Words and phrases you first learned from video games...

[Emperor Megas]

Recently someone in a facebook group mentioned that Final Fantasy 6 was their first RPG, and how his mother first warmed him that he may not enjoy the game because there was "a lot of reading in it". He then jokingly thanked FF6 for improving his reading skills. He was kidding (I think) but it got me wondering. What are some words and phrases that you remember being introduced to in video games? I'm focusing more on general terms, and excluding the names of mythical creatures and the like.

A few I recall learning from video games are:

Ammonite - Phantasy Star
Citadel* - Space Harrier (SMS version)
Epilogue and Prologue - Space Harrier (SMS version)
Gauntlet - Gauntlet (arcade) As in running the gauntlet, I knew about the 'glove'.
Outskirts - Phantasy Star
Paramecium - Forgotten Worlds
Plateau - Phantasy Star
Thwart - Several games, I don't recall the first
Xenophobe - Xenophobe (arcade)

*Citadel is easily my least favorite word in the English language. I've just always REALLY hated the way it sounds. :^/

[Tanooki]

Maybe games got a bit more complex over time or I paid attention to stuff, but I don't really remember learning a real new word from a game. I think I picked up a few in comic books of all things in the 80s into 1991 when I had to stop buying them. The only thing I know I can put square on games learning words and phrases was my love of Super Famicom releases we were denied. I self taught myself the hiragana and katakana tables, bought a 3" thick dictionary, looked up some basic grammar online and started to peel away at some of the menus, tiny sentences at times, and other little things. It was pretty motivational and interesting to say the least. From my time in college I still have a 20 year old text file on my computer of where I translated the Hokuto no Ken 6 manual with the help of a half japanese co-worker.

[ccovell]

"gist" from the Zelda instruction manual.

[kupomogli]

Parasite Eve taught me about Mitochondria.

[Tanooki]

Ok here's one... Sidle. Never had I seen that word used before let alone in a video game and it started to drive me nuts seeing it in Zelda the Wind Waker.

[SpaceHarrier]

Embarrassing, but as a 7 year old reading the Legend of Zelda manual, I had no idea what the word 'chaos' was, or how to even pronounce it.

[SparTonberry]

I first heard that from the Sonic Game Gear game and I thought it was pronounced similar to "Sonic Chows".

[fergojisan]

I feel asleep.

[Gamevet]

The most obvious phrase is Game Over!

[eskobar]

LOL, my motivation to learn english were video games. My mother language is Spanish and I started to play games at 4 or 5 years with the Atari 2600 ... and after video games became more complex, the text was an important part of the game and I wanted to knew what was happening so I took a spanish/english dictionary and started to learn english LOL

[celerystalker]

LOL, my motivation to learn english were video games. My mother language is Spanish and I started to play games at 4 or 5 years with the Atari 2600 ... and after video games became more complex, the text was an important part of the game and I wanted to knew what was happening so I took a spanish/english dictionary and started to learn english LOL

That is fantastic. :)

The only one I could think of was "labyrinth" in the original Zelda, which I mispronounced for at least a year.

[retroman]

All your base are belong to us. Enough said..

[LAGO]

A winner is you. My young self thought that was correct grammar too.

[Tron 2.0]

Samurai Shodown,victoly !! :p

The Goonies II,Ouch ! What do you do !?

[SMB]

Parasite Eve taught me about Mitochondria.

You and me both haha

[Zap!]

Inevitable, in 1987 from Alex Kidd In Miracle World. For over a decade after that, I mispronounced it as "In-Evite (sorta like invite)-able." :)

Adjacent, also from 1987, in The Legend of Zelda. Strangely enough, I also mispronounced this one until my 30's as "Ajj-A-sent." :beaten:

[Az]

Inevitable, in 1987 from Alex Kidd In Miracle World. For over a decade after that, I mispronounced it as "In-Evite (sorta like invite)-able." :)

I can't think of many specific instances but the SMS introduced me to a *lot* of things. Much of it wasn't in the games themselves but in the instruction manuals where they'd have detailed names of enemies and items. I knew what a chameleon was and how to pronounce it, but I think reading it in the Wonder Boy manual was the first time I'd seen it written. I thought it was pronounced "cha-mel-on". Took me a few days to figure that out then I felt like a moron.

I was introduced to a ton of Japanese terms through SMS games and manuals. I never realized until now how openly Japanese Sega left their US releases and didn't make a lot of effort to remove that had a distinct cultural difference to US products.

Hell, I thought the little black and white onagiri thing at the end of the Miracle World stages was like a tiny cave entrance that took you to the next level. I seriously thought, "Why is Alex shown eating the cave entrance?!?" The manual said to be sure to look for the rice ball for extra points and the only rice food I'd ever heard of was a round white cake. For years I honestly thought that was a typo in the manual and Alex was eating the cave entrance until my buddy bought a newer SMS that had him eating a hamburger instead.

I can point to Miracle Warriors and Dragon Warrior as being the first things I can remember reading that were written in ye olde English. Both are pretty laughable in the attempt of just throwing "ye", "thou" or "whilst" into a sentence but as a young kid in North America it's something you'd never come across.

[Tanooki]

I guess it's the late 20th century educational experience, but I may be off on this, but I never learned metric for distance or really ever seen it up until 1990 when of all things Wing Commander came out. I had to figure out what a kilometer was and its distance relative to a mile which is what we were taught (imperial system.) I would not be surprised if kids in the 00/10s have had metric thrown at them in grade school and up but back then nope. I got curious in the big Klaw Marks guide and in flight what this whole kph/kps stuff was when they're were talking speeds and distances relative to location and target.

[Emperor Megas]

'Flotsam' I learned from the arcade game Toobin'.
'Vangaurd' from the 2600 game of the same name.
'Retainer', as in someone in service to a lord, I learned from Super Mario Bros. (Mushroom retainers)


Hell, I thought the little black and white onagiri thing at the end of the Miracle World stages was like a tiny cave entrance that took you to the next level. I seriously thought, "Why is Alex shown eating the cave entrance?!?" The manual said to be sure to look for the rice ball for extra points and the only rice food I'd ever heard of was a round white cake.Man, I LOVED SEGA for that. They used to leave so much Eastern stuff in thier games, unmolested. Alex Kidd was my first introduction to rice balls as well. Till this day my best friend and I sing "Boy, lemme tell ya, this rice tastes good!" in time to the stage map jingle that plays when Alex is eating the rice ball. Try it and you'll do it for the rest of your life.


For years I honestly thought that was a typo in the manual and Alex was eating the cave entrance until my buddy bought a newer SMS that had him eating a hamburger instead.Urgh. I didn't appreciate the later burger change AT ALL.

[Zap!]

Hell, I thought the little black and white onagiri thing at the end of the Miracle World stages was like a tiny cave entrance that took you to the next level. I seriously thought, "Why is Alex shown eating the cave entrance?!?" The manual said to be sure to look for the rice ball for extra points and the only rice food I'd ever heard of was a round white cake. For years I honestly thought that was a typo in the manual and Alex was eating the cave entrance until my buddy bought a newer SMS that had him eating a hamburger instead.

That's funny, because at the time I always thought the rice ball looked exactly like popcorn! In fact, in the first world, my friend's and I said "eww, soggy popcorn!" since it was under water. :)

So they changed it to a hamburger? I never knew that, interesting that there were two versions!

[Koa Zo]

penultimate: Light Crusader

[SpaceFlea]

Eviscerate - Vay

I also pronounced it evis-crate for a few years.

[SparTonberry]

A relatively recent one, thanks to Twitch Plays Pokemon plays Pokemon Battle Revolution: "IMMOLATED BY BLAST BURN!"

Looking up the definition to "immolated" at it's kind of funny to hear that from a Pokemon game, considering the crazies calling Pokemon a satanic cult.

[Satoshi_Matrix]

I first played Pokemon before I had a bank account, so it was through Pokemon Red/Blue that I learned the words Deposit and Withdraw. To my child mind the phrases "put in" and "take out" would have been much more understandable.

[Gameplayer1500]

One of the pokemon games, you needed to deliver a parcel. Maybe I was just dumb back then but I didnt know what it was.

[Jehusephat]

I learned the word 'bung' from Hugo's House of Horrors. I also pronounced the name Penelope as one would pronounce the words 'pen' and 'elope,' having never heard it said aloud before.