Local gaming slang

[racketboy]

Everyone I know who played games at the time here pronounced called the Super Nintendo the 'Snez' and the original the 'Nez'

I think I have noticed that more in the UK

[Retrogameresource]

Everyone I know who played games at the time here pronounced called the Super Nintendo the 'Snez' and the original the 'Nez'

I think I have noticed that more in the UK

Perhaps thats why it was nearly unheard of in my area, I am US based and generally have only spoken to gamers in my area until recently.

My narrow-mindedN E S S haha

[ElkinFencer10]

Everyone I know who played games at the time here pronounced called the Super Nintendo the 'Snez' and the original the 'Nez'

I think I have noticed that more in the UK

Perhaps thats why it was nearly unheard of in my area, I am US based and generally have only spoken to gamers in my area until recently.

My narrow-mindedN E S S haha

[Jagosaurus]

We all used "regular Nintendo" or "super Nintendo" wording. Still do

I never really heard N.E.S./S.N.E.S. or the words "snes"/"nes" until years later.

We called everything "Sega." From SMS to DC.

My dad's generation here calls extra lives in shooters (Galaga, Defender, etc) "extra ships" which I always found interesting.

Apparently my Dad was the local king at Defender and his buddies still always talk about how he'd have "99 extra ships" when they unplugged "the machine."

That's another one... they called the arcade cabinet "the machine." That's gangster somehow .

[Retrogameresource]

My narrow-mindedN E S S haha[/quote]
[/quote]

Hahha man i luv bad humor

[Key-Glyph]

Great topic! Here are some I've thought of:

The first time I played Thunderforce III I thought the Option orbiters (called CLAWs) where called "ghosts" because the voice shouting the word was so garbled. Sometime later I used this mistaken term in casual conversation with Hobie-wan, the shmup connoisseur. Amusement ensued. I think he calls all shmup Options "cans."

I recently found an old journal I kept in second grade and discovered I used to call the Sega Genesis "the Sega," which I don't remember doing. I thought I always called it "the Genesis."

Growing up I referred to video game music only as "BGM," because that's how it appeared in sound tests. Now I almost exclusively say "VGM."

On the PixelTunes Radio Facebook group someone recently asked if anyone ever called Nintendo cartridges "game paks." This made me realize I only ever think of Game Boy games as "game paks" -- never NES cartridges. I figured out the reason: I was too young to read when we first had our Nintendo, so I picked up my brother's vocabulary verbally. By the time I had a Game Boy, though, I was reading manuals cover to cover, so I picked up that terminology instead and thought it was handheld-specific. The weird epilogue to this is that Nintendo was still using the game pak thing into the N64 days, but it didn't take hold for me. I probably had the Game Boy/pak association so thoroughly ingrained that I saw the term in the Mario 64 manual and laughed, thinking, "No way, that term only means teeny tiny cartridges! How silly!"

One of my best friends and I recently had miscommunication when I used the term "avatar" to mean a character's profile picture instead of their overworld sprite. I think I might use that term super loosely and inconsistently, but I hadn't thought about it until then.

I always called the directional pad the "D-Pad," but I was recently reading a manual that called it something else -- something like "directional cross" -- and I was wondering if anyone ever picked that up.

And somewhat in reverse of the original question, I'd never truly internalized the term "platformer" as a genre until Racketboy. I'd just thought of platformers as being the standard definition of video game, believing it was everything else that needed a qualifier (first-person shooter, point-and-click adventure, etc.).

And to address the NES/SNES pronunciation topic:

As a kid I would refer to the Nintendo Entertainment System as the acronym N-E-S or "the Nintendo," but I only called its successor either "the Super Nintendo" or "Super N-E-S," never by the full acronym S-N-E-S. I just don't like the way that acronym feels to say. I'm weird!

As an adult I've picked up calling them the "ness" and "sness" because the hosts of my favorite podcast did it as a joke once and I thought it was funny and cute. It makes me think of them when I say those. I particularly like saying "sness."

[Retrogameresource]

Great topic! Here are some I've thought of:

The first time I played Thunderforce III I thought the Option orbiters (called CLAWs) where called "ghosts" because the voice shouting the word was so garbled. Sometime later I used this mistaken term in casual conversation with Hobie-wan, the shmup connoisseur. Amusement ensued. I think he calls all shmup Options "cans."

I recently found an old journal I kept in second grade and discovered I used to call the Sega Genesis "the Sega," which I don't remember doing. I thought I always called it "the Genesis."

Growing up I referred to video game music only as "BGM," because that's how it appeared in sound tests. Now I almost exclusively say "VGM."

On the PixelTunes Radio Facebook group someone recently asked if anyone ever called Nintendo cartridges "game paks." This made me realize I only ever think of Game Boy games as "game paks" -- never NES cartridges. I figured out the reason: I was too young to read when we first had our Nintendo, so I picked up my brother's vocabulary verbally. By the time I had a Game Boy, though, I was reading manuals cover to cover, so I picked up that terminology instead and thought it was handheld-specific. The weird epilogue to this is that Nintendo was still using the game pak thing into the N64 days, but it didn't take hold for me. I probably had the Game Boy/pak association so thoroughly ingrained that I saw the term in the Mario 64 manual and laughed, thinking, "No way, that term only means teeny tiny cartridges! How silly!"

One of my best friends and I recently had miscommunication when I used the term "avatar" to mean a character's profile picture instead of their overworld sprite. I think I might use that term super loosely and inconsistently, but I hadn't thought about it until then.

I always called the directional pad the "D-Pad," but I was recently reading a manual that called it something else -- something like "directional cross" -- and I was wondering if anyone ever picked that up.

And somewhat in reverse of the original question, I'd never truly internalized the term "platformer" as a genre until Racketboy. I'd just thought of platformers as being the standard definition of video game, believing it was everything else that needed a qualifier (first-person shooter, point-and-click adventure, etc.).

And to address the NES/SNES pronunciation topic:

As a kid I would refer to the Nintendo Entertainment System as the acronym N-E-S or "the Nintendo," but I only called its successor either "the Super Nintendo" or "Super N-E-S," never by the full acronym S-N-E-S. I just don't like the way that acronym feels to say. I'm weird!

As an adult I've picked up calling them the "ness" and "sness" because the hosts of my favorite podcast did it as a joke once and I thought it was funny and cute. It makes me think of them when I say those. I particularly like saying "sness."

Haha awesome post, I misheard stuff all the time when I was younger too. I thought "Bare Knuckle" when Axel does his forward forward B special in Streets of Rage 2 was "Hung Duck Tao" hahah Some faux Asian language... what a dumbass I was ahah