The Vigilante

"Vigilante is Above the Law. When you're a sharpshooter, nobody gets out of your crosshairs."
— Toppinbot.

The Vigilante is the second boss in Pizza Tower.

Description

The Vigilante is a Cheeseslime wearing a cowboy hat. He is the grandson of John E. Cheese, the former owner of Fun Farm, which he now owns. He was apparently tricked by Pizzaface into thinking Peppino is a wanted criminal using forgery, leading to his fight at the Western District.

Boss Room

To access the boss room, the player needs to pay Mr. Stick 150$, or 15 Toppins.

The room is a stage play-like arena, made out of painted wood with desert-themed cutouts, and with the background being a painted wall of the Tower. As Peppino enters the boss fight, The Vigilante looks at a "wanted" poster with Peppino on it.

During the second phase, the background changes to sunset and everything else is silhouetted.

Boss Fight

Main Gimmick of the Fight

The Vigilante hands Peppino a pistol to use for the whole fight. This replaces the grab and can rapidly fire bullets or be charged for a giant, stronger bullet. However, the stronger bullet gets shot immediately after being charged, so the player needs to wait for the right moment to use it. The pistol is the player's only means of damaging The Vigilante, as he does not leave himself open for any other attacks.

Regular shots can take one of The Vigilante's HP in 8 shots. The stronger shot deals 6 damage out of 8 required.

Phase 1

After each hit, he changes his attack pattern:

• Cheese Bullets; Dash and Dive Kick
• Dynamite Toss; Cheese Bullets; Dash and Dive Kick
• Bullet Spray; Dynamite Toss
• Bullet Spray; Cheese Bullets
• Dash and Dive Kick
• Bazooka; Dynamite Toss; Cheese Bullets; Dash and Dive Kick
• Flamethrower; Dynamite Toss
• Flamethrower
• Herd Call; Dynamite Toss; Cheese Bullets

After each hit and some of the attacks, The Vigilante slides away from the player, making him temporarily invincible.

Cheese Bullets

The southern swiss slime fires his revolver at the player, firing cheesy bullets that the player needs to quickly jump over. As the fight progress, the bullets will come out faster and more will be fired.

Dash and Dive Kick

The Vigilante runs with his high cowboy boots then dive kicks low to the ground with the boots in front of him.

Cardboard Target

Occasionally, a large cardboard cutout of a cowboy will fall from the sky, creating a target for Peppino’s bullets to hit. It also can act as a shield for The Vigilante, as the bullets only hit the cutout. It will be destroyed after 5 small bullets, or can be dispatched with one big bullet.

Dynamite Toss

The Vigilante throws dynamite high into the air, exploding on contact with the ground. If the small explosion the dynamite creates touches the player it will hurt them, but not the dynamite sticks themselves. The amount of dynamite The Vigilante throws is random.

Bullet Spray

The Vigilante jumps high into the sky, firing a cheese Uzi towards the ground as he flies by.

Dead Grandpa

At 4 HP, The Vigilante's dead farmer grandfather, John E. Cheese, will start appearing through out the fight. John will slowly fly towards the player with a pitchfork, but can be dispatched by a single bullet.

Bazooka

The Vigilante jumps high into the air, and fires a bazooka towards the middle of the arena, creating an explosion on impact and a shockwave travelling outwards.

Flamethrower

The Vigilante slowly moves around the arena with a fire-spitting flamethrower.

Herd Call

The Vigilante calls up to drop a crate onto the stage. After the box drops, a cow spawns. The cow will bounce around the arena for a while, but can be taken down with bullets.

Phase 2

After getting hit 9 times, The Vigilante regenerates his HP back and his attacks become faster. The pattern of attacks is also different, relying mostly on singular attacks, rather than multiple:

• Dynamite Toss
• Dash and Dive Kick
• Cheese Bullets
• Dynamite Toss; Bazooka
• Herd Call (only once); Flamethrower
• Herd Call; Bullet Spray
• Herd Call; Dash and Dive Kick
• Cheese Bullets

Quick Draw Finale

After finishing the second phase, the Quick Draw duel starts. Once the word "DRAW" appears, the player needs to shoot The Vigilante for the final hit. The timer is not very strict, however if the player fails to do so, The Vigilante shoots Peppino first, and the last attack repeats. If the player shoots before "DRAW" appears, the result will be the same as if the timer would ran out.

Boss Rematch

After beating the Final Boss' 2nd Phase, the villain will bring in the four previous boss characters, and sends 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 bosses one by one, they use some of the same attacks as before. After defeating Pepperman, Gustavo will appear for you to grab and throw him at the remaining 3 bosses to stun them.

The Vigilante is the second boss refought. The player is forced to throw Gustavo at him, as they are not given a gun.

The Vigilante will attack in this order:

• Dynamite Toss; Cheese Bullets; Dash and Dive Kick
• Dynamite Toss; Cheese Bullets; Dash and Dive Kick
• Bazooka; Dash and Dive Kick; Bullet Spray; Flamethrower
• Dynamite Toss; Dash and Dive Kick

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

In the comics

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

In The Bad, The Ugly, and The Even Uglier, he is the sheriff of a western town and is first seen while Pepperman was attacking the town. After Pepperman barges into his building and asks if he was the sheriff of the town, he quickly surrenders. Afterwards, he is seen tied up alongside the banker of the town while Pepperman and his troops were robbing the bank.

Pre-release

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

Trivia

• The Vigilante, then known as Cowboy Cheeseslime, was originally created as a mod for Mega Man 8-bit Deathmatch. PTG was feeling tired of drawing Peppino, so he opted to do a Cheeseslime with a cowboy hat instead. He ended up liking him enough to make him an important character in the main game.

The teaser picture showing the 4 possible characters.

• Before it was revealed that The Vigilante would be a playable character, Pizza Tower Guy had been teasing a third playable character for around a week in the Discord server with a picture showing 4 possible characters it could be, those being Gustavo, Pepperman, Snick, or The Vigilante, then known as Cowboy Cheeseslime, and gave various hints to who it could be. These hints included:
  • Already exists in Pizza Tower lore
  • Angry
  • Inspired by an old actor
  • A band that's relevant still has a popular song relating to the actor and/or character
    • The "inspired by an old actor" hint refers to Clint Eastwood, while the "band that's still relevant" in question is Gorillaz.
  • Doesn't play video games
  • One interesting thing of note about this image, is that all of these characters ended up becoming playable at some point, but Snick ended up being SAGE 2019 Demo exclusive, and Pepperman's appearance in Refrigerator-Refrigerador-Freezerator was scrapped. In the end, Gustavo was the only one of the four who ended up playable in the final game.
• An MM8BDM mod called Grand Classes, both add Peppino and Vigilante as playable characters, though Vigilante uses the same sprites as the original skin mod, he has a move revamp, making his moves the same ones as from Pizza Tower, that being his revolver and a stick of dynamite which can be used to get height or a slight speed boost.
• It has been said that Vigilante's full name is Vigert Ebenezer Lantte, shortened to Vigilante. [Citation needed]
• When entering the stage for The Vigilante, the fight does not start until Peppino picks up the revolver from the box thrown at him. This is likely a reference to the fight against Meta Knight in Kirby Super Star, where in both the enemy offers you a weapon to make the fight fair.
  • If the player does not pick up the gun when the Vigilante offers it, after a few seconds the Vigilante will stare at the screen with an annoyed expression.
• Vigilante's moveset is inspired by the Worms series, and his coming to a dead stop before firing most of his guns is a reference to the turn-based nature of those games. Most familiar to the Worms series are his bazooka, flamethrower, staggering his aerial momentum by firing an uzi downwards, and calling down a cow with a radio in lieu of a Concrete Donkey.
• The cowboys on the cardboard targets are depictions of Lowercase Bob and Uppercase Bob, two characters made by lead developer McPig before Pizza Tower. They can be seen in this animation, and appear as a playable duo in the “Bring Your Own Class” Doom mod.
• Sertif (co-programmer) has stated that Vigilante is his favorite character.

Gallery

Regular animations

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  Vigilante standing while looking at a "Wanted" poster depicting Peppino.

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  Vigilante turning around and pointing at Peppino.

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  Vigilante's idle animation.

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  Vigilante looking at the player disappointingly if they ignore the pistol.

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  Vigilante pulling out his revolver.

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  Vigilante holding his revolver.

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  Vigilante shooting his revolver.

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  Vigilante preparing to dash.

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  Vigilante's dashing animation.

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  Vigilante preparing to dive kick.

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  Vigilante dive kicking.

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  Vigilante throwing his dynamite, Or The Gun.

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  Vigilante preparing to shoot with his uzi.

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  Vigilante shooting with his uzi.

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  Vigilante shooting a bazooka.

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  Vigilante preparing to use the flamethrower.

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  Vigilante using the flamethrower.

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  Vigilante turning around while using the flamethrower.

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  Vigilante ending his flamethrower attack.

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  Vigilante calling in bovine support.

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  Vigilante's hurt animation.

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  Vigilante's sliding animation.

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  A silhouetted Vigilante preparing for the Quick Draw duel.

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  Vigilante's idle animation during the cutscene at the start of phase 3 of the Pizzaface boss battle, Also Used when vigilante hit an enemy in previous demos.

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  Vigilante's idle animation during The Crumbling Tower of Pizza, Also used when he was playable on Pizza Time.

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  Vigilante's walking animation during The Crumbling Tower of Pizza, Also used when he was playable.

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  A silhouetted Peppino nervous before the Quick Draw duel.

Boss Fight projectiles

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  John E. Cheese's flying animation.

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  John E. Cheese's defeat sprite.

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  The Vigilante's dynamite.

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  Cow crate.

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  Cow crate alert.

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  Cow.

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  Beef cut "particles" that appear when a Cow dies.

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  Target picture 1.

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  Target picture 2.

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  Bazooka missile.

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  Cheese bullet forming.

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  Cheese bullet disintegrating.

Arena

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  The Vigilante arena gate.

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  The Vigilante arena gate background.

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  Arena's ground sprite.

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  Phase 1 background. Blue wall with painted desert, clouds and sun.

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  Background decoration. Clouds.

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  Phase 2 background.

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  Phase 2 arena's ground sprite

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  Sign from final phase's quick draw.

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  Second sign from final phase's quickdraw.

In-game miscellaneous

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  Vigilante's VS screen portrait.

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  Vigilante's name on VS screen.

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  Vigilante's HP icon.

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  Vigilante's boss fight icon on Pizza Granny sign.

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  Vigilante staring at the giant John statue in Staff Only.

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  Vigilante looking towards the player when approached in Staff Only.

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  Vigilante holding a cup in Noisette's Cafe.

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  Vigilante drinking from a cup in Noisette's Cafe when approached.

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  Vigilante in the game's intro.

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  Vigilante in the game's ending.

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  Vigilante wrangling Stupid Rats with Peppino, Gustavo, and Brick. Appears in the ending.

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  Vigilante teaching the Toppins how to handle a revolver. Appears in the ending.

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  Vigilante looking at a "Wanted" poster depicting Pizzahead as the others chase Peppino. Appears in the ending.

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  The Vigilante dressed as a cow. Appears in the end credits.

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  PNG version of Vigilante in the ending

Miscellaneous

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  Vigilante's sprites for the MM8BDM mod.

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  The mod in-game.

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  Vigilante shooting a shotgun in Pizza Tower Versus.

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  Toppinbot's Description of Vigilante on the Pizza Tower Discord.

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  Toppinbot's Portrait of Vigilante.

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  Vigilante ready to kick some italian butt after Peppino tried to steal.

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  The epic battle ensues.

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  Vigilante being impressed by Noisette's extreme finger skateboarding tricks.

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  Vigilante liking the idea of peanut butter spaghetti.

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  Vigilante regretting eating the peanut butter spaghetti after it gives him turbo diarrhea.

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  Vigilante admitting his diarrhetic rage to Noisette who then offers him a chocolate corncob.

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  Vigilante getting Pepperman to leave by offering him the unholy chocolate corncob.

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  Vigilante immediately blasting off to the bathroom to blast out some super turbo diarrhea.

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  Vigilante being utterly dumbfounded at Noisette and Peppino's shenanigans.

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  Vigilante holding a barrel weapon that shoots big cheese projectiles.

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  Vigilante holding a cheese grater weapon.

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  Concept art for the Vigilante's Dynamite stick.