\n<\/p>\n
S<\/span>ome snippets of video game dialogue, like classic movie quotes, are immediately recognisable to a swathe of fans. From Street Fighter\u2019s \u201chadouken!\u201d to Call of Duty\u2019s \u201cremember, no Russian\u201d to BioShock\u2019s \u201cwould you kindly?\u201d, there are phrases so creepy, clever or cool they have slipped imperceptibly into the gaming lexicon, ensuring that whenever they\u2019re memed on social media, almost everyone gets the reference.<\/p>\n But there are also odd little phrases, sometimes from obscure games, that stick with us for seemingly no reason. I recall most of the vocal barks from the second world war strategy game Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines, even though I haven\u2019t played it for 20 years. Why is it that I\u2019ll lose my headphones, wallet and phone on a daily basis, but I have absolute recall when it comes to the utterances of burly soldier Samuel Brooklyn? Why am I doomed to \u201cFinally, some action\u201d, \u201cConsider it done, boss\u201d and the immortal \u201cokey dokey\u201d echoing through my head? What is wrong with me?<\/p>\n Fortunately, when I posted about this on Bluesky, I discovered I was not alone. Hundreds of gamers got back to me about the random game dialogue lodged in their own heads. Some were lesser-known quotes from famous titles: comic book writer Kieron Gillen is haunted by the line \u201cI\u2019ve not seen such bravery\u201d from Gauntlet, while video game academic Kat Brewster wrote that she thinks about the game\u2019s \u201cah, sustenance!\u201d line all the time. Matthew Castle, of the gaming podcast The Back Page, simply cannot forget the way Beedle says thank you in The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. Game designer and artist Anna Hollinrake cannot escape the voice of the random Pok\u00e9mon trainer who said: \u201cWhether hot to trot or cool cat not, chill at my papa\u2019s shop.\u201d \u201cIt runs around in my head again and again,\u201d she said. \u201cDrives me mad.\u201d<\/p>\n Some games came up again and again. Worms, Grand Theft Auto, House of the Dead and Monkey Island seem to be filled with memorable lines, sometimes because they\u2019re funny, but often because they\u2019re simply ludicrous. One fan of Bungie\u2019s shooter Marathon has been unable to forget the phrase \u201cFrog blast the vent core!\u201d, only later discovering its strange origin. Many players had adopted these lines of dialogue into their every day lives \u2013 several respondents admitted to thinking \u201cwizard needs food badly\u201d whenever they open the fridge door.<\/p>\n <\/span>In my head \u2026 Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines.<\/span> Photograph: Pyro Studios<\/p>\n So why have so many obscure lines remained in our brains all these years? Partly it\u2019s about sheer repetition: in a 20-hour action-adventure game filled with non-player characters, you\u2019re going to hear the same \u201cbarks\u201d (quick pieces of NPC dialogue that express surprise or provide contextual information) over and over again. This is why so many people recall everything the merchant says in Resident Evil 4 \u2013 by the end of the game, you\u2019ve heard \u201cWhat\u2019re ya buyin\u2019?\u201d several hundred times. There is also an element of echolalia, the repetition of certain comforting words and sounds as an act of self-soothing. Games are built around rhythm and repetition, so it is perhaps natural for us to adopt elements of these patterns into our lives.<\/p>\n Game dialogue can also become an in-joke with friends, enforcing bonds and shared interests and memories in the same way as quoting pieces of movie dialogue. Bluesky user Steve O\u2019Gorman wrote this about F-Zero GX: \u201cSamurai Goroh\u2019s line delivery of \u2018You stole the prize money from us last time\u2019 while flailing his arms has randomly stuck with my friendship group for 20+ years.\u201d With video games, our own subjective experiences in the worlds can often be as memorable and valuable as the intended narratives. Sometimes, the idea that we could be the only player to have encountered an obscure character, or heard a specific snatch of dialogue, creates a connection with the game that becomes personal.<\/p>\n I don\u2019t think I have a deep connection with tough Samuel Brooklyn, despite the number of times I sent him to his death while he yelled the immortal words: \u201cNo problem, man.\u201d But clearly, I was going through something when I was playing that game, or I was just amused by the disparity between the seriousness of the fight against the Nazis and the daft, repetitive phrases that accompanied my every mouse click. We never really know what makes a moment of our life memorable, or why a line from an old episode of Gilmore Girls, Twin Peaks or Scarface sticks around in our subconscious. But it\u2019s nice to know we\u2019re not alone with our weird little aural collections.<\/p>\n <\/span>Scoundrel\u2019s tale \u2026 Star Wars Outlaws.<\/span> Photograph: Ubisoft<\/p>\n Unfairly maligned on its original release and now available in a lush Nintendo Switch 2 conversion, Star Wars Outlaws<\/strong> is one of my favourite ever Star Wars games. Choosing to eschew all the mysticism and vainglorious posturing of Jedi lore in favour of a scoundrel-turned-resistance hero story, it\u2019s an exciting romp across familiar planets, against familiar Imperial bad guys.<\/p>\n The design of the worlds and the various bases and spacecraft you explore is incredible, capturing the slightly battered futurism of those early Ralph McQuarrie concept sketches, and the dialogue is often genuinely funny. Lead character Kay Vess is a nobody in the Star Wars canon, but that\u2019s the whole point, and the relationships she forges on her quest to pull off the ultimate heist against the Empire reflect the themes and ideals of the original movie. For such a big story, the Switch 2 screen makes a wonderful venue, allowing you to carry a whole galaxy with you wherever you go.<\/p>\n Available on: <\/strong>PC, PS5, Switch 2, Xbox <\/span>Bugged out \u2026 Hollow Knight: Silksong.<\/span> Photograph: Team Cherry<\/p>\n Eurogamer has kicked off a series of features about contentious topics in video game design, and the first looks at the subject of boss runbacks<\/strong> \u2013 ie the length of space and gameplay between a checkpoint and a boss battle. Silksong has been challenging (frustrating?) gamers with its lengthy, often difficult runbacks, which can seem like a sadistic insult after you\u2019ve failed a boss fight for the 56th time. But are they, in fact, a legitimate part of the rhythm of games? In my opinion, they are the worst<\/em>, but don\u2019t get me started.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n I didn\u2019t think I\u2019d ever link to the United Nations on this newsletter, but the organisation has just featured a piece about video games and democracy<\/strong> on its website to mark the International Day of Democracy (15 September). The piece looks at the history of persuasive games and advergames made by charities to highlight campaigns and asks if games have a role in informing players about democratic rights and participation.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n The wonderful retro gaming zine Forgotten Worlds<\/strong> is back with a new issue, this time dedicated to Sega, or more specifically the company\u2019s \u201cblue skies\u201d period of the late 80s and early 90s when its arcade and home console games invariably took place in super-bright, sunshine-lit worlds. There are lots of excerpts from contemporary games mags as well as interviews with key Sega staff and journalists including Gary Cutlack, founder of influential Sega fansite UK Resistance. Nostalgic gold.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Sign up to Pushing Buttons<\/span><\/p>\n Keza MacDonald’s weekly look at the world of gaming<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.<\/span><\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n <\/span>On the shelf \u2026 books on video games, politics and culture.<\/span> Photograph: Aleksandr Volkov\/Alamy<\/p>\n This week\u2019s question came via email from Amanda S, who asked:<\/p>\n \u201cGiven how much video games are in the news at the moment, are there any books about the connection between video games and politics?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n There are, but not many. Several titles touch on the themes we\u2019re used to \u2013 ie are games addictive or bad for us? Among these, I recommend Lost in a Good Game<\/strong> by Pete Etchells and Extra Lives<\/strong> by Tom Bissell. More overtly sociopolitical examples are Angela Nagle\u2019s vitally important Kill All Normies<\/strong>, Shira Chess\u2019s Play Like a Feminist<\/strong> and Marijam Did\u2019s Everything to Play For<\/strong>.<\/p>\n I also recommend Games of Empire<\/strong> by Nick Dyer-Witheford and Greig de Peuter, and Blood, Sweat, and Pixels<\/strong> by Jason Schreier, which look at the sometimes shadowy economics of the industry. Finally, look out for Power Play<\/strong> by games industry journalist (and Pushing Buttons contributor!) George Osborn, on how corporations and governments use the popularity of games for political purposes. That\u2019s out next year.<\/p>\n If you\u2019ve got a question for Question Block \u2013 or anything else to say about the newsletter \u2013 hit reply or email us <\/em>at pushingbuttons@theguardian.com.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Some snippets of video game dialogue, like classic movie quotes, are immediately recognisable to a swathe of fans. From Street Fighter\u2019s \u201chadouken!\u201d to Call of Duty\u2019s \u201cremember, no Russian\u201d to BioShock\u2019s \u201cwould you kindly?\u201d, there are phrases so creepy, clever or cool they have slipped imperceptibly into the gaming lexicon, ensuring that whenever they\u2019re memed<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22203,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[13620,413,378,2447,5651,13322,11679,94],"class_list":{"0":"post-22202","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-technology","8":"tag-dialogue","9":"tag-game","10":"tag-games","11":"tag-heads","12":"tag-lines","13":"tag-random","14":"tag-stuck","15":"tag-video"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22202","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22202"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22202\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/22203"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22202"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22202"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}What to play<\/h2>\n
Estimated playtime: <\/strong>25+ hours<\/p>\nWhat to read<\/h2>\n
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What to click<\/h2>\n
Question Block<\/h2>\n