What’s That Dang Card XXL!! — Dan Skins
This is going to be an unusual article due to the nature of these cards. Since all three of them have very similar origin points, it didn’t feel appropriate to dedicate an article to each one. That doesn’t mean that we don’t love and respect each of these cards, we just love and respect your time and anticipation as readers too.
Dan Skin
“You have to earn it to use it.”
What’s in the Picture?
The image of this card contains the Dan Skin, a skin created by card artist danesykins for Dan to use in Spelunky 2. When asked about how the skin came to be, danesykins had this to say:
I made a skin for Dan just because I could. I have a degree in Game Dev and I loved the show. I wanted to contribute something, and I recalled Dan saying how much he disliked Alto for some reason, so I decided to mod in Dan in place of Alto.
What Does the Quote Mean?
Obviously the skin instantly became a favorite of Dan’s and he put the skin on a pedestal. Once Dan started playing with this skin, he would regularly punish himself for bad play by forcing the game back to the main menu and switching character skins. He would often accompany this switch by saying “We’ve gotta earn it, chat.” He would often not return to using the Dan Skin until he had reached the Cosmic Ocean or accomplished some other challenge he laid before himself.
What’s in the Full Art?
Hiding near Dan’s feat are a piece of paper that reads “7–99 dream”, a phrase Dan would regularly say to describe his goal of accomplishing the 7–99 Challenge. The other item at Dan’s feet is an eggplant, an item necessary for the notoriously difficult Eggplant Run in Spelunky and Spelunky 2.
Dripped Dan Skin
“Wings, pastea, and gloves give him a shot to PB and be crate.”
What’s in the Picture? Looks Pretty Much the Same…
If you look closely between the two cards, you can see subtle (and not-so-subtle) differences. First, in the Dan Skin card, the only accessories Dan has on are his black hat and red shirt (a frequent outfit of Dan’s on stream). In Dripped Dan, you can just see a gold chain and what appears to be a red cape. The Full Art variant is where these cards greatly differ.
What does the Quote Mean?
“Wings, pastea, and gloves” are references to items which can be collected in Spelunky 2. Dan tried to ensure that he had certain items before entering the Cosmic Ocean. The term “Dripped Out” comes from friend of the show and fellow streamer Northernlion who said the phrase in such a powerful manner that Dan instantly had to put it on his soundboard. (Special shoutouts to DanGheestorians ouranemily who originally identified it as a NL clip and BeardedJoe who found the clip for me! Your certificates as members of the DanGheestorical Society are in the mail.)
PB stands for “Personal Best”, an expression used by athletes as a benchmark of their highest achievement for a particular activity (e.g. most weight deadlifted or furthest distance in the discus throw). Since the 7–99 challenge is such a long and grueling task, people who have yet to complete it often mark their PB’s by the highest level they died on.
What is Hidden in the Full art?
This full art does actually hide something! The framed version hides the original Dan Skin with the Climbing Gloves, Paste, and Vlad’s Cape. These items granted the benefits of the ability to cling to walls, making your bombs sticky, and a double jump respectively. Notice also that the background of the card changes to one resembling the Cosmic Ocean.
F. Dan Skin
“Who knew all along it would be the furry animal?”
What’s in the Picture?
When Dan did finally make it to 7–99, it was not with the beautiful and well crafted Dan Skin, but with a skin that Dan had regularly dismissed. Roffy D. Sloth, the furry animal himself, was the skin which Dan used to finally conquer the challenge.
What Does the Quote Mean?
To answer that, I would have to return once again to the soundboard at Dan’s fingertips. Roffy became the dictionary image of the Furry Animal soundclip. Since Roffy was extremely rarely chosen by Dan, no sane viewer would have possibly gamba’d on Roffy being the first character Dan would reach 7–99 with.
What’s in the Full Art?
In every version of the card, you can see the normal Dan Skin, but with his face painted to resemble Roffy. He’s also wearing a black shirt, something that isn’t uncommon for Dan but thought more likely to be a replication of Roffy’s leather jacket look. Additionally, at Dan’s feet there are coins with clovers on them, danesykins’ interpretation of what Dan refers to as “Luck Tokens”. Luck tokens are a “currency” which Dan cashes in whenever something unexpectedly goes his way in a game. Lastly, the background has been changed to fit the Temple theme of the game. The last level that Dan had to beat to ascend to 7–99 was designed around the Temple levels. Artist danesykins said that designing this card was one of his highlights of designing the S3 cards.
My favorite part of any of the 3 cards was re-designing the Egyptian themes and tile set into a background. Of course, we can’t use assets straight from the game/IP so I have to repaint everything, and it was very rewarding to find the right parts to create a cool background that looked good in both the regular and full art style treatments.
Once again, special shoutouts to danesykins for the art and the intel and special thanks to ouranemily and BeardedJoe for the assist with the link! What S3 card would you like to see next? Let me know in Chat or in the DanG Discord!
