In General Gaming

Sure , theyre cool and all, but, the only negative thing is (for hardcore nerds like me), is there are no more countless nights of arguements over the pronunciation of a character's name. Its a social gathering in sorts, and an interesting social mechanism.

For example: In 1996 I had this arguement at a local arcade.

Scott: Hey!
ME: Whats up? Wanna play Street Fighter 2010?
Scott: I call Ryu! (rai-yoo)
ME: Its pronounced (ree-yoo)
Scott: everyone I know calls him (rai-yoo)
ME: well everyone I know calls him (ree-you). He's japanese man!
Asian guy: Hate to interrupt you both, but The proper japanese pronunciation is "ru with a very short i in the middle"

Ah... Nostalgia.

I know what you mean. The fact is, that names like that gets pronounced differently depending on where you live. Here we pronounce several letters differently than in the US. For example when we say "I" we pronounce it like you pronounce "E". When you say "A" you say it like "AI". We say it like "AH".

So how you pronounce a name is all after what suits you best. Unless it's about a real person who prefers to get his name pronounced correctly.

Asian guy: Hate to interrupt you both, but The proper japanese pronunciation is "ru with a very short i in the middle"
I had this same debate with a friend of mine, same game, and his brother, who knows a lot of Japanese, said the same thing ^^ about Ryu's name. Every time we watch the Street Fighter 2010 movie, he grinds his teeth at the mispronounciation.

Not only in videogames, Japanese names in general are pronounced badly in most cases.

But it's a riddle to me how you could pronounce Ryu beginning with Ray...

i always pronounced it "Rye-you" and so does everyone i know

The only bad thing about voice overs is when you get a character that has an extremely annoying voice. I ran into that in The Legend of Kay. Great game, annoying voice overs.
One of the characters reminded me of a whiney slowpoke rodriguez (speedy gonzolas's cousin).

I agree heartily, Evil, but that doesn't help if the game's pronunciation is retarded. Like the "Zee-lotts" from Starcraft.



Dummies.