If you've been around video games long enough, you've no doubt heard people pronounce the same words differently. How do you say Crystalis? What is the correct way to pronounce Chocobo? Some of these may remain mysteries forever, some have answers! Here are our Top 5 Video Game Mispronunciations. (Hopefully we got them right!) 

Transcript of the video: 

Hi, everyone. Kris from Stone Age Gamer here. And welcome back to Stone Age Countdown. Now, if you've been around video games long enough, you've no doubt heard people pronounce the same word different ways. It just happens all the time. For example, is this game Crystalis or Crystalis? Is this game system called the gamecom, like they said on that one TV commercial? Or is the game dot com like it's written? Is this game Magus or Magus? The world may never know for sure, but there are some mysteries out there, some words that get mispronounced a lot. They're actually pretty obvious what they're supposed to sound like. And those things I've listed right here. Here are my top five mispronounced video games. 

Faxanadu

This is one that I did myself for a number of years because without the appropriate context, how the heck was anybody supposed to know? Looking at this game’s name, there’s no reason you shouldn’t think it’s pronounced Faxanadu. And in fact, that is an awesome name. Faxanadu. It's got a cool ring to it. It also sounds like a game about a rogue fax machine, but whatever. Combined with its mysterious box art, Faxanadu was just a cool name.

Years and years later, I learned that this game’s name is actually Faxanadu (fah-zana-doo). Why? Because it’s part of the Xanadu series. It’s the version of the game that came out for the Famicom. It’s Famicom Xanadu. Fa-Xanadu. Is that cooler than pronouncing the hard X? I don’t think so, but it’s a pretty wild story. Like, why did they keep that name for the US release? It’s the NES, not the Famicom. Shouldn’t it be NeXanadu? Oh man, Nex-anadu is also a cool name. Whatever. Faxanadu it is.

Onett

Here’s another super easy mistake to make because again, if you don’t have the proper context, how would you know? If you’ve only ever played EarthBound content via Smash Bros., this word is Onett. That’s how the English language works, for the most part. The English language is weird. Anyway, this is a stage in Smash, and it’s an easily figured out phonetic word. But if you play EarthBound though, the pattern becomes clear pretty quickly. The first town in the game is Onett. The second town you come to is Twoson. The third is Threed. The Fourth is Fourside. So it isn’t Onett, it’s Onett (One-ett). One Two Three Four.

Because of course it is. That’s totally the kind of humor Earthbound is full of. Though now that I’m looking at it, I’m still not entirely sure how it’s supposed to be said. It’s obvious the first part is supposed to be pronounced like the number one, but is it one-ett? Want? The world may never know. Or maybe the world already knows and I’m too lazy to do the research.

Ryu

No, this isn’t the name of a martial artist who has an affinity for a particular type of bread. I pronounced this as Rye-oo since I was a kid thanks to Ninja Gay-den (Gaiden) Gaiden not having any voiceovers. That’s just how it looked like the name should be pronounced. But then Super Street fighter II entered my home for the Super NES

Now at first I thought this just said “You win” but there was definitely an S at the end. Oh my goodness, it’s pronounced Ree-ooo.

I guess a big hint should have always been the dragon punch. Sho-ryu-ken. It’s written in the instruction manual. Ryu and Ken are right there in the name. It seems so obvious in hindsight.

Marry-o

So this one is completely forgivable, sort of. There are loads of actual living human beings whose names are Mario and they pronounce their names marry-oh. I’m not here to tell anyone they’ve been pronouncing their own names wrong. That’s not up to me. HOWEVER, this cuts both ways. Mario himself has told us exactly how to say his name.

Super show

Okay, maybe everyone who plays Mario games hasn’t watched the Super Mario Bros. Super Show. How about this?

I mean, there it is. Mario typically can’t stop saying his name during his games, so unless you’ve exclusively only played older Mario games where he doesn’t shout his own name at every opportunity, anyone calling this guy marry-oh just comes off like Lando calling Han Han for some reason. Which, I know they addressed sort of in that Solo movie, but why was this ever a thing?

Smash Bros.

Okay, this one here legitimately drives me bananas. It’s not Smash “bros” This isn’t a bunch of bros getting together to beat the crap out of one another. It’s See, there’s a period after this word. That means it’s an abbreviation. For the word brothers. The game itself even flat out says what its name is.

It’s one of the most iconic voice overs in gaming in the last 20 years, so why on earth do so many people INSIST on calling this bros? Do you also drink a can of Dr Pepper? IS the name of this movie Mr and Mrs Smith? Do you call this Ms. Pac-Man? No wait, that one works…

It’s Super Mario Brothers. They’re Hammer Brothers. It’s Super Smash BROTHERS. 

Okay. I'm done. Okay. So I'm hardly the authority on these things. And obviously a few of those I still don't know the actual pronunciation for, but they're the kinds of things that fascinate me. These are the words that float around in my head, that keep me awake at night because I'm a crazy person. But what did you think? Huh? Thanks for watching, everybody. If you liked what you saw here today, please follow comment like and subscribe and yes, let me know what you think. Are there any words on here that I took the wrong direction? Is there a reason people called them Smash Bro's? What's with the Bro's thing? I don't understand it. Please clear that up for me. Let us know down in the comments. Thanks again for watching, everybody, on behalf of all of us here at Stone Age Gamer. Keep playing games.