A Pictorial History Of Australians In Video Games
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39 responses to “A Pictorial History Of Australians In Video Games”
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Mark Serrels
Great job – love that you remembered the shitty villain from Escape from Monkey Island.
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NegativeZero
The only one that I can think of that isn’t listed is Kid from Chrono Cross. Of course that’s old enough that she wasn’t voiced, but – at least in the US localisation – she uses a lot of telltale Australian slang, like ‘sheila’. Ironically we never got the game in Australia.
I guess there’s Ty the Tasmanian Tiger as well.
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Chuloopa
If you live in Melbourne, dungeon crawl in the city sells it quite readily.
They have plenty of copies 🙂 -
Andrew Burdusel
I included Kid from chrono cross after I had already sent this in; someone had randomly suggested it on Twitter.
You can see the slightly updated version here
http://i29.tinypic.com/jl3t5j.jpg
(Sorry, Tinypic resizes it)
A few i didn’t include
– Slasher Hawk from MGS
– Some racoon from Sonic
– Some animal from the Spyro universe
– Ghost from MW2 (Maybe Aussie)-
Bish
Pretty sure Ghost is supposed to be a wonderful tea-drinking English gentleman chap.
‘course, I’m just basing this on the fact that he’s the same voice actor as Gaz.-
Andrew Burdusel
It certainly doesn’t help that his identity is shrouded in secrecy. Problem is that MW2 actually has a handful of Aussie characters. At times his accent sounds quite Aussie, but most other times his accent sounds like an aristocratic British person.
The thing is, for some games back in the day. Most Aussie characters would just have English accents because the voice actors were easier to come by. And in some games they just don’t try at all, like Robert foster, he grew up in the Aussie outback since he was about 6 but still has a think American accent. But that game was supposed to represent a future dystopian version of Australia, so maybe everyone speaks like that.
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Cerzel
Wondering where I got my copy from if the game never came out here. But yeah, Kid’s a pretty big one.
As for the Sniper, I like him and pretty much everything to do with Australia in TF2, but one thing pisses me off.
“God save the queen!”
You guys know. We don’t give a crap about the queen. I hate this line.
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villainsoft
technically, crash bandicoot too.
The absurd thing is that no australians i know speak this rubbish.
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Ross Moir
I’m a bit ashamed there have been so few Australian characters in video games, especially since we’re so distinctive, but I guess we’re a bitlike vegemite.
Beer waste that’s an aquired taste.
Still, the sniper, chloe and miranda almost make up for it.
“I’m not a crazed gunman, Dad, I’m an assasin… the difference being one’s a job and the other’s mental sickness…” -
D.C.
There’s also the Australian pilot from the adventure game Broken Sword 3. Within minutes of starting the game he crashes his plane and has to be woken up with the smell of beer. Enough said.
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EvilHayama
EXC355UM forgot to mention his hard hitting journalism revealing the Akuma from Street Fighter is actually Australian!
http://www.shadowloo.com/?p=926-
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EXC355UM
Haha, yeah forgot about that.
You know… I’m going to go ask Yoshinori Ono about this on twitter.
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warden
theres a heap in FIFA world cup!
And the aussie soldiers in the Halo series are strangely comforting… -
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Scruffy
DragonQuest: Chapters of the chosen had a land in the south full of people with Australian accents.
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D.C.
There’s Wilkes in Gabriel Knight 3 too. Probably the most stereotypical Australian known to man.
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Braaains
Does Bruce McAvaney doing the commentary on AFL ’98 count?
“He LOVES it on the left foot!”
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Neil Williams
There’s always Marine the Racoon from Sonic Rush Adventure, AKA the most insulting Australian stereotype in a video game ever.
Plus, I believe there was a Aussie marine in Halo 1-3. Can’t vouch for ODST though.
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Amp
I’m really reaching back in time here, but we could include every character in Bunyip Hunt (a text adventure for the Microbee back in the late 80s by Grotnik Software).
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Michal
Awesome!
What about “Big Jim” Slade in Tex Murphy: Overseer? He was played by Australian-born martial artist Richard Norton. -
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Korwin
Nope Aussie.
Claudia Black is in fact an Aussie herself, but classical theater training and a spell in London does funny things to your accent (I had a high school Drama/English teacher with a similar blended accent).
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Andrew Burdusel
Let me explain the history of the ethnicity of Kano, it’s a very interesting story. At first (before the first movie) Kano was just an American criminal with a martial arts background. But after an “Australian” actor named Trevor Goddard put an Aussie spin on the character in the first movie. Ed Boon apparently loved the Aussie version of Kano so much he apparently retroactively changed the backstory to make Kano an underworld Australian crime boss.
The reason I put “Australian” in quotation marks is because the actor who played Kano, Trevor Goddard only claimed to be Australian to get work in Hollywood – Aussie male actors were in high demand at the time – So the Englishman changed his bio to make himself Aussie. Because of this, MK purists will tell you that Kano is American, some people will tell you that Kano is English. But now it is generally accepted that the Kano we know and love today has become Australian.
So yes, Kano is Aussie, but he was only made Australian on the basis of lies and deceit.
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jabso
Either way Ed Boon seems like he liked the Australian take on Kano regardless of whether the actor himself was Australian or not.
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Paul Bereza
What about Shaky Jake? The drunk Aussie who breaths fire in Naughty Dogs 3DO fighter Way of the Warrior.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_Ya4mSkDMI
“You call that a knife?” I’m think was one of his lines too. As bad as it looks I really liked this game.:P -
mase
I don’t Get Lord Raptor from Darkstalkers. I know all the wiki pages say he was born Australian, and he was voiced by the Australian-Born-Canadian-Raised Scott McNeil. But the guy has the Union Jack on his gear and is dressed like British Punk Rocker… I is confused
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