regional game slang

[MrSparkle]

Alright so I've noticed people in the south in the us tend to call carts tapes (ie nes tapes). what other regional game slang can you think of?

[dlopez9069]

Actually im from the south and I've never heard tapes. But I have noticed the south uses broad genres for example we don't use FPS of TPS just shooter.

[GnawRadar]

I'm not sure if this is regional but I've heard regular genesis and NES controllers been called paddles or remotes before.

[EX-Soldier]

Alright so I've noticed people in the south in the us tend to call carts tapes (ie nes tapes). what other regional game slang can you think of?

i dont know if that whole "tape" thing was exclusive to the south or if it even originated there at all, growing up we called all 8 bit & 16 bit era games "tapes" in nyc and jersey area, possibly connecticut as well but dont quote me on that

[CelticJobber]

I live in the south, but I've only heard a few old people refer to videogames as "Nintendo tapes".

[DefaultGen]

.....

[EX-Soldier]

They're incorrect. Gradius is a shooter. :bad-words:

then you sir would be wrong, technically its a shoot-em-up or shmup =(

[Icarus Moonsight]

No, shooter being used as a term to refer to FPS games is just recent common use. It is still, technically, incorrect. Fuck common use.

DefaultGen is also half wrong... Gradius is an awesome shooter. ;)

[NayusDante]

I always resented use of the term "beat the game" to describe finishing or completing a game, something I heard commonly growing up in Florida. As the NES Games Without Ending thread shows, there is no way to "beat" the game, and "beating" a game just sounds wrong anyway.

[Damaramu]

No, shooter being used as a term to refer to FPS games is just recent common use. It is still, technically, incorrect. Fuck common use.

So true. I HATE "shmup" and refuse to use it. :bad-words:

[TonyTheTiger]

I'm finding it less used now, but it used to be pretty common to call levels "boards."

[segagamer]

I also agree with others that I HATE the term "shmup" and refuse to use it. I will always use the term "shooter" for horizontal, vertical, or 3rd person scrolling shooters. FPS is not "shooter," and I don't like them at all.

[jb143]

I'm finding it less used now, but it used to be pretty common to call levels "boards."

My wife calls them boards. I'd never heard it before then so I figured it was just her LOL

[pookninja]

all fps and shoot-em-ups were always just called shooters in my neck of the woods.(doom is a shooter,gradius is a shooter)until the last few years.now doom is called fps and gradius is still called a shooter.i still refer to all fps and shoot-em-ups as shooters.im getting older and hate change.

[EX-Soldier]

I'm finding it less used now, but it used to be pretty common to call levels "boards."

LOL damn u just took me back, completely 4got about that

[robotriot]

In German, we use the English term Jump 'n' Run for platform games. I was very surprised to learn that this wasn't the normal term for that genre in English back when I first read of "platform games". Also, we called all fighting games Beat 'em Ups, and I am not aware of any distinctive term for versus fighting games (Street Fighter) and actual beat 'em ups (Streets of Rage). From what I can remember, "shmups" have always been called Shoot 'em Ups as well since the 1980s, while the term (Ego-)shooter refers to FPS games.

[MrRoboto19XX]

I'm finding it less used now, but it used to be pretty common to call levels "boards."

I recall more than a few people calling them "Screens" as well.

[MrSparkle]

my uncle used to call levels boards. he also used to refer to ANY type of warp as a warp pipe (hailing back to super mario bros 1). though i doubt these are really regional terms as he lives in essentially the same region as myself, hes just a bit eccentric. (before the internet this guy was my answer to getting stuck in video games, just call him up and if he isnt familiar with the game he could at least reason out what to do next over the phone)

[jb143]

I'm not sure how regional it is but a lot of people will call extra lives extra guys or extra men.

The hard part about comming up with lists of regional sayings is that it's hard to recognise your way as not being the "different" way. I always called the game system a "system" so I just assume everyone else did as well, so when I hear it called a deck it sounds silly...even though that's what the manual called it.

[TonyTheTiger]

my uncle used to call levels boards. he also used to refer to ANY type of warp as a warp pipe (hailing back to super mario bros 1).

I think that's pretty common for certain high profile games to have their terminology trump the generic term. Kind of like how certain brand names become the norm. Band-Aid instead of bandage, Crisco instead of shortening, Ipod instead of MP3 player, etc. In fighting games, people often refer to perfects as flawless victories or flawlesses. Any death move becomes "fatality." Quarter-circle forward motions are referred to as "Hadouken-moves."

[NayusDante]

I remember a time when the kids judged games by number of levels. When I tried to explain the games I liked, they got confused, because I've always been more into RPGs and adventure games. I suppose the equivalent would be distinct locations or regions, but they had it in their mind that games were linear sets of levels/stages. I'm sure the confusion applied to other genres as well, but the word "level" simply referred to any part of a game.

How about the concept of lives? 1-Up vs Extra Man/Life, Lives vs Chances vs Tries, etc.

[Captaintim]

I am from Jersey and I used to call FPS (like doom also this was the time period I used the term) a Run and Gun game

[CelticJobber]

I also agree with others that I HATE the term "shmup" and refuse to use it.

I also hate that term, in fact it pisses me off so bad that I would be tempted to punch someone in the face if I heard them say "shmup", but luckily its a term I've never heard used in real life.

[dr101z]

So true. I HATE "shmup" and refuse to use it. :bad-words:
Yeah, I won't use the term shmup either.

[tcv]

Alright so I've noticed people in the south in the us tend to call carts tapes (ie nes tapes). what other regional game slang can you think of?

I'm from New Orleans. As kids, I called Atari carts "tapes" but mostly because I didn't know any better. Another reason: They resembled 8-track tapes, which were available at the time. But I never though of this as something like "regional game slang."

And certainly I don't know of anyone who calls them that now. Of course, cartridges really don't come up in many conversations, but I digress...

[GarrettCRW]

my uncle used to call levels boards. he also used to refer to ANY type of warp as a warp pipe (hailing back to super mario bros 1). though i doubt these are really regional terms as he lives in essentially the same region as myself, hes just a bit eccentric. (before the internet this guy was my answer to getting stuck in video games, just call him up and if he isnt familiar with the game he could at least reason out what to do next over the phone)

Does he wear a bow tie, like, every day?

[dr101z]

This is turning out to be a pretty good idea for a thread.

I used to hear people refer to carts as tapes back the 80's and like TCV said it was mostly because they resembled 8-track tapes.

FPS to me and the people I know always meant "frames per second" so games like Doom and Unreal were always called first person shooters.

Games like Gradius, ThunderCross, etc. were either shooters, shoot'em ups or side-scrolling shooters.

Game consoles were always called game systems or just systems. I know that the manuals referred to some systems as decks but I have never heard anyone actually use that term. Back in the 80's people wouldn't even call it a system. You would say something like "Do you have an Atari?" ...to which people would reply either "Yes" or "No, I have an Intellivision." Okay, so no one really admitted to having an Intellivision back then... :-)

Around these parts you didn't refer to it as a NES or a SNES you called it a Nintendo or a Super Nintendo.

At some point in the 90's people stopped referring to games by the media that they were on and just called it what it was; a game.

Donkey Kong used to be derogatorily known as Chutes and Ladders.

Mario Bros. and Super Mario Bros. style games were known as platform games or just "a platformer."

-dr101z

[Haoie]

Not sure if this happens anywhere else, but in NZ, people sometimes call all arcade games 'spacies'.

[rkotm]

'round down here they call games just nintendo. "i played that on the nintendo" Also super mario bros is mario or mario 3, etc. and then the conversation moves away to like wrestling or cars or something.

[8bitCaged]

all i know my dad calls pokemon pokeman that about it

[FrakAttack]

Before the term "shmups" came along, we used to call them side-scrolling shooters, top-down shooters or just plain shooters.

What used to bug the crap out of me was when people would argue that the "POW" in Capcom games stood for "Prisoner Of War." I'm pretty sure that it was short for either "Power" or "Power-up."

[c0ldb33r]

My wife's family calls save files banks, as in save banks.

Never heard of that before. I don't know if its regional or not, I doubt it since we live in the same region ;)

[NayusDante]

What used to bug the crap out of me was when people would argue that the "POW" in Capcom games stood for "Prisoner Of War." I'm pretty sure that it was short for either "Power" or "Power-up."

We all know that bringing those prisoners onboard makes your plane stronger.

[Rev. Link]

I always assumed that "shmup" was just typing shorthand for "shoot-em-up", and that nobody actually pronounced it that way. If anyone does, I would have to say that's about as stupid as actually pronouncing "lol" or other 'net slang.

I don't understand this aversion to calling FPS games shooters, though. I understand that games like Gradius and the like had the tag first, but FPS stands for first person *shooter*! So calling Doom a shooter is perfectly acceptable, imo.

I always tended to call shoot-em-ups scrolling shooters, anyway, which clearly differentiates them from FPS games. There can be more than one type of shooter, folks. It's not too different from how people call Zelda-type games adventure games, while point-and-click titles like Shadowgate or even Myst are also called adventure games, even though they play totally different.

[The Clonus Horror]

Wisconsin: To this day I call extra lives "extra guys," levels are "boards," and your controller is only a "paddle" if it doesn't work, ie. "$%J*-in' PADDLE!" Also, two-player co-op is "doubles." Finishing a game is "beating the game."

[tcv]

Someone who beats me at any game is a "fucking asshole." But I suspect that's not game slang either. I suspect it's a personal problem.

[Rob2600]

In NJ and NYC, my friends and I have always used the phrase "beat the game."

In the mid to late 1980s, before the term "boss" became popular, my friends and I used to say "end guy."

[j_factor]

It's not too different from how people call Zelda-type games adventure games, while point-and-click titles like Shadowgate or even Myst are also called adventure games, even though they play totally different.

I've heard people on the internet refer to Zelda as an adventure game, and also games like Metroid and Wonder Boy in Monster World, but I never heard that growing up. I remember my dad always said Zelda (and its first sequel on NES) was a role-playing game (we didn't abbreviate it to RPG). Today, most people would say that the first Zelda was not an RPG, but I remember it being described as such by many people (not just my dad). Apart from the method of fighting, Zelda does bear a resemblance to the early Ultima games. The term "adventure game" was reserved for games like King's Quest, and also Zork and the like.

I also remember genres being generally referred to by a present participle, rather than a noun. For example, "shooting game" instead of "shooter", "platforming" instead of "platformer", etc. Wonder Boy III was both platforming and role-playing, but we always said "platforming and role-playing", rather than rephrasing it to sound like its own genre (ie, not "platform RPG" or whatever). That phenomenon is now extinct, however.

Also, someone mentioned "top-down shooters" to mean shmups (or shoot-em ups, shooters, or whatever you want to call them), but to me, the term "top-down shooter" means a game like Ikari Warriors or Soldiers of Fortune. I would call a game like Ikaruga a "vertical shooter" or "vertical scrolling shooter", and Lords of Thunder would be a "horizontal shooter" or "side-scrolling shooter".

We actually called the Nintendo Entertainment System "NES" out loud (en ee ess). SNES was always "Super NES". Genesis was just "Sega". Master System was "Sega Master", and any form of Turbografx/Duo was shortened to "Turbo". "Atari" meant the VCS/2600, as I never knew the existence of the 5200 or 7800. I did know of Atari 8-bit, which we called "Atari computer". Atari ST was simply "ST". "Commodore" meant the C64, or sometimes we said "the original Commodore" to distinguish it from the Amiga, although that was just "Amiga", not "Commodore Amiga". I never knew what a PET, VIC-20, or Commodore 128 was.

When I was like 7 my friend's older brother told me that "Mac" (as in the computer) was short for Most Applications Crash. A while later I found out the full acronym, which was "Most Applications Crash, If Not, The Operating System Hangs". I guess I've always been a huge nerd at heart, because that little joke has been ingrained in my memory ever since.