The story behind the quote: This week’s quote comes from Capcom’s Resident Evil 4. This was a major landmark in video games as series creator Shinji Mikami decided to reinvent the series, focusing more on action elements while still keeping a lot of the horror which made the franchise popular. It also popularized the over-the-shoulder camera angle we now see in a lot of 3rd person shooters.
The quote comes from the middle of the game. One of the game’s antagonists, Ramon Salazar, contacts rookie cop turned government agent Leon S. Kennedy via his comms. Ramon Salazar threatens Leon by stating he’s sending his “right hand” after him now. Leon then delivers the quote.
By the way, the subtitles from the original version of the game mistakenly says “you’re” instead of the more correct phrasing. As this is a direct quote from the original game, the title also shows the incorrect grammar instead of “your right hand comes off,” which is shown in later versions of Resident Evil 4.
Geek wisdom: Don’t take things too literally and try to read between the lines. There should be some room for more colorful language to get your point across to emphasize the tone you’re going for.
The story behind the quote: This week’s quote comes from Street Fighter: The Movie, the 1994 live-action film based on the hit Capcom fighting game. While not really taking the source material to heart, the film is still remembered as Raul Julia’s final film as M. Bison as well as another famous quote involving Tuesdays. But it still has another memorable quote besides that iconic saying.
The quote comes from the middle of the film. As Chun-Li (played by Ming Na Wen) and her crew send a truck filled with explosives towards the tent where M. Bison and he cohorts are celebrating. As the group watches the truck barrel towards them on a monitor, Zangief (played by Andrew Bryniarski), in fear of his life, yells out the quote.
Geek Wisdom: There are going to be some problems you cannot simply shut your eyes and hope it will pass. Sometimes, taking fast action is needed.
The story behind the quote: The Resident Evil series from Capcom popularized horror games and was the basis for the entire “survival horror” genre. Take note that didn’t actually create survival horror as there were horror games like Alone in the Dark or Clock Tower that came before it. However, it does earn the distinction of taking horror games into the mainstream.
While the first game in the series was a breakthrough and did have some genuine scares (remember the jump you got when the dogs jumped through the windows?), that’s not to say that the story and script was very good. In fact, the voice acting is pretty bad, especially if you compare it to today’s standards. But at the time, having any voice acting in a game was pretty phenomenal. However, there is an advantage to having such poor voice acting and awful dialogue: the quotes in the game become extremely memorable… such as the quote in question.
If you play as Jill Valentine, the female in the game, you and one of your squad members, Barry Burton, get separated from the rest of your team members. So, they decide to split up to cover more ground. Barry then remembers that he found a lockpick. Knowing that Jill is “the master of unlocking,” he generously gives it to Jill since it will be much more useful to her.
Geek wisdom: If you’re not really using something and you know that someone will find that item useful, you might as well let that someone have it. We tend to be greedy with our possessions and actually hoard stuff, citing that we “may need it in the future” or there’s some sentimental value with these items. But there may be people that may need these items much more than you.
Try to remember to help other people. It may be difficult to let go but, if it helps other people, you know that the thing that you loved before is being put into good use.
The story behind the quote: This is actually the victory quote from Ryu, one of the characters from Street Fighter II. However, it created a lot of questions and confusion, which sadly could have been avoided if Capcom was more serious with their documentation.
The quote will appear when Ryu beats his opponent. However, people who were playing the game started wondering who the heck Sheng Long is and why we won’t be able to beat Ryu unless we go through this Sheng Long guy? A lot of people (myself included) that Sheng Long was Ryu and Ken’s master. We all thought that he was some tough Karate master who trained Ryu in his fighting style and must be one tough sonoabitch.
It was a great mystery and EGM, a popular video game magazine at the time, fueled the rumor that Sheng Long was actually in the game by publishing a method to actually fight him!
The method EGM published turned out to be an April’s Fools joke.
The real story behind the quote actually comes from sloppy translation of the victory quotes. The original Japanese quote reads “You must overcome the Rising Dragon,” which is Ryu’s jumping uppercut move, AKA the Dragon Punch. The Japanese text was translated into Chinese, where “Rising Dragon” can be translated into… yep, “Sheng Long.” When it came time to translate the quote to English, the localization staff misunderstood that it was a special attack and not a person, so he (or she) transliterated the text to read the quote we all know and love.
Still, we can sort of thank this mistranslated text. Because of this error, Capcom actually created Akuma (Gouki in Japan… don’t ask why they keep on screwing up the names), who had the moves of “Sheng Long” as described from EGM’s April’s Fools joke, and Gouken, the “official” master of Ryu and Ken who look strangely like the character art from EGM’s joke.
(Whew! That was another long one!)
Geek wisdom: We have to know our limits. A lot of people try to overcome great obstacles and that’s still admirable. However, we sometimes have to realize there has to come a time to step back and actually assess if we have the ability to perform the task. I mean, an ordinary guy just can’t come up to Kobe Bryant right now and challenge him to a one-on-one basketball game and hope to dominate! There’s a certain skill level involved to even stand a slight chance of beating him!
Now, I’m not saying it can be done. It can… but there’s a lot of practice and training involved. But, until you become skilled enough, just stay back and admire the man’s skill on the court.
My Geek Wisdom 