Originally, the ‘Super’ in ‘Super Mario Bros’ was presumably meant to indicate that the game was a souped-up, extra sophisticated, super version of the original ‘Mario Bros’ game. Somewhere down the line however, it became the fuckin’ guy’s name. This is stupid. Nintendo didn’t rename themselves SUPER NINTENDO when they released the SNES.
Stupid.
Honourable mention: PlayStation.
I get that it’s a play on ‘workstation’, but you know what ‘workstation’ doesn’t have? A capital S, that’s what. We’re largely free of errant capital letters in brand names these days, but this one persists. Even Sony became aware of this boneheaded moronitude. Their third console had its name in all-caps to hide the typographical abomination:
And ever since then they’ve abbreviated the thing entirely to ‘PS’, avoiding use of this hideous word where possible.
I don’t know what started the mid-word capitalization trend, but it bugs me every time. (Something like SaGa can kinda get away with it? It’s not as bad in shorter words.)
Nobody ever called it PlanetSide, Sony, it’s just Planetside.
Baldur’s Gate 3 drives me batty. It’s not a sequel to Baldur’s Gate or Baldur’s Gate II, and Larian/press also normally refers to it as Baldur’s Gate 3 instead of Baldur’s Gate III (except in the logo, where they used Roman numerals just like Baldur’s Gate II does)
They should have called it Baldur’s Gate: The Trouble with Tadpoles or some other subtitle, and I will die on that hill
I was going to say that I didn’t like ‘Content Creator’, and that it sounds like the kind of title you’d give a lowly factory employee who mindlessly churns out some kind of unpleasant, regurgitated commodity nobody needs, who earns the respect of his factory coworkers and those addicted to the gruel factory’s vile product but is otherwise scraped from decent society like excrement from a boot. Then I changed my mind.
I think the whole world should adopt my personal stylization of GOD HAND (all capital letters and bold, never italicized for any reason) because it best captures the game’s straightforward, forceful spirit
Posted from an alternate universe where this is the “Stylizations I Prefer” thread
“A love letter to” is one that gets my goat too. We have so many good words to use that better communicate what you probably mean! An homage, a tribute!
Love Letter implies it’s a soppy romantic piece written by a lovesick individual incapable of seeing fault in what they’re writing about which I feel often devalues the innovations and improvements that often appear in games described as a ‘love letter to X’.
Metroidvania too, don’t like it. Why did “Doom-clone” fall into obscurity but “Metroidvania” persists?
It’s so much more useful and interesting to describe games than to say ‘it’s like x’.
I don’t want to put a damper on things but I’m just going to point out that the vibe of the forum is mostly talking about things we DO like - this hasn’t gone off the rails and I don’t expect it to, but this is the sort of thread that can. I just want everyone to keep that in mind and maybe the first post can include the text “no dunking on people” or something… just thinking aloud here. But I think you all know what I mean and the places a thread like this could go on another forum if left unchecked!
