Hello my name is…
It’s hard for some gamers to remember a time when every shred of information about a video game and all of its secrets wasn’t easily available online. I’m kind of an old guy though, having been given an Atari 2600 right around the time they were new, in 1978, so I remember when information about a game was as precious as gold.
My brothers and I spent a ton of time with our Nintendo Entertainment System and even though we kept all of our game cartridges (ha!) in more or less good condition, the boxes they came and any instruction booklets were generally lost within minutes. Because of that, unless there were names given in text on the screen while playing the game, we forget or never even knew the names of just about every character in every game we ever played.
So we did what lots of kids do and made them up.
“Metroid” won the lion’s share of made-up names, but here are five of my favorites from those long ago years of gaming fun.
5. “Mac Gargan”
Years later I discovered that this guy, from the probably totally forgotten game “Trojan,” was really named Armadillon. Which I guess makes sense in retrospect because he curled up in a ball and rolled around the room trying to kill you. But we thought he looked a lot like the Spider-Man villain Scorpion, whose real name was Mac Gargan, which was much cooler AND much dumber sounding than Scorpion. So that’s what we called him. A lot, actually, since Armadillon was a pain in the ass to beat.
4. “Creampuff”
I actually don’t know precisely why we came up with this name for the boss Eruga from the first “Rygar.” For some reason, the upside-down cone shaped body and creamy white heads made us think of sweet treats. I think this boss’s name was actually on screen at some point in the game, but that didn’t matter, we called him Creampuff anyway. In a related note, we had a friend who constantly called him “The Hideous Eruga Monster” which never made much sense either.
3. “Pinguins”
No one ever knew what ANYTHING in “Kid Icarus” was called, other than the Eggplant Wizards and Medusa, so we made up all sorts of names. I think these things are actually supposed to be snakes, or winged snakes, or something, but we thought they looked like penguins and we pronounced it the way our grandmother did, which was “PINguins.” But man, “Kid Icarus” really ruled!
2. “Devil Dinosaur”
Kind of obvious, I know, but that’s what we called this tyrannosaurus boss from “Karnov,” again because of the Marvel Comics character of the same name. What? You didn’t know Marvel had a comic in the 1970s about a giant red dinosaur and his hairy little friend Moon Boy?
However, this one is notable for another reason. I am the oldest of my brothers, and my middle brother, who was quite a decent gamer despite his young years, sometimes had problems remembering longer titles and names. “Karnov” was subtitled “Karnov, the Fire Breathing Russian” or something like that. It must have appeared on the title screen or in the one glimpse we got of the instruction book or something. Only my brother could never remember that, or even the name Karnov, so he constantly called this game “Conan the Russian Eater.” Awesomeness.
1. “Sand Ass”
Nowadays, I know the names of just about everything in every game I play. And even though I made up all sorts of names for these classic NES games as a kid, today I call them by their real names. Armadillon. Eruga. You get it.
But this one here, even today, I still call by the name Sand Ass. I am speaking of the Yellow Devil from the very first “Mega Man.” Why Sand Ass? Because of the way he would stream like sand across the screen, from right to left, over and over and over again, killing you every time while you were fighting him. And why, today, is he still Sand Ass? Because I fought this thing, honestly, about 8 million times as a kid. And beat him maybe three or four times. So I have had A LOT of time think about old Sand Ass here. And he will forever be Sand Ass to me.
- Matt