50: Penny Arcade

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
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Penny Arcade
Of course, Penny Arcade has already mocked themselves for this. They don't care.
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 video game culture. The character above is Tycho Brahe, one of the two main characters of Penny Arcade (the other being Jonathan "Gabe" Gabriel). 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, represented by 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 neither released in the North American region nor officially translated to English for more than thirteen years after this strip. However, many North American game players might have recognized Seiken Densetsu 2, the predecessor in the series, by its North American name: Secret of Mana.

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 Tycho, 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 bubbles,]
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.
  • This comic kept its 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.
    • Apart from the thirteen first comics posted to LiveJournal, there were only three other comics without the word "Drawing" in the title before these last six.
  • It is the first of the last six comics on LiveJournal that 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.
    • Apart from the first thirteen comics posted to LiveJournal, there were only three other comics without the word "Drawing" in the title before these last six.
  • 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 on a Tuesday.
    • It was the last of a series of three where the release day was shifted to one day later.
    • This one was posted quite early, at 1:53 am, so it could almost have become a normal Monday comic.


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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)