Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Oh Crap, we forgot to give our main character a name, I KNOW! How about....

     Ok, so it occurred to me that video games back in the day didn't always have the best production values, and in this case I'm going to highlight where an otherwise lack of creative character naming can sometimes elevate a game even higher than you originally intended.  Sometimes I wish they would still do this, and rare cases you might on a small independently developed game, but I suppose when we're talking about millions to develop games now instead of much less back in the day, you can have some creative leeway with certain aspects of your game.  Now I don't just mean like funny cartoony characters with a funny cartoony names (Banjo Kazooie, Earthworm Jim), and also nothing Japanese because even if their name translates into "Clownshoes Asshat" most people stateside would never know the difference.  Also MGS and similar games gets left out because everyone in that game is obviously be referred to by intentional code names, so there is some leeway into how strange those names could be.  I mean people with names that clearly were not given by their parents and aren't nick names either, names that might make you scratch your head or wonder if maybe they got it in prison and had it legally changed much in the same way that Dennis Rodman considered having his name changed to "orgasm" at one point.

Here are a few of my favorite examples.

1. Commander Keen:  For those of us unfortunate enough to get stuck with pc games that were plagued with control problems and a number of other strange variables that can really mess up a gaming experience and not an amazing newfangled video game machine (I'm referring to the NES), Commander Keen was the Mario of the PC in the early 90's.  He was probably only likeable because of his name which would otherwise raise many questions (was his last name really "Keen", or did he change it?, or was that his military cosign or something, wait, isn't he like 12, how is he in the military?).  I don't remember the story behind him and I'm too lazy to pull up wikipedia right now so I'll go off of what I remember from roughly 20 years ago... Commander Keen typically gets marooned on alien worlds and has to fight his way through ridiculously hard platforming levels that would be playable if the PC back then wasn't a horrific example of how bad controls can turn a good game bad.  His name was probably the only thing that saved this thing, and it was a strange one to say the least.

Press F1 for Help, you're going to need it...


2.  Striker and Blade:  Bad Dudes, fighting ninjas to rescue the president.  This game with some pointers can be very satisfying once you get good at it, otherwise it's tough to play, and is redeemed only by it's colorful yet simple premise and it's simple yet somehow intriguing main characters.  I remember kids used to say one was better than the other or one was better at using weapons and the other punching (made sense, BLADE, and STRIKER), but I think most of that was just conjecture and what it really came down to was superstition or which name you thought was cooler.  Also, no last names, no military rank, if I had to guess, they pulled these guys out of prison for committing some despicable crime, and threw them back in the slammer after their post rescue celebration burgers with the president were finished.

 Decisions, Decisions....

3.  Duke Nukem:  This one is obvious and his name is so ridiculous they just had to make the whole thing silly because his name oozes masculinity, nuclear irresponsibility, and comedy.  This has only been further made ridiculous by the people who created him having so much trouble (well over a decade of trouble) to get a sequel released with his name on it.

 Fiscally and Militarily irresponsible, I'd say he's a shoe in.


4.  Vic Viper and Lord British (Gradius, Life Force): The fact that these guys even have names is kinda unnecessary.  I mean you're in a F-16 in space (try and figure that one out), and sure there could be a pilot but the game doesn't exactly have or really need much back story.  Also I'm pretty sure it's set a few thousand years in the future, would there even BE a Britain for someone to be a lord of that far in the future?  Anyhow, I suppose ridiculous names were in order when they decided to try and give this game some context and filler for the instruction manual that nobody was going to read.  Yeah, I guess they released some pretty cool anime movies based on the game series, but I don't recall seeing either of these two characters in them, so...yeah...

They have names..... and feelings...



5.  Super Joe and Rad Spenser (Bionic Commando):  Last guys on my list for now.  Clearly when screening candidates for sending a soldier on a top secret mission using highly experimental technology to go kill the clone of Adolf Hitler you need to select someone with experience, grit, and wicked cool names.  Obviously Super Joe wasn't quite good enough to get the job done, so they sent in Rad Spenser who's name was that much better and thus more qualified to finish the job.

Rad Spenser, look at all that non-threatening arsenal, he's clearly ready to take on an army and kill Hitler's Clone

That's all I have for now, any good ones I should have added to this list I would welcome in the comments section (consider the parameters I set in the opening statement).  I really hope that when some of these developers came up with the names that they were thinking that in the future people would be having crazy discussions about just this topic.