Pepperman

From Pizza Tower Wiki

Pepperman is the first boss in Pizza Tower.

Description

Pepperman is a giant anthropomorphic red bell pepper with limbs wearing white gloves and sneakers of the same color. Pepperman has big, blue eyes and is frequently seen sporting a great, confident grin, showing his teeth. His stem sometimes turns into a beret when he is focused on his artwork or admiring others' work.

His Boss Fight portrait depicts him in a more humanoid appearance, showing him wearing a dark red t-shirt underneath a white apron.

During fights in older demos, he was far bigger, and would change colors: first to orange, then to light yellow depending on how many times he has been hit.

Pepperman is a hypocritical, contrarian artist, as confirmed by McPig[1]. It has also been said that Pepperman's full name is Phil Pepperman, with him also being referred to as an apple.

Boss room

To access the boss room, the player needs to pay Mr. Stick (Or Noisette, in case of playing The Noise campaign or Swap Mode) $100, or 10 Toppins.

The room is made out of purple bricks and is decorated with Pepperman's artwork. As the player enters the boss fight, Pepperman is drawing, the portrait can change depending the players character (A sad Peppino or a realistic Noise respectively), which can be destroyed during the fight.

During the second phase, the background artwork starts laughing and the room is filled with fog.

Boss fight

Phase 1

The phase is split between 5 attacks, that change after getting hit 2 times.

Shoulder Dash

Pepperman dashes towards the player until he hits the wall, giving an opportunity for the player to attack. At 8 HP after the player successfully jumps over or parries Pepperman's Shoulder Bash attack, he turns around and starts dashing in the other direction until hitting the wall.

Ground Pound

Pepperman jumps up in the sky and lands at the exact place the player is at. After the land, he is open for an attack. At 4 HP after landing, he bounces up towards the wall in the direction he is facing, then bouncing off it back to the ground, being open for an attack only in the air.

Art Marbles

At 2 HP, Pepperman constantly uses his double Shoulder Bash, while not giving any direct opportunity to hit him. The player instead needs to attack marble blocks, the first one appearing on the right at 2 HP, the second on the left at 1 HP. The marble blocks have 3 HP. After finishing the artwork, the player needs to let Pepperman to Shoulder Bash towards it, then he'll stop to admire it, giving an opportunity to attack.

Pepperman Drawings

At 8 HP, Pepperman Drawings start appearing from the corners of the arena. Once they spawn, they wait some time in the wall, then start slowly moving towards the other side of the arena, disappearing into the other wall. They can be destroyed by Pepperman, but deal damage if Peppino touches them at all.

Pepperman Statues

At 6 HP, Pepperman Statues start appearing at the top of the arena shortly before falling down. After reaching the floor, they get destroyed, but will hurt Peppino if they touch him on the way down.

Phase 2

After getting hit 10 times, Pepperman's HP regenerates and his attacks become much faster. The marble blocks that drop during Art Marbles require 6 hits to be finished instead of 3.

Knight Pepperman Statue

The Knight Pepperman Statue works very similar to the Pepperman Drawings, except it has a bigger hitbox and it moves across the screen much faster. It also can destroy Pepperman Drawings and cannot be destroyed by Pepperman.

End of the fight

After finishing the second phase, Pepperman shrinks down in size and runs away from the player when they get too close to him. When cornered against a wall, he jumps and starts running in the other direction. Any Pepperman artwork that was still on screen during the second phase is not removed, so the player needs to be careful to not get hit by them. He requires only a single hit to finish the fight, but he is also shrunk down only for a limited time. If the player does not hit Pepperman in time, he grows back up in size and performs Ground Pound with bouncing off the wall, requiring the player to hit him once more before he shrinks again.

Boss rematch

After beating the final boss’ second phase, the villain will bring in the four previous boss characters and send each of them to attack. Despite each boss having 8 HP and extra 8 HP afterwards, 4 HP will be drained per hit. The player fights each of the previous bosses in sequence, with each boss using some of the same attacks present in their standalone fights. After defeating Pepperman, Gustavo will appear for the player to grab and throw him at the remaining three bosses to stun them.

Pepperman is the first boss fought. He does the same order of attacks as his original boss fight, but without the art-related attacks.

After 4 hits, Pepperman will go down, and the player will face The Vigilante.

In the comics

Pepperman appears in The Bad, The Ugly, and The Even Uglier comics.

In The Bad, The Ugly, and The Even Uglier, he wears a cowboy hat and is first seen attacking a western town. He first goes to the Sheriff's building and finds The Vigilante there, who quickly surrenders after Pepperman asks if he was the sheriff. Afterwards, he robs the town's bank alongside a Pepperoni Goblin and a bandit Cheeseslime and ties up the banker and The Vigilante. However, soon after, right before he sets up camp there, he hears an explosion and is then attacked by The Vigilante, who had escaped. His fate is currently unknown, as the set of comics hasn't been completed yet.

Pre-release

For early appearances and scrapped ideas, see the pre-release page here: Pepperman/Pre-release

Chef Tasks

This boss is tied with the following Chef Task:

The Critic
Defeat Pepperman without getting hurt.

Trivia

  • Pepperman's main attack seems to be inspired by Wario's Shoulder Bash, his signature move throughout the Wario Land series, which was the main inspiration for Pizza Tower's gameplay.
    • However, the boss itself seems to take more inspiration from his first ever apparence as a boss in Super Mario Land 2, explicitly by its heavy usage of ground-pounds, taking place inside a castle filled with statues, and his transformation into a smaller version of himself upon defeat.
  • Pepperman was likely a nod to Spoiled Rotten, the first boss from Wario Land 4. Both are the first bosses of their respective games, are anthropomorphic fruits (a pepper and an eggplant, respectively), have obstacles that appear during their boss fights and charge at the player character (Pepperman's knight statues and the Eggplant Warriors, respectively), and have angrier second phases.
  • In comic #4.5 of The Bad, The Ugly, and The Even Uglier, Pepperman is shown with green pupils, despite the fact that his eyes have always appeared blue. It has been suggested that his eyes turn green when he's scared, but that isn't the case in his in-game animations despite looking terrified when stunned, so it's most likely that this was just a continuity error.
  • McPig stated that Pepperman would sound similar to Comic Book Guy, from The Simpsons.
  • McPig has shared a concrete idea for a Pepperman spinoff game, titled American Pepperman. The gameplay would've centered around Pepperman travelling through the different states of America to spread his artistic influence, with enemies based off American iconography trying to stop him. McPig's referred to the gameplay style as a mix of Viewtiful Joe and Warioware, taking place in single screen challenges that move on to the next one when the player beats it under a strict time limit, with the intensity and difficulty of each screen continually ramping up.
  • Despite being the first boss of the game, he has the most hit points of any boss.

Gallery

Regular animations

Pepperman's Artwork

Arena

Arena Background

In-game miscellaneous

Miscellaneous

Noisette’s Cafe Comic

American Pepperman Concepts