All spoilers for the canon Deltarune are unmarked. You have been warned.
IT'S TIME FOR THE BONUS ROUND!!!
Mike's Big Showdown is a Deltarune fangame made by Sad Bread. It consists of a battle against a mysterious character named "Mike" who is often theorized by the Deltarune fandom to appear in Chapter 3 as an antagonist.
Its signature SOUL color mechanic is just like Undertale's blue SOUL color's — where gravity applies to your SOUL and you can hold the up arrow key to jump — except you can "GROUND POUND" onto blue attacks to gain SP, the fangame's replacement for TP.
You can download the game here
, or play the official Scratch port here.
LOTS OF TR0PES 4HEAD! YOU'RE GO1NG T0 LAUGH!
- Anti-Frustration Features: As an unusual display of mercy (even compared to the full heals before the first two interludes), Kris gain more HP than their maximum in this game for Mike's final Desperation Attack(s).
- Blatant Lies: At the beginning of the quiz interlude, Mike claims that his static eye resulted from falling down a flight of stairs, despite Kris having just slashed into or launched themself at it.
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: At one point, Mike reminds the audience and player that the game isn't Deltarune canon.
- Continuity Nod:
- Mike's boss form is modeled after an odd Easter Egg in Chapter 2 of Deltarune that can be seen for a split second in the basement of Queen's mansion, referred to as "IMAGE_FRIEND" internally.
- Mike can use a blue target with a face that you must damage greatly to end certain attacks, just like the heart of Spamton NEO.
- Near the end of the cooking interlude, a realistic image of a steak is tossed into the pan (complete with stock explosion on impact), which is likely a nod to one of the possible responses when Susie uses her S-Action on a Poppup in Chapter 2, detailing how she clicks on not an ad, but just a plain image of a steak.
- Mike's battle theme, "Laugh Track", uses some motifs from "BIG SHOT" and "THE WORLD REVOLVING", including the short melody shared by both of them.
- During Mike's laugh track attack, Everyman's head can briefly show up in place up one of the mouths (though it's transparent and fairly hard to detect), just like it can replace the head of one of the carousel ducks in Jevil's fight.
- Desperation Attack:
- The third interlude at the end of the fight, titled "Mike's Murder House", consists of a sequence of attacks with the bullet box broken.
- If Mike is defeated via combat, he has an extra one where you must press the correct arrow keys for Kris to escape his hold.
- Don't Try This at Home: Inverted; a piece of flavor text consists of these words, but without "Don't".
- Easter Egg: There is additional flavor text found by "checking" Mike two additional times. It's does softlocks you from battling or sparing Mike though.
- Evil Laugh: Mike has two: a garbled-sounding one in his normal form, and a bellowing one right before his battle.
- Eyeless Face: Mike's humanoid form's TV head has only an image of a smiling mouth.
- Eye on a Stalk: Mike's battle form and blue attacks each have two, based on stereotypical television antennae yet eerily reminiscent of the eye tentacles of gastropods.
- Free-Fall Fight: For the entire battle, Kris and Mike fall from the Dark Fountain of Chapter 3's tower to the ground.
- Gameplay and Story Integration:
- In the beginning cutscene, the SOUL getting punched away from the Dark Fountain makes Kris keel over in pain. However, it also causes the diamond attack Mike launches at Kris thereafter to pass through them harmlessly, because it didn't hit the SOUL.
- Then, without the SOUL putting them under the player's control, Kris stumbles onto their feet and deactivates Mike's normal body without player input.
- Giant Hands of Doom: For the third interlude, Mike will destroy the interface with giant hands, which then loom in the shadows behind Kris for the duration of the attacks.
- Ground Pound: The blue SOUL in this game can zip down to the floor. Blue attacks that are hit this way grant you SP.
- Heel Realization: If Mike is defeated by sparing, he'll save Kris from hitting the floor by catching them with a free hand. Then he'll talk to Kris, saying that he should have known that Kris would lash out after everything Mike put them through. Despite this, he appreciates Kris trying to spare him and laments that maybe he could have been better if he wasn't so stubborn.
- I Lied: At the beginning of the quiz interlude, Mike states that the punishment for answering incorrectly is him falling asleep, yet the penalty is actually Kris taking electrical damage. Mike will reveal what the penalty really is, even though the correct "answer" is "Sleep"; he wants to make sure you were paying attention.
- Laugh Track: These are weaponized in some of Mike's attacks, and the insubstantial "Canned Laughter" is one of the healing items you're given for the fight. "Tastes funny."
- Leet Lingo: Mike's speech has certain letters flickering back and forth between their number lookalikes, and his description in the "Check" ACT displays his name as "M1K3".
- Letting the Air out of the Band:
- This happens to the "Your Power" track from the base game when Mike interrupts the fountain-sealing sequence.
- Mike's theme music plays at a faster speed when he tries to pry his remote out of Kris's hand only for it to slow to a halt when Kris turns him off.
- Malaproper: Mike uses incorrect homophones of certain words.
- Multiple Endings:
- If you defeat Mike violently, he tries to crush Kris in his hand, but the latter escapes his grip and finishes him off with their sword.
- If you keep using the "change channel" ACT to increase Mike's mercy, he gently decelerates Kris's fall with his hand after his final attack, and laments his ill deeds to Kris and co. before dropping the TV Antennae.
- Mythology Gag:
- Mike's "TURN UP THE JU1C3! PUT 0N YOUR SH0ES!" line is similar to two of Spamton NEO's lines upon trying to become "Spamton EX" after being defeated violently.
- Mike's salt attack is capable of pausing, rewinding, and fast forwarding, similar to some of Mettaton EX's attacks in Undertale.
- The attacks where you have to destroy a particularly hardy target call back to similar attacks from Mettaton EX.
- The cooking interlude as a whole is very reminiscent of the green SOUL phase of Photoshop Flowey's fight in Undertale.
- The quiz interlude is akin to Mettaton's own quiz show, down to two of the questions mirroring ones on the Mettaton quiz.
- Non-Human Head: Mike's normal form is that of a humanoid with an old-school television for a head.
- One-Winged Angel: Once Kris turns off Mike's normal body and the path to the Dark Fountain crumbles beneath them, the form of Mike present in the page image and the game's battle appears before them.
- Rolling Attack: Kris's "Hodgepodge" ACT consists of them rolling into a ball and crashing into Mike, dishing out many small hits.
- Shout-Out:
- Kris's healing ACT is "an ad for a crunchy cereal that melts in your mouth".
- The last question of the quiz interlude displays a square on the screen, with the question being "What is this shape?".
- One of Mike's lines include "I AM MIKE THE HARDCORE + AWESOME", which is a reference to the infamously bad Mike and Melissa.
- Slasher Smile: Mike's battle form nigh-ceaselessly sports a huge grin and large eyes.
- Symbol Swearing: Mike's curse after the cooking interlude is veiled behind this. Later, he more thinly conceals another one by replacing the letters with "4$$".
- Visual Pun: An attack that first appears after Mike stresses that the game is not canon... is a cannon with "NOT CANON" emblazoned on it. It can even fire the word "NOT" at you.
