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Misheard voice acting in retro games

Posted: Sun May 07, 2017 3:21 pm
by tepples
In [url=https://forums.nesdev.com/viewtopic.php?p=195238#p195238]this post[/url], Fisher wrote:I also remember that me and the other kids were very afraid of the famous Sagat's "Tiger Robocop" back on the day. :P
The Tiger Uppercut became much clearer once a multi-ethnic golfer became famous for his own uppercut.

Image
TIGER UPPERCUT!

Re: Misheard voice acting in retro games

Posted: Sun May 07, 2017 3:53 pm
by Fisher
Voice on videogames looked like a fantastic and curious thing to me as a kid.
Fantastic because it was basically a machine talking!
As a kid, I had no idea that a person needed to talk on a microphone and them the voice was processed and recorded.
Curious because most of the time I had absolutely no idea of what was being said.
I would like to know what these voices sound or sounded to other people.
I'm writing what some sounded to me back in the day, it's "rough" translation to english and what it sounds to me now.
Hope this can be informative and funny!

On most of MegaDrive's games, the voice actors seemed to have some kind of laryngitis.
The only exception I know is Strider II, wich is not a very good game, but the voice acting are fantastic!

The first Final Mission voice "Tche mas que baita bafo" would translate like something like "Man, what a big breath".
I remember another stage that I thought it was said "Sou analfabeto" wich would mean "I'm illiterate" but now it sounds to me like "That was a beat".
Other one was "Eu tô com babas de pressa" translate like "I'm in a big hurry", now sounds to me like "There's a last to press".

The spanish guy on Street Fighter II seemed to say "Soy la borrego", wich is spanish, but would be something like "I'm the Lamb". I have no idea of what he says, even today...

My daughter when was younger told me that Mario on Super Mario 64 says "Pêssego" when entering a stage.
Curiously this word translates as peach, but it's clear that he says "let's go" with a heavy accent!

Re: Misheard voice acting in retro games

Posted: Sun May 07, 2017 3:58 pm
by Dwedit
ddribble.png
ddribble.png (2.64 KiB) Viewed 9903 times
What did you hear?

Re: Misheard voice acting in retro games

Posted: Sun May 07, 2017 4:01 pm
by Fisher
Sorry... :(
I hadn't played that game back in the day...
But I can do a quick play and tall what I hear.
Unfortunately, as a kid, it was a lot funnier!!
Maybe I use my kids as gnea pigs...

Edit: did it!
They said "Dá a mão, diabo!", wich translates as "Give the hand, devil!".
Yes!! It's a lot funny as/with kids!! :lol:

Re: Misheard voice acting in retro games

Posted: Sun May 07, 2017 4:30 pm
by rainwarrior
Fisher wrote:The first Final Mission voice "Tche mas que baita bafo" would translate like something like "Man, what a big breath".
I remember another stage that I thought it was said "Sou analfabeto" wich would mean "I'm illiterate" but now it sounds to me like "That was a beat".
Other one was "Eu tô com babas de pressa" translate like "I'm in a big hurry", now sounds to me like "There's a last to press".
Continuing on from my previous post: the NSF rip I have for Final Mission has the voice samples as tracks, so I've attached the file. They sound like very heavily Japanese-accented English to me, though they are mostly indecipherable to my ear:
  • 1. "We have survived the battle."
  • 2. "Players are fit."
  • 3. "Destroy battleship."
  • 4. "Pick up the attitude."
  • 5. "It's the last press."
The only one of these that I am certain of is #3, the rest are wild guesses.

Re: Misheard voice acting in retro games

Posted: Sun May 07, 2017 5:17 pm
by Jedi QuestMaster
Dwedit wrote:
ddribble.png
What did you hear?
Here's what I heard:

Image

Re: Misheard voice acting in retro games

Posted: Sun May 07, 2017 5:44 pm
by Punch
Dowbow drillbow

...really, any videogames with language different from what I know (ie English when I was younger, Japanese). Can't think of any specific example right now though.

edit: "Gay boneeer, let's go away! Gay boneeer... ahh". I blame arcade environment noise + immaturity. :mrgreen:

Re: Misheard voice acting in retro games

Posted: Sun May 07, 2017 6:00 pm
by rainwarrior
Dwedit wrote:(Double Dribble title image)
What did you hear?
bubble_bibble.png
bubble_bibble.png (6.2 KiB) Viewed 9857 times

Re: Misheard voice acting in retro games

Posted: Sun May 07, 2017 6:20 pm
by Fisher
Dammit!!
I just saw this K-Pop video and can't stop laughing:
"Lá no mercado, lá no mercado, perderam o gato" something like "There in the market, there in the market, they lost the cat"
And the guys also make a movement that seems like a cat attacking!
tepples wrote:The Tiger Uppercut became much clearer once a multi-ethnic golfer became famous for his own uppercut.
I had a friend who tought it was a marketing campaign from Square, to promote their them-new game: Chrono Trigger!
Even with an uppercut on Chrono!!
Them we learned the correct pronunciation of the word trigger is pretty different from tiger.

Also, we tough Adon said "Canudinho", wich google translates as "little straw".
Now it sound's like "genocide" with some accent.

By the way, thanks for making this thread, it shows me I really need to find someone to talk and listen to in english, so maybe I can become a little better on this...

Edit:
I laughed loud on this!!
Also, the main newscaster of the biggest TV station here in Brazil is Willian Bonner!!
We can say that his work makes him very excited!! :mrgreen:

Re: Misheard voice acting in retro games

Posted: Sun May 07, 2017 7:02 pm
by Jedi QuestMaster
Played By: Uncle Bone
:?

Re: Misheard voice acting in retro games

Posted: Sun May 07, 2017 11:04 pm
by Gilbert
Apart from Tiger Robocop, the Street Fighter series is quite guilty of this, especially SF2 (and TONS of the special/expanded/tweaked/whatever versions of it), possibly because of its explosive popularity and increased amount of voice usage than its predecessor. Sloppily inexperience "voice actors" and muffled samples won't help either. I think later installments were becoming better, possibly because of hiring real voice actors and having better clarity in the samples.

Some of the hilarious ones I found, before learning what they really were:
Chun Li: Spinning Bird Kick --> Speedy Lard Dick
Guille: Sonic Boom --> A Nick Poon

The end stage dialogue from defeated opponents in SF1 was SUPER hilarious too, though it's nothing about being misheard (as it's with on screen subtitles), just more because of the awful Engrish and "voice actor" (yeah it's actor not actors, as it's the same dialogue recording regardless of which opponent it was).

Thunder Force II on Mega Drive had some awful indecipherable samples too. I never owned the system so I never heard the samples closely. One hilarious one was I think it's played when a mission started (or something) I heard "Ba na na na na grab" which I never knew what it was but I later thought it was "(something something) good luck".

The original Arcade version of Salamander had some hard to decipher voices too (mainly due to them being synthesized instead of sampled). I always misheard the item "multiple" as something like "occo ball". (The "multiple" items are what used to be called "option" in Gradius. As Salamander was not initially created as a straight sequel to Gradius and to be included in the series they just gave different names to certain items. The games were just created by mainly the same team and that they reused a lot of assets. That didn't prevent the items to be called multiples in certain console versions of the Gradius/Nemesis games though. Konami was just not very consistent in terminology.)

Re: Misheard voice acting in retro games

Posted: Sun May 07, 2017 11:41 pm
by Oziphantom
To this day my mum still claims that SFII on the SNES says BULLSHIT can't remember which move it was exactly. She also claims that Pretty Boy Birds who are named Pretty Boys because it is what it sounds like they say with their calls, should be renamed to Pikachus

MK corner voice guy Toastie, or Whoopseee ?

Re: Misheard voice acting in retro games

Posted: Mon May 08, 2017 12:48 am
by Memblers
Ah, this thread is hilarious. The ones I remember right now aren't as funny, but Starfox is one. I always thought it sounded like Falco was saying "dammit wing dammit". Though I heard later that all the in-game voices were built from the "wing damaged" sample, so that makes sense now. In the intro I thought it sounded strangely like "emergegengency, emergegengency", though listening to it now there is definitely no extra syllables in there, just lots of echo and a slow, deliberate kind of pronunciation.

Probably the most mysterious sample I thought was in Blades of Steel, "make the pass!". Googling it is interesting, you see "get the pass", "hit the pass", "made the pass", "with the pass", I'm sure there's more interpretations.

In Street Fighter II, I remember my mom saying hadouken sounded like "a wolf shit". Ryu and Ken definitely say "sure you can!", almost mockingly because I had a really hard time doing that move on the controller. Tiger Robocop though, that's classic. I thought E. Honda sounded like he saying "whose point", though I knew it was supposed to be something in Japanese.
MK corner voice guy Toastie, or Whoopseee ?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfOYQeRYVCU (just because I like that video clip)

Re: Misheard voice acting in retro games

Posted: Mon May 08, 2017 4:31 am
by Fisher
Man!! I didn't know that "Tiger Robocop" was famous in other parts of the world!!
That's great!!
Street Fighter is an almost endless source of misheard voices, specially the 16 bit home consoles versions.
I remember the shoryuken bein called "Holy user", "Holy you Zen", "Sorry you can't", "Hollywoody" (some of my friends had english classes at school :-b).
The Tatsumaki Sempukyaku (or however it is) was called "Catar tuas pulga" (Catch your fleas), "Café com cuca" (Coffe with skunk -> google translated), "Acorda as coruja" (Wake the owls).
Adon was also known for liking a lot of "Tarantino".
Akuma (or Gouki) also seemed to say "Xoxo", wich I didn't find a word in english, but it's something like this. Maybe "fail" woud be a nice word...

Other than that, I tought Eartworm Jim was continously calling "Daileon" and being totally ignored!!
Also, Jim seemed to be a big fan of little lupe (the porn actress, I'm posting nothing about her here 'cause it's a familiar site), as he seemed to scream "Lupe!" when getting a powerup. :P
The Rock'n Roll Racing narrator also seemed to say "Snake is a Battletoad!", someone took this seriously and have done this patch, wich adds Rash as a playable character!

Re: Misheard voice acting in retro games

Posted: Mon May 08, 2017 5:27 am
by Punch
Jedi QuestMaster wrote:
Played By: Uncle Bone
:?
:lol: :lol: :lol:

I never noticed it myself but apparently there's another gay oriented music in daytona usa: "I wanna fry sky hiiiigh, let's gooo to gay baaar". Apologies to gay people but I can't unhear it anymore. :lol: