn in some background characters like Mario and Little Mac here. They're playing a game of chess! Cute, huh? But I went one step further, as I tend to do: this match is an exact copy of a match between Magnus Carlsen and Fabiano Curuana, the two best chess players in the world. I think. I'm not into chess so I'm not sure. But I found this video on YouTube and I copied the positions of the chess pieces. At 15:23, you can see the exact same situation on the chess board as in this comic.

In the second panel, you can see Mario going in for the kill, just like in the video of Carlsen vs Caruana! Mac is shocked by this turn of events.

So he goes all crazy and turns into Giga Mac, as he tends to do in Smash as well.

In the fourth panel, you can see the aftermath of Mac's frenzy. Mac's a very sore loser, so he broke the chess board on Mario's head. Those birds that are circling Mario's head are "Little Birds". They pop up in Mario games now and then. They're exclusively found in the Mushroom Kingdom in Super Mario Odyssey.

I THINK I included every Smash fighter with psychic abilities that might be able to cheat at poker in the final panel. Ness and Lucas mostly seem to guard and attack with their PSI powers, so I think they'd also be able to cheat at poker (I can already hear it: "PK CHEAAAAT!"). Lucario can read aura's and communicate via telepathy and in Brawl, he is shown to sense Snake hiding in his box, so I'm pretty sure he'd be able to use his aura to call people's bluff in a game of poker. Same goes for Mewtwo: he's like... the ultimate psychic Pokémon, so if there's any Pokémon that has an advantage during a match of poker, it'd be him. Nobody would be able to beat Shulk though. He can literally see into the future and change it. That's the best possible psychic power you could have if you'd want to win big at poker.

I shoehorned another detail into the last panel: three Pikmin being completely smitten by the amount of poker chips on the table. This might seem super random, but poker chips look a lot like Pikmin Pellets:

These things can be collected in Pikmin and are used to summon more Pikmin, so if a bunch of Pikmin would see the poker chips on this table, I think they'd mistake them for Pikmin Pellets and try to collect them!

And lastly, Arthur's horse in the bonus panel, the one that's being seduced by Yoshi, is based on a white Arabian. Apparently, that's the absolute best horse you can get in Red Dead Redemption 2. But as I said before, I wouldn't know that for sure since I haven't played the game so don't @ me if I turn out to be wrong.

And that's it! As always, I hope you've enjoyed reading about these hidden details. I'll be back next week, have a wonderful weekend!

Cheers,

- Abel