VGC Top Ten: Worst Videogame Character Names
by Stephen Kelley, posted on 03 February 2010 / 21,927 Views
They say that a name can make a man. In the cases of these video game characters, one can only hope that these guys have a cool nickname to make up for the terrible moniker that was chosen for them at birth. This is a top ten of the worst names given to video game characters, in no particular order.
Let’s face it; in order for “Super Mario Bros.” to make sense, the namesake's brothers are named Mario Mario and Luigi Mario. Luigi Mario is a bad enough name, a name that sounds like a bad Japanese metal band, but his brother is the worst. Mario went through a few name changes in his time, being called both “Jumpman” and “Mr. Video” at some point in his early life. Poor Mario Mario, he was so embarrassed by his name he tried to hide it with a crappy set of nicknames.
Donkey Kong is a strong case for why characters should have their name changed sometimes when a game heads overseas. Originally Shigeru Miyamoto believed "donkey" meant "stupid" in English (as in calling someone an ass), and assumed the name Donkey Kong would convey the sense "stupid ape" to an American audience. OOPS!
Sol Badguy is one of those names that makes me laugh when I see it, no matter what. It reminds me of the ludicrous names in many anime shows (Gundam comes to mind for bad names) in that it looks like someone looked at a dictionary for random words. I guess we can chalk it up to the non-serious nature of the Guilty Gear series, but it’s still a silly name no matter how you slice it.
When picking animal names for Mega man X, you would think that an obscure name for a type of beetle would be pretty much the last item to chose. In comes Boomer Kuwanger, confusing Americans for nearly 15 years now. A Kuwanger, for those who do not know, is a stylized way to say "Kuwagata" or Stag beetle. Instead of just saying “beetle” or even “Kuwagata” so folks could just look up the name, we were stuck with what sounds like Gibberish.
Noob Saibot (Mortal Kombat)
We all know the origin of the name Noob Saibot, being the name of the main two developers for Mortal Kombat. That fact does not excuse how stupid the name is. By just hearing the name I imagine a poorly equipped robot that fights with sai shorts words, rather than the black clad ninja that he is.
Seaman (Seaman)
Any teenager around during the introduction of the Sega Dreamcast can tell you exactly how hilarious the name “seaman” was with eloquence of Beavis and Butthead. One quick look and the average guy will not see SEA MAN, as in two words, but SEMEN as in the bodily fluid.
While a simple mistranslation of Errol (as in Errol Flyn), the minor character Error has gained notoriety in the realm of funny videogame moments. Walking up to this old man reveals the statement “I AM ERROR!” leading some to believe that some sort of sloppy programming had occurred, but this is not the case. For those that have finished the game, Error pops up a few times and is spoken to by name by other characters, so it’s just a typo, and a dumb one at that.
I know that the popular way to refer to Mr. Posterior nowadays, is Bartz, but many will point out that his name was originally “Butsu” or Butz or Butts. whichever one you pick, he was still named after someone’s hindquarters. In the days now where every Final Fantasy character is named after some kind of weather (Cloud, Squall, Lightning etc..) we can get spoiled by having games without silly names. Final Fantasy V had another few bad names of note including “guido” a derogatory name for an Italian Americans, and X-death which is quite possibly less inspired than if the boss was called “Finale Bosse” or something.
I’ve seen characters named Cheese, Apple and any other number of food names, but Corn takes the cake as the least cool sounding food based name. I guess it word be worse to be named "Hummus", but until that happens I stand by my statement. At least he could have been trendy and spelled it “Korn” complete with backwards “R”, but I guess the mid nineties were too far gone when the game came out.
Poo (Earthbound)
I guess it’s good the martial arts master of the game Earthbound wasn’t named Turd or something, but poo is pretty bad. It’s kind of like when I order the pup u platter from the Chinese restaurant, I hope that what I am ordering is actually a plate of fried appetizers, and not what it sounds like.
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