Well if you’re old as me then all of these phrases will be incredibly familiar but some might be not make sense to you younger gamers, but stick with me, I’ll do my best to paint you a picture (metaphorically of course). You know those phrases we’ve had shouted at us, spoke out-loud to ourselves and heard in our favourite games, we’re now wearing T-shirts (because we’re super cool).

!?@&3£ (insert your favourite swear word here)

A bit of a cheat on my part as this first one isn’t really a phrase but I know when I’m playing a difficult game then 90% of my vocabulary is made up of various swear words. A recent example for me was when completing the trials set by The Riddler in Arkham Knight, that guy is so annoying. I’m pretty sure I might have set a record for the most swear words in one sentence. I also like to swear at the virtual referee in the FIFA games, this achieves nothing but it’s oddly satisfying. “Offside?! Are you blind ref?” Nope you’re just artificial.

EA Sports, it’s in the game

You might not admit that you do this, you might not even know you do this but I will go on record to stay that I have done this, still do this and I bet you do too. Still pretending you don’t know what I’m talking about? What I’m referring to here is when you load up your favourite EA Sports title and when the loading screen comes on and with the EA logo a voice over (but really you speak over it) says “EA Sports, it’s in the game”. You may even let the voiceover say EA sports and you finish it for them, I’m not telling you how to do it, I’m saying you do it and we all do it.

Finish him!

How do I introduce this one without being able to shout it at you? Maybe this article needs to come with sound. This is a phrase from the brilliant Mortal Kombat series, if you’re not familiar it’s an arcade style fighting game first released on home consoles in the early 90s. The phrase comes on screen, accompanied by a cool voice over when you have your opponent in a daze and you can use an often gruesome signature move to kill the other fighter. In the real world you will hear this shouted during an argument by someone not involved in the argument hiding from a safe distance. You may also just shout it at your friends randomly in a-close-as impression of the original voice that you can do.

Rage Quit!

The newest term on the list so one that everyone should be able to understand but it’s quite self-explanatory in it’s title. You might say this is exactly the same as the first one and I’m lazy, well I am but they are two very different phrases and I’ll tell you why. Rage-quitting has become a bit of a craze on social media and you can watch great examples on YouTube, featuring people breaking controllers, monitors and basically just having adult tantrums. This is different to swearing because, swear words are just a part of gaming but getting so angry you smash your TV is different all together.

Snake Snake Snaaaaaaakkkkkkkkkeeeeeee!!!!!

It’s impossible to read this without doing a dodgy impression of it out in your head or even out loud, apologies to the rest of this train. If you’re not familiar with this phrase where did you grow up? Did you even own a PlayStation? I understand some of you may be of a younger generation and think the PlayStation began at number 3. You may also think The Simpsons is rubbish, in my day it was the best show but you’ll have to trust me on that. Did I just say in my day? Wow I’m getting old. Anyway, this is, of course, from the excellent Metal Gear Solid game featuring the character Solid Snake and upon his death you are greeted with the best ever game over sequence ever.

After playing the game just once you will sort of fall in love with the death sequence, it takes the sting out of the fact that you’ve tried the same bit repeatedly and continued to die.  The therapeutic effect of getting to shout your character’s name dramatically along with the game works really well and you find yourself ready to tackle the challenge again.

Everything not saved will be lost

Playing any game you will come across a variation of this message and I’ve put it in here because why do game developers make it sound like the end of the world, it makes me anxious. Warning! All unsaved progress will be lost. Even writing it down made me panic; have I saved all I’ve written in this article so far (stops to save and make a brew). All games now seem to have an auto save feature so why does this still make us panic? Well it’s probably just me in reality but I’m going to pretend it’s a widespread gaming epidemic. Remember Resident Evil? A survival horror game that required not only for you to find a typewriter but to have ink ribbons so you could save your game. I know for a fact this has resulted in gamers leaving their consoles on overnight or during the day because they haven’t quite got to a safe room yet. The best variation of this is still the Nintendo one and the reason I like it so much is because it sounds so profound like a philosophical term. In fact get that phrase put on a T-shirt and everyone will think you’re really intellectual and constantly deep in thought. So spread go forth and the message far and wide “Everything not saved will be lost”.

Thank you, but our princess is in another castle

In the 1980s Nintendo created a game that would make the typical fantasy of being an overweight plumber, tripping out on mushrooms and trying to save a princess from a dragon/turtle type creature finally a reality. This was also how I was introduction to gaming, after me and brother received a Nintendo Entertainment System one year for Christmas, along with the Super Mario Bros and Duck Hunt double game. Upon completing every level in the first world, you reach the castle, the music gets intense and scary but the Princess is in trouble, she needs your help. You have jumped over bottomless pits, timed your movements through moving levers made of fire and reached the end where you face the terrifying Bowser. But scared you are not for you know you must defeat him, he has the Princess and like the hero you are you must save her. You fight gallantly and best the mighty Bowser as he plummets to what seems like a certain doom and you prepare to greet the Princess as her rescuer, hero and maybe even her Prince? But the Princess never arrives, instead you’re greeted by Toad (not a frog) who says “Thank you Mario, but our Princess is another castle”. Now what a kick in the teeth this is, I mean you’ve basically risked your life to save Toad (again not a frog) not the lovely Princess you wanted to save. Then throughout the game you get to the castle, defeat the evil Bowser to be greeted yet again by Toad (he’s some sort of mushroom thing, I don’t really know) and his message that once again in you’re in the wrong castle. Frustrating, annoying and easily the greatest gaming experience of my life but I think you always say that about your first.

Just give it a blow

You’ll be thinking to yourself “hmm well this article just got interesting” but you can get your mind out of the gutter because this one relates to a very specific era of gaming. I’m about to blow some minds here but there was a time when games didn’t come as digital downloads or even on discs, they came as cartridges. Through my years gaming I owned many of the great cartridge based consoles such as NES, Megadrive, Gameboy and the incredible Nintendo 64 to name just a few. During this wonderful era of gaming, players would spend a good bit of their time blowing dust and other bits out of cartridges to get them to work. The weekend came and you grab your N64 controller and head over to a friend’s house for a traditional Goldeneye or Mario Kart tournament. Everyone is eager and excited as controllers are connected and the console is powered on but the game doesn’t load and the owner freaks out and starts to panic. That’s when one of us would always say “just give it a blow, and it’ll be fine” and usually it would do the trick.

Since those fantastic cartridge days, it’s been documented that game loading problems were usually mechanical and blowing on the cartridge was a placebo effect that originated with the gamers themselves. Even after reading that blowing the cartridge doesn’t help if my Gameboy games fail to load, I’ll still take out the cartridge blow it and try it again. After all we gamers are creatures of habit.

Can you not just pause it?

Most of you will have no knowledge of hearing this phrase because when it’s spoken you’ll use every ounce of will power to try and block it out. But for those of you who haven’t been strong enough, you’ll have been asked by a loved one, be it a parent, other family member or your partner to just pause your game. The next part to this phrase is the gamer’s response and that will be different depending on what type of person you are. Let’s give this a scenario to put you all in the moment and help you identify what type of person you are: So you’re at a crucial point in your favourite game, a boss battle, final lap of a race or you’ve just entered a building you know is crawling with the undead. You hear a faint sound coming from the other room, so you listen a bit closer to investigate the sound and that’s when you hear it. “Sorry honey can you just pause that and come and help me with (insert your most hated chore here)”. Now a nice person and easily the rarest of the types will just sigh, pause his game and go and help his wife with the chores. Then there is the person that refuses to pause the game but they are usually murdered in their sleep so I wouldn’t worry about them. My favourite type of person and the most common in this scenario is the chance who tries to lie and convince their partner that this game cannot be paused at this moment and they must reach a specific point first. Mexican standoff begins but deep down you know you won’t win and your partner knows you won’t win because you didn’t win last Sunday when you tried it. Nobody is ever convinced by the lie but you will continue to try it time and time again. The strangest example of this is when the Nintendo Wii got the impression it was the boss of you and would try to tell you to take a break. Now I’m definitely not taking a break because you have told me to, even though I’m tired and have to go to work, I will continue to play just to disobey you!

Before I continue with the last one I’m going to give you a brief list of some of the gaming phrases I’m not a fan of:

Game over: Simple and boring but nobody likes to hear/see this, especially for 27th Time in one game.

Noob: Gaming should be a community, be patient with newcomers.

Gamer-girl: Yep girls play video games too, why does this still blow people’s minds?

Just one more go

Easily the most often phrase said by anyone who’s played any game, ranging from Mario and Call of Duty to those annoying mobile games like Angry Birds and that basketball one everyone is playing at the moment. I hope every gamer has experienced that moment when you’ve spent all evening playing a great game but then you hit a difficult part that you really struggle to get past. Since it’s nearly 11pm, quietly under your breath you say “Just one more go”, then what seems like a short time later you get past the difficult point take look at your watch and its 6am. Just one more go is unofficial code for hundreds of extra attempts, 7 hours of your time and several gallons of coffee. It’s ok though, when you stroll into work late with enormous bags under your eyes, your boss will understand you finally beat the water temple level and will reward you with a nice easy day and maybe a raise. So no matter what type of games you play this is the most common gaming experience and is a phrase that everyone will have told themselves, a loved one or the guy in the game shop who wants you to leave so he can close up for the night

About the Author

Stuart Purcell

Meanwhile, deep underground somewhere in Manchester, terrifyingly sinister plots are being schemed. But back in reality I’m usually just playing video games, reading comics and watching cartoons.