History AsLongAsItSoundsForeign / VideoGames

** Raiden is a real name...except that even in modern games, it's still pronounced "Ray-din" instead of "rye-den". And ** Scorpion's surname, "Hasashi", isn't even a real Japanese word. While one could pronounce it with a hard "S" that results in sounding like "Hizashi", which ''is'' a real Japanese surname, modern games usually don't opt into it.

** Raiden is a real name...except that even in modern games, it's still pronounced "Ray-din" instead of "rye-den". And Scorpion's surname (Hasashi) isn't even a real Japanese word.

* All the spoken dialogue in the ''VideoGame/GravityRush'' games, including "Jeuchalais Evule Plelat" and other songs, is just French-sounding gibberish.

* All the spoken dialogue in the ''VideoGame/GravityRush'' games, including "Jeuchalais Evule Plelat" and other songs, are just French-sounding gibberish.

* The ending song from ''VideoGame/GravityRush'' Jeuchalais Evule Plelat. From the title it looks french, and the lyrics being sung sound french but it was all just made up for the song.

* The events of ''VideoGame/HalfLife2'' take place in an unspecified Eastern European location, so the game features quite a few inscriptions in Bulgarian.
** More specifically, one of lead designers was Bulgarian and modelled most of City 17 over Bulgaria's capital city. The square leaving the train station is an almost exact duplicate of a major plaza... Minus the Combine checkpoints. For a Bulgarian, it's actually a little creepy.
** Nevertheless, most in-game posters and signs featuring cyrillic letters are in fact in (sometimes mangled) Russian. Bulgarian usage of vowels is drastically different.
** Bizarrely, though, despite the otherwise Eastern European theme, City 17's gas pumps are labeled in ''Swedish''. As long as the texture reference photos look foreign...

* ''VideoGame/BeyondGoodAndEvil'' also features numerous songs in very convincing-sounding nonsense. Specifically, the nonsense is meant to sound "Belgian, with a little Spanish and English mixed in." [[CriticalResearchFailure Even though "Belgian" isn't a language]]. However, there are songs with ''real'' Spanish and English words mixed in with the gibberish, as well as the game's pseudo-[[ArcWords arc word]], "Shauni."

** ''VideoGame/ResidentEvil4'' is set in [[WordOfGod a nameless fictional European country]] apparently placed in the middle of Spain. Despite this, all the Ganados speak Spanish [[{{Spexico}} with a Mexican accent]].
*** "Ganados" is itself an example: ''Ganado'' means "Livestock" in Spanish and it is rarely pluralized.

* In ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaTwilightPrincess'', ziz-zags this with Midna's spoken language. Half the time, it's legitimately just random gibberish that sounds like some strange merge of Asian accent with French, while employing neither the grammar rules nor words of either language. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfoBWjUNYQw We think it's gibberish, anyway]]. The rest of the time, [[https://www.youtube.com/shorts/ZKi3so02RVk a decent chunk of her dialogue]] is actually broken-up and scrambled clips of English that, when put back together, more succinctly sum up or directly relate to whatever she just said.

* ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaTwilightPrincess''. Midna's spoken language sounds like some strange merge of Asian accent with French, while employing neither the grammar rules nor words of either language. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfoBWjUNYQw We think it's gibberish, anyway]]. Although, it's gibberish to us, in-universe she could easily be speaking perfect Hylian.

* ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaTwilightPrincess''. Midna's spoken language sounds like some strange merge of Asian accent with French, while employing neither the grammar rules nor words of either language. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfoBWjUNYQw We think it's gibberish, anyway]]. Although, it's gibberish to us, in-universe she could easily be speaking speaking perfect Hylian.

* "Simlish", the language of the characters in ''VideoGame/TheSims'' and its sequels is meant to be ''English'' foreign-sounding gibberish. Apparently the company that makes the games frequently receives calls from customers who think they've gotten the game in the wrong language. ''VideoGame/{{Simcopter}}'' was the first game to feature it. In ''VideoGame/Sims3'' Simlish includes (correct, but irrelevant) phrases in French, Spanish and German. It also features licensed music from various bands... "translated" to Simlish. The cadance and intonation of the nonsense words follows the actual lyrics, and sometimes, the gibberish sounds ''almost'' like actual words.

* ''VideoGame/FightingBaseball'', the Japanese localization of ''VideoGame/MLBPABaseball'', did not get a license to use the names of MLBPA players, and instead infamously used made-up "American-sounding" names like "Sleve [=McDicheal=]", "Mario [=McRlwain=]", and "Mike Truk". Creator/ProZD reads out the whole list [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oymWAeqv_-c here]].

* ''VideoGame/PokemonColosseum'' and its sequel ''VideoGame/PokemonXDGaleOfDarkness'' have characters whose names go from just slightly off normal names to a random string of letters. (Then again, with LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters the series may have ran out of "normal" names by then.)

* ''VideoGame/JadeEmpire'' does this with its ''own'' ConLang. Rather than being assigned to particular lines of text the sound bites are chosen at random, and [[BilingualBonus 90% of the recorded lines]] are actually [[EverythingsBetterWithCows cow jokes]].

* ''VideoGame/AceCombat5TheUnsungWar'' brings us the ever-lovely name of "Seryozha Viktrovich Nikanor", which is a horribly butchered form of UsefulNotes/RussianNamingConventions.[[note]]Realistically, it would be Sergey Viktorovich Nikanorov.[[/note]]

* ''VideoGame/AceCombat5TheUnsungWar'' brings us the ever-lovely name of "Seryozha Viktrovich Nikanor", which is a horribly butchered form of the UsefulNotes/RussianNamingConvention.[[note]]Realistically, it would be Sergey Viktorovich Nikanorov.[[/note]]

* The opening song from ''VideoGame/AtelierIris3GrandPhantasm'' Schwarzweiss uses this along with GratuitousGerman and WordSaladLyrics. The German chanting in the beginning and end of the song is just a mash up of German and German sounding words with no grammar connecting any of it.

** It's actually a reference to Wilhelm Heirich Wackenroder, a German poet of Romanticism.

* The ''VideoGame/StarOcean'' games have some terrible names (including 'Fayt' Leingod, romanized with a Y to save us from laughing out loud) but nothing, nothing beats the protagonist of ''VideoGame/StarOceanTheLastHope'', 'Edge Maverick'. Really.

* ''Franchise/TouhouProject'' has this with the character Maribel Hearn: Her first name is written in Katakana as マエリベリー (Maeriberī), which could be rendered a number of ways, including "Merryberry", and doesn't seem to come from any recognized language; "Maribel" [[ItIsPronouncedTroPay is simply the spelling that most of the fandom has agreed upon]]. The franchise's creator ZUN seemingly picked the name because it sounded foreign and was difficult to pronounce as evidence in-universe with Renko just calling her Mary because she has no idea how to pronounce her name, and when asked point-blank even admitted that he had no idea what the proper romanization should be. However, since [[Music/TouhouZUNsMusicCollection Maribel's portion of the franchise]] is set [[TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture far enough into the future]] that [[FutureFoodIsArtificial the only edible plants are synthetic]] ([[CrapsackWorld among other things]]), it's possible that language drift is in effect.

* Given that these are series based around a worldwide fighting tournament, it's expected that ''VideoGame/FatalFury'' and ''VideoGame/TheKingOfFighters'' would have some of these. Originally Kim Kaphwan was going to be called Kim Haifon, which is not a legitimate Korean name. Some others include Americans named Lucky Glauber, Mignon Beart, Duck King, Geese Howard and Heavy D!, a Frenchman named Shermie, two Germans named Alba and Soiree Meira, Italians named Robert Garcia and Fiolina Germi[[note]]should be Fiorina[[/note]], and an Irishman named Krizalid.

** Early games don't quite get Russian naming conventions: The de-facto BigBad of ''[[VideoGame/ResidentEvilTheUmbrellaChronicles The Umbrella Chronicles]]'' is named "Sergei Vladimir", and two of the U.B.C.S. members from ''[[VideoGame/ResidentEvil3Nemesis RE3: Nemesis]]'' are "Nicholai Ginovaef" and "Mikhail Victor". While Ginovaef's name can at least be justified by [[BlindIdiotTranslation poor translation]][[labelnote:*]]A better rendering would be "Nikolai Zinoviev"[[/labelnote]], ''anyone'' with even a passing knowledge of Russia will realize that the other two are complete nonsense (but they can have a last name derived from Viktor or Vladimir, such as Viktorov or Vladimirov).

* In ''VideoGame/Haven2020'', the books in the abandoned library that houses the Illustrated Erotica Handbook have pseudo-German names like "Uff Glishden Tär", "Gorgnemuld", "Flurm Gliffen", and "Flurm Gliffen: Ostruisï", though the last one's subtitle is a legitimate Italian word meaning "clogged" or "obstructed".