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HOW GAMES CHARACTERS GOT THEIR NAMES

4/8/2016

9 Comments

 
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You know how Super Mario was named after Mario Segale, the landlord of Nintendo of America's office, yes? It's a good story. It's an interesting story. And we're ending it here. There's just no time to recount right now. There really isn't. We have to move on. 

You see, it is time already for nine more stories about how the games characters got their names, and one story about a protein. That's not even a joke. 
PAC-MAN
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We all know the urban myth that the look of Pac-Man was inspired by a pizza with a slice missing. Some of you may have even seen arcade cabinets titled "Puck-Man", and wondered what that was all about. This, you see, was the name of the game in Japan - inspired by the character's resemblance to a hockey puck.

When brought to the West by Midway, the name was changed to "Pac" - to avoid filthy-minded vandals changing the "P" to an "F". Even though Fac-Man has its own certain appeal.
DONKEY KONG
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Monkey Kong was the original name for Donkey Kong, according to apocryphal legend - until a blurred fax led to it being erroneously retitled "Donkey". In reality, the game's designer Shigeru Miyamoto selected the name "Donkey" after looking in a Japanese-English dictionary for a word which meant "silly" or "stubborn". Perhaps just as well he didn't call it "Ass Kong" - which sounds like something you'd buy discreetly from a specialist retailer.
Q*BERT
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An early working title for Gottlieb's Q*Bert was "Snots And Boogers". When that was rejected, for reasons which aren't too hard to fathom, it became briefly known as "@!#?@!" - inspired by Q*Bert's penchant for censored swearing.

Wisely, it was argued that releasing a game with an unpronounceable name might not make commercial sense. Hubert was suggested at a desperate staff meeting - which was then combined with "cubes" to become "Cubert". The company's art director Richard Tracy then tweaked that to Q*Bert.

Tracy - ha ha, girl's name - has since gone on record lamenting the asterisk in the game's title, meaning it would never become the answer in a crossword puzzle. He needs to get over that.
SONIC HEDGEHOG
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Originally named Mr Needlemouse, Sonic The Hedgehog's name is fairly self-explanatory. He's a supersonic hedgehog, see.

However, get this: he actually has a human protein named after him - the Sonic Hedgehog - which is partially responsible for limb growth and brain organisation. A potential inhibitor of the protein's signalling pathway has even been dubbed "Robotnikinin", in honour of Sonic's arch-enemy Dr Robotnik.

Digitiser: come for the video game naming trivia... stay for the protein facts.
THE LEGEND OF ZELDA
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Princess Zelda is named after Zelda Fitzgerald, the wife of the author F. Scott Fitzgerald (who once wrote "You can stroke people with words" - which is clearly abject nonsense, suggesting he can't have been that good a writer).

Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto chose the name because the real Zelda was - like the Princess - a "famous and beautiful woman". Link was originally named Christo, after Miyamoto's godfather, or something. Link was ultimately settled upon, as he represents a "link" between the player and the game.

LARA CROFT
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Apparently inspired by Neneh Cherry and Tank Girl to be a tough, no-nonsense, female action hero, with - one presumes - a buffalo stance, Tomb Raider designer Toby Guard originally envisioned the main character as a Latin-American adventuress called Laura Cruz.

When Eidos boss Ian Livingstone declared he wanted the character to be a member of the British aristocracy, with massive pointy boobs, they went through a telephone directory until they found the suitably British-sounding Lara Croft.
MASTER CHIEF
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For a protagonist with all the emotional depth and characterisation of a walnut, it somehow seems right that Master Chief's name is nothing but a placeholder. Halo's development team first selected his rank, and had always intended to give him a proper name to go with it. As the game got closer to completion, and time to come up with an alternative started to run out, Master Chief stuck.
MORTAL KOMBAT
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Dragon Attack, Death Blow, Kumite, and Fatality were just some of the awful alternatives considered before Midway's Mortal Kombat got its sort-of-alright final title. In the end, an act of simple graffiti chose the name - the word "combat" had been written on an office wipe board, but somebody had altered the C to a K. It inspired a pinball designer to suggest it as a potential new title.

Probably just as well that they hadn't changed it to a W. 
METROID
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Metroid was set in a series of subterranean caverns - and they provided the primary inspiration behind the title for the game, which is a combination of the words "android" and "metro subway". Before settling upon its final name, it was known internally at Nintendo by the far less exotic "Space Hunter".

More esoterically, the game's protagonist Samus Aran was named after the footballer Pelé - whose real name is Edson Arantes do Nascimento. That's a stupid name.
DOOM
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The Color of Money, a movie about pool hustling, starring Tom Cruise and Paul Newman, provided the inspiration for Doom's title. In one scene, Cruise's character describes the contents of a pool case as "Doom". Cruise then goes on to wipe the floor with his opponent - something which Doom's creators confidently predicted would happen to id Software's opponents in the games industry. What a bunch of cocky shits.
FROM THE ARCHIVE:
10 THINGS YOU NEVER KNEW ABOUT SONIC THE HEDGEHOG
GAMES OF MY YEARS: POKEMON - BY MR BIFFO
WE ASKED THESE GAME DEVELOPERS IF THEY'D EVER BEEN VISITED BY THE GHOST OF BRAHMS - AND NOT A SINGLE ONE REPLIED

9 Comments
Chris
4/8/2016 09:44:01 am

I work in biological science, and I despair every time someone brings up that bloody protein. You see, us in microbiology behave like librarians, and have a fairly strict naming system for bacterial genes and proteins, so nothing sounds too ridiculous. Those people who work on flies and humans and so on, they don't give a monkey's arse (because those are valuable for experiments) about comprehensible and consistent naming. Hence, Sonic Hedgehog protein, which unfortunately turned out to be quite important and now embarasses us at all when it comes up in a presentation.

More irritating proteins with videogame references:
Pikachurin (http://www.chm.bris.ac.uk/sillymolecules/pikachurin.pdf)
Pacman (http://www.chm.bris.ac.uk/sillymolecules/pacman.pdf)
Earthbound (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21399610)

Reply
standard_crab
4/8/2016 10:14:25 am

Maybe protein-namers should stop being such a bunch of nerds and name a protein Hordor or something

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Dr Peanuts
4/8/2016 11:47:57 am

What about "Protein 1" or "Protein 7"?

Klone
4/8/2016 04:36:52 pm

Brilliant! Pikachurin sounds like evidence of our lord Pikachu's existence on earth to me. =D

Reply
Talcum Sidney
4/8/2016 01:12:44 pm

Crash Bandicoot - Originally called 'Crash Hedgehog' in an attempt to cash-in on Sonics waning popularity, the name was changed when Naughty Dog realized the character is a bandicoot

Notch - The Minecraft creator took his name from a simple conversation in the Mojang offices. When Notch asked his colleague what sandwich he wanted for lunch, he responded 'Anything, just not cheese'. Notch liked the sound of the 'Not ch' part so much he adopted it as his moniker!

Charlie the Fucking Prick - later renamed Luigi due to marketing concerns

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Retroresolution link
4/8/2016 03:13:05 pm

I laughed more than I should have at the last line - ta!

Reply
Damon link
5/8/2016 06:36:58 am

I was expecting this to be about fonts.

"You see the A is named for the first sound a newborn makes, if it makes another sound it is shot."
"The B is named for actress Bea Arthur, Prior to that it was named William have William Shakespeare."

And so on.

Reply
Spiney O'Sullivan
5/8/2016 08:58:34 am

It's a little known fact that Batman in the hit game Arkham City was named after a popular comic book character of the same name. Those cheeky monkeys at Rocksteady were lucky not to get sued for that.

Reply
Sky's_Edge
23/8/2016 12:10:28 pm

I read an interview with Toru Iwatani a while back in Retro Gamer where he says that the name Pac Man came about because the term 'pac' (or rather 'pac pack) is an onomatopoeic term for chewing or eating in Japan (think 'nom nom').

Reply



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