Darth Wiki / Most Annoying Sound

Look, kid, I don't care if you're going to grow into one of the most influential characters in video game history, just SHUT. UP.

"Don't worry if you're not keen on scavenger hunts, though, because the presence of a nearby invisible thing is helpfully indicated by the soundtrack going 'BDEEP BDEEP BDEEP BDEEP BDEEP' while you're still trying to clear the room of those fucking insidious scuttlefuck spawners — BDEEP BDEEP BDEEP BDEEP BDEEP!"

— Zero Punctuation on The Conduit

Most Video Games use audio cues as well as visual cues to let the player know what is going on around them. However, in some games these audio cues become an extreme annoyance to the player, either intentionally or thorough repetition. These sounds disrupt gameplay and force the player to focus on the sound instead of the game itself. Many gamers choose to disable the volume just to avoid hearing that sound again. And God forbid if you have misophonia over it. One execution of that sound effect can give you PTSD or nightmares for months.

In order for one of these sounds to be a Most Annoying Sound, it must fall into one of the following categories; otherwise it's just personal dislike:

• Annoying Video Game Helper — In a game's attempts to assist you, it just irritates you even more, often due to repetition.
• Critical Annoyance — The sound for "Warning! Bad stuff happening!", and in this case it causes you to perform even worse.
• Death sounds — Your character is already dead, and that stupid death music is playing again.
• Repetitive sounds — Sounds that re- sounds that repeat-repeat-repeat themselves- sounds that repeat themselves are the worst-worst-worst.
• Taunts — The "come at me!" moves/sounds in multiplayer games are often designed to create this annoyance. Any strategy to use taunts to annoy other players and possibly screw with their concentration is generally considered poor form.

See also Annoying Video Game Helper, Critical Annoyance, Hell Is That Noise, Loud of War. Contrast Most Wonderful Sound.

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Examples:

• Action Games
• Action-Adventure Games
  • The Legend of Zelda
• Driving Games
• Fighting Games
• First- and Third-Person Shooters
• MMORPGs
• Platform Games
  • Sonic the Hedgehog
• Puzzle Games
• Role-Playing Games
  • The Elder Scrolls
  • Final Fantasy
  • Tales Series
• Simulation Games
  • The Sims
• Strategy Games
• Wide-Open Sandbox

Ace Attorney

• The sound of music continuing to play after you present evidence in a cross-examination, as it means you're headed for a penalty. (To contrast, the music stops if you've presented the right evidence on the right line.). And of course, Trials and Tribulations had to play with this, in which sometimes presenting the right evidence does not stop the music, making you wonder whether you succeeded until you reach the end of the conversation.
• Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney:
  • Every single time Winston Payne says "OBJECTION!" in his high-pitched, squeaky, Nails on a Chalkboard voice.
  • Similarly, Manfred von Karma's demonic "OBJECTION" in case 1-4. If only because he'll yell it if you do as much as opening your mouth.
  • For that matter, any OBJECTION that doesn't come from the player character. Just when you thought the case was starting to make progress...nope! OBJECTION.
  • Mia's objection is a bit high-pitched as well, and while it's not as bad as Payne's, hearing them yelling "Objection!" at each other in 3-1 can get a bit grating.
  • The feedback from Mike Meekins' megaphone! BWEEEEEEEE-OOOOOP! He turns that damn thing on every ten seconds or so! Thank GOODNESS they didn't give it to him in Investigations!
  • The buzzer in case 3-2, which could have been avoided if Maya didn't press it. You can expect it the first time, but the producers felt evil enough to make it play AGAIN in court, when you're not expecting it, making a lot of people jump.
  • Franziska's whip. You'll come to hate it as much Phoenix does. Except at the end of case 2-4, when the circumstances turn it into a Most Wonderful Sound, and in case 3-5 and I-5 when she uses it on Larry for being obnoxious and unhelpful.
• In Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney, there's a song called "The Guitar's Serenade". The song isn't so bad the first time you hear it... but by the time the case is over, the song will be permanently etched into your brain as it plays over and over and over...
  • Also in Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney, Noodle cart vendor Eldoon's constant and unskippable harmonica riffs.
  • And then there's MUNCH MUNCH MUNCH (for about three screens) when you first meet Ema Skye.
• Ace Attorney Investigations:
  • In the first case you have to talk to Jacques Portsman, who constantly takes his jacket half off and puts it back on. Loudly. Like, every ten seconds. You will rapidly begin to hate him for his Smug Snake-ness, but even more because that damn jacket sound is so annoying.
  • The loooong final chapter is punctuated by the culprit's frequent "OHB-JECK-SHUN"s.
  • In the Japan-only Ace Attorney Investigations 2, Bansai Ichinyanagi's objections are pretty bad to listen to. So are the constant emptying his goggles of sweat/tears/water.
• Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Dual Destinies:
  • Silence!, which replaces Simon Blackquill's Objection! when his shackles break loose.
  • While we're at it, Simon's Razor Wind swing, his rough equivalent of Franziska's whip.
  • In the same vein as the example of Jacques Portsman above, you will scramble to get through any scene speaking with Myriam Scuttlebutt as quickly as humanly possible. When she gets angry and begins punching her cardboard box, the sound quickly gets incredibly annoying due to sheer repetition.
• In Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, there's Lettie's "SIIIIIIIR!" It's so obnoxiously loud, they included a microphone feedback sound effect after it!
  • Also, Mary's goat, which she squeezes whenever she's upset, causing it to start bleating. The sound itself isn't bad, but it will NOT stop bleating until Mary's dialog is over.

Resident Evil

• In Resident Evil 4 and Resident Evil 5:
  • There is nothing worse than hearing a chainsaw rev up. Time to lose your combo and ammo.
  • Also Wesker players in Versus; It was in your best it was in your best it was in your best it was in your best it was in your best it was in your best it was in your best interest to assist me!
  • The Merchant: "Welcome! What are ya buying? What're ya selling?" and also the clank-clank of Ashley in her suit of armor.
  • Mega64 actually addressed this. They almost got arrested because the cops thought they were dealing. To be fair, going up to random people dressed like the merchant looks pretty sketchy.
  • At least Ashley only screamed when you allowed enemies to take her. Sheva has a need to announce everything to the world; I need ammo! I need ammo! I NEED HEEELLLP!!
  • Any co-op game of RE5 will inevitably result in both players spamming "Come on! Come on! Come on!" at every opportunity.
• In Resident Evil: Outbreak, games with a full four-person group tend to have a clusterfuck of chatter: "Hey!" "What?!" "I want that." "I don't wanna die!" "Oh my God!" "What the hell?!"
• Leon's death yell is frequently likened to the sounds of a dying walrus, which only becomes more obnoxious when it plays over unique death animations. Avoiding listening to it often becomes an incentive in and of itself to not getting killed.

Star Fox

• Slippy freaking Toad. "Fox, get this guy off me!"
• Bill Grey's "Fox, that's one of ours!"
• Star Fox Adventures:
  • Whenever you pick up a new item, the game shows a cutscene of Fox picking up and holding the item above his head, accompanied by this musical jingle that you will hear over and over and over again. Worse, when you open a locked container, there is a cutscene of the container opening, accompanied a different jingle, then immediately followed with the New Item jingle and cutscene! Seriously, is that REALLY necessary, especially since the item is already shown in the container opening cutscene? To make matters worse, in said chest opening scene, we see the actual name of the item along with what the item is, making the next cutscene redundant!
  • Those weird flying bat-like enemies that SCREECH and laugh maniacally as they attack you. Especially annoying, since they are everywhere.
• Star Fox had one, too. The longer you fight the Slot Machine the more memorable and annoying the song will get.
• Star Fox Zero and "For sharper shooting, use your motion controls!" in nearly every all-range battle. Constantly. To the point where Peppy will start cutting off other characters (or himself) just in case the previous 500 times you were reminded about this incredibly basic game mechanic didn't get through.

Other Games

Adventure

• The indie adventure series Dark Fall has several examples:
  • Play enough of the series, and you'll get really sick of the oft-reused "over here!" ghost-voice soundclip used in every game. Especially when you actually do go "Over there" in Lights Out and the little *** starts LAUGHING at you!
  • Due to an oversight in the game engine, some sounds will often play every time you pass certain screens. One of the most grating examples includes a short violin tune, which plays at several points in Fetch Rock lighthouse.
  • Many players will be quick to notice how repetitive the dialogue can get in the third game Lost Souls, especially with Matilda Fly.
• In Discworld, Rincewind says "That doesn't work" when you try to use an item somewhere it can't be used. Since you will inevitably be reduced to trying every item everywhere on several occasions, this got old really fast. It didn't help that the volume of that phrase seemed particularly loud. Thankfully, Discworld II took the liberty of expanding Rincewind's verbal repertoire for the player using an item incorrectly.
• Discworld Noir averted this with a wider range of comments, including one where Lewton says dryly, "I resisted the impulse to say 'That doesn't work'."
• The NORAD VI military base in The Journeyman Project has sleeping gas being pumped into the vents. Because of this, nearly the entire time you're there, an alarm perpetually goes off, accompanied by a bland voice repeating, "Warning. All personnel, contamination detected in NORAD air ducts, and ventilation systems." You can shut the alarm off in the remake, Pegasus Prime, but this locks you into the first room unless you start it again, otherwise a guard outside will wake up and apprehend you on sight.
• Kings Quest (2015) has an In-Universe example in the fourth chapter. Alexander has a habit of snapping his fingers when he's agitated or thinking. His father, King Graham, hates the sound and eventually snaps over it. Eventually he explains that his dislike of the sound is justified because it reminds him of the night Alexander was kidnapped as a baby, when the Big Bad immobilized Graham and his wife with a spell by snapping his fingers.
• "'Tis beyond my reach!" was an infuriatingly oft heard line in King's Quest: Mask of Eternity.
• Pajama Sam's Lost & Found has bonus puzzle pieces laid throughout the levels. You collect them about as often as you collect coins from a coin block in a Super Mario Bros. game. Now imagine picking them up that constantly, and hearing "I picked up a bonus puzzle piece!" every single time you pick up one. It gets grating very fast. To make matters worse, the game takes two and a half hours to beat. They expected children to be able to tolerate it too.
• In the 3D graphic adventure Return to Zork (the In Name Only revival of the franchise by Activision), there's a character named Boos Myller, who always offers the player some rye whenever they pass through his area. The repeated sound byte of his catchphrase "Want some rye? 'Course ya do!" greatly annoyed many players.
• Sam & Max Hit The Road:
  • Deliberately done with much of Max's self-consciously annoying behaviour. Examples include his constant begging to go to the bathroom ("I gotta go to the bathroom. I gotta go to the bathroom."), his complaining while in the dunk tank (which actually annoys Sam, too), and his deliberately agitating a squeaky sliding door by leaning toward and away from it.
  • All audio annoyances in Hit The Road pale beside the horror of Sam announcing loudly and constantly, "I can't use these things together!" every time an inventory interaction fails. In a game that requires you to do things like stick Jesse James's severed hand on a golf ball retriever and shove it into the world's largest ball of twine, you'll be hearing this a lot.
• Space Quest 1 averts this, in that the self destruction alarm for the starbase you're on plays only for about two seconds and then continues silently. Nevertheless, Space Quest II: Vohaul's Revenge took the leap backwards and has a meltdown alarm that plays continuously.
• From Zack & Wiki, any of Wiki's high-pitched, ear-screeching audio clips.

Alternate Reality

• From Ingress: "Welcome back. It's been [>12] hours since your last login. I was getting worried about you." Considering that it's perfectly normal for regular players to spend more than 12 hours away from the game (e.g. due to sleeping and responsibilities such as school or work), especially if they don't live within rock-throwing distance of a portal, this form of Guilt-Based Gaming gets old fast.

Edutainment Games

• JumpStart Adventures 4th Grade: Haunted Island:
  • The Enchanted forest has a witch cackling whenever you pick up a dropper. Every. Single. Time.
  • The Pyramid game is all about matching... but whenever you mess up you hear a shrieking cat. This can be made even worse if you are listening to a player brute forcing it meaning all you hear is SHRIEEEEEK and RRRRRRR.
• The Oregon Trail II: DUN DUN! Yes, we know Emmy has cholera, now can you stop?
• Zoombinis Mountain Rescue. A shame, since its predecessor had the Most Wonderful Sound trope down pat.
  • In the puzzle where you must find and shoot the real Fleen among a selection of fakes, if you remain idle for too long, the Fleens will suddenly and loudly jeer at you. The first time, it makes you jump. Every other time, it makes you want to take out the disc and snap it in two. And if you think you can avoid the noise by just being fast, think again; you have only exactly enough shots to get the Zoombinis through, and being hasty will only result in wasted shots.
  • The Boolies. Dear sweet lord, the Boolies. It's bad enough that they look as creepy as they do, but they all have reverberating voices, creepy giggles, and trill and gurgle in ways that don't sound remotely human. No wonder the Zoombinis were scared shitless when they first encountered them.

Miscellaneous Games

• In any video game that has voice chat for multiplayer, you may get people that have a high pitched voice, scream for the entire game, decide to blast loud music/sounds over their microphone, hold their mic so close to their mouth that it records every breath they take, or have the volume jacked so you hear everything in-game echoed.
• Konami's light Headset. "FIRE! FIRE! FIRE! FIRE! FIRE! FIRE! FIRE! FIRE! Fuck!" "I didn't say 'fire', I said 'fuck'!"
• The Wii U has it right on the home screen. Messages are constantly popping up and every time one does, the Mii "saying" it will make a noise like "Yuuuuu!" or "Baba!" in a squeaky voice in order to draw your attention. If you're going to have the system running while doing something else, make sure to mute the speakers so you aren't driven insane.
• Alpiner used the TI/99-4A's speech synthesizer peripheral to provide a voice for the player character, as well as a quasi-Mission Control sort of disembodied voice. Some of what this latter voice says are warnings/advice ("Beware, falling objects", "Look out!", "You've got to move faster", and even "You've got to duck" despite the fact that your character can't duck) which may fall into Annoying Video Game Helper territory, and the rest of what it says is outright mockery of your mistakes ("Did you mean to do that?", "Walked right into that one", "Harder than it looks, isn't it?", and "Great move, sport!").
• The first games of the Battlecruiser series had you as captain of the titular ship. Any command you'd give, all the crewmembers who had anything to do with it would report immediately and speaking over each other, which resulted in an uncomprehensible mess of voices. The worst of these would happen during high-speed jumps. As you had to jump very often in the game, that very quickly became old.
• In Clusterball (a strange combination of a flight sim, Wipeout and Unreal Tournament 2004's Bombing Run), to score points you had to pick up chains of balls from magnetic tracks... BALL BALL BALL BALL BALL BALL BALL BALL BALL BALL BALL.
• In the Facebook game Country Story, livestock that need food or petting or have produce will make a VERY loud, distressed sound. This sound is often a good 2-dozen decibels higher than your volume setting. and it keeps happening over and over every ten seconds until you cater to their every whim. The cow is probably the worst, it sounds like a chainsaw.
• CrazyBus is known for its legendarily awful title screen music, almost certainly the worst piece of music ever 'written' for a game (it was made with a random generator). It is a harsh square-wave beep, on three random pitches in the chromatic scale, for every single measure in the music.
• Dragon's Lair, the "SAVE me!" will make you want to throttle Daphne by the time you rescue her, sexy outfit or no.
• The Gormandizer Mooks from Fighting Foodons constantly say "Glutton power" which is laughable at first, but can start grating on your nerves after a while.
• Katamari Damacy:
  • Euu-BEEP! Euu-BEEP! Euu-BEEP! Euu-BEEP! Euu-BEEP!... for the last thirty seconds. Of every level. Every time. Right after the screen-filling 1-minute warning. WE GET IT.
  • Also the proximity alarm when you're near a moving object.
• Mario Party:
  • Daisy. Every time you selected her in 8 and every time she got anything, she would yell "NEATO!" louder than any of the other characters' catchphrases.
    • Even more annoying is her catchphrase after she wins a minigame: "I'm a WINner!" Especially if she is one of your opponents, and you are losing.
  • Peach's victory quote from 5: "Oh, did I winnn? [giggle]"
  • Daisy will yell "THAT'S RIGHT!" after nearly everything she does in DS, including getting three coins from a common Blue Space.
    • Worse, after EACH mini-game win, EVERYONE but Yoshi will exclaim, "I'm the Superstar!" — despite the fact that you only become the "Superstar" when you win the whole main game, not when you win a single mini-game.
  • Similarly, there's everyone's (except Yoshi and Donkey Kong) exclamation that, "I'm the best!" after every mini-game they win in Mario Party 3.
  • The taunts.
    • 3 gave us Daisy's not very enthusiastic but somehow still annoying "Yahoo.", Waluigi's flat "Wa-ha-ha-ha." and Luigi's smarmy "Hahaha!"
    • As the series progresses, the taunts become more and more annoying, evolving from the above to Mario's "Hey, stinky!" and Toadette's "MUSHROOM!" (from #7), just to name a few. Some are amusing when done once or twice, but they don't stay funny for long.
    • Mario Party 8's taunts are thankfully optional. However, if you bought the "heckling voices" from the shop, you would find that you cannot turn them off- and they are activated by shaking the Wii Remote. Unless you've got a really steady hand, making a new file might just be less stressful.
  • Super Mario Party allows players to high five each other in team minigames. The problem with this? You constantly have to hear the female announcer shout "READY? YEAH!" repeatedly at the end every single time you play a team-based minigame, which can get very old to hear fast.
    • From the same game, there's also Mario's "I did it!" It's the same voice clip Mario says in New Super Mario Bros. when he has collected all 8 red coins, and some genius at Nintendo thought it would've been an excellent idea to have him say this as his catchphrase in Super Mario Party, which means Mario says this even when he hasn't did anything at all, like at the very beginning of a match before the minigame even starts! And when he actually has done something, he'll say this over and over again quite often. We get it Mario, you did it, but most of the time you say this you haven't even did anything!
• In Mitadake High, there's "Axe + Door". The game describes it as WHAM. Players describe it as "WOULD YOU CUT THAT OUT, WE DON'T WANNA HEAR IT".
• The final challenge of Only the Brave Can Rescue the Kidnapped Princess involves zapping ten soldiers with a magic wand as they run around taunting the player. The soldiers will say something every single time they come out of hiding, including the ones who aren't even in the player's line of sight, leading to a cacophony of "peek-a-boo!" and other childish taunts.
• Second Life:
  • Users can create their own "gestures" for their avatars that can be accompanied by an audio clip. Some of these audio clips become extremely common and overused. Ones is a child saying "lol" (triggered, of course, whenever the user types "lol"�which for some people has apparently become a form of punctuation used to indicate the end of a sentence), a sort of frantic chipmunk laughter, and "let's do the fork in the garbage disposal! DING DING DING DA DING DING DING DING DING DING!" Many griefers also use this trope deliberately and will use scripts to endlessly loop the sounds of horrific screaming in public places.
  • Of course the gesture/audio spamming falls flat since users can easily mute (block) people so they don't have to hear their spamming. Depending on what region you're in, admins can be so anal when it comes to gesture spamming that they will kick or ban people.
• In Takeshi's Challenge, the 'main' music you'll be hearing for most the game is extremely high-pitched and repetitive. Considering this game was designed to be as crappy as possible, this was likely intentional.
  Joueur du Grenier: I think we're close to the ultrasound barrier. All the dogs in my neighborhood bark every time I play this game!
• In Time Gal, Japanese or English, some people think Reika's voice and constant giggling and squealing are this. It doesn't help that she does it all throughout the game.
• Lampshaded in the obscure Xbox game Whacked!. "This just in: researchers have just discovered the most annoying sound. Let's take a listen." *cue loud screeching noise*
• WolfQuest: Howling, in multiplayer games, since people like to spam it and all the wolves use the same howl.

Multiplayer Online Battle Arena

• In the cartoon Adventure Time, the Earl of Lemongrab has an extremely loud and high-pitched voice, although it manages to be quite humorous. However, in the game Adventure Time Battle Party, the same voice clips are used constantly. If you choose to play as Lemongrab, you will get tired of hearing "TASTE THE SOUND SWORD!!!" and "OH! MY JUICE!" each time you use your special attacks.
• Dota 2: Storm Spirit's voice lines for his incredibly spammable ultimate are heard by everyone in the game, meaning that fighting him tends to sound like "STORM SPIRIT'S HERE! ZAAAAAAP! Who's that handsome devil? I'm over heeeeere! ZAAAAP? Where's the party? PUDDIN POP! Where's the party? ZAAAAP! BLOOOOW THE MAN DOWN! I'm over heeeere! ZAAAP! I'm over here! Where's the party? Puddin pop! Where's the Party? ZAAAAAP! I'm over heeeere! Who's that handsome devil? Puddin pop! BLOOOOW THE MAN DOWN! Mmmhmm! Who's that handsome devil? WHERE'S THE PARTY?" Doom speaks for everyone: "Storm Spirit, SHUT UP."
• League of Legends: "Ravage! Ravage! Pulse! Pro-tect! Ravage! Pro-tect! Pulse! Throw! Ravage! Pro-tect! Ravage! Ravage! Pulse! Ravage! Ravage! Pulse! Pro-tect!"
  • There's actually quite a few champions with extremely annoying sounds. Karma's auto-attack when you play as her as well as the mantra she says when using the titular ability can get on one's nerves FAST. Twitch's "I WAS HIDING, HEHEHEHEHE", "HERE'S SOMETHING THAT WON'T WASH OFF!" or "I'll be right under their noses". Heimerdinger's "Huh, it's smaller than the diagram" or literally ANY quote by Super Galaxy Rumble.... Riot seems to be unaware that champions who talk non-stop annoy their entire team to unknown lengths. And the laugh spam from pretty much any champ qualifies, but Lux's is particularly grating due to its high pitch.
• The English announcer in Pokémon Unite gets annoying quickly due to his repeated lines. Expect to hear "You're on fire!" and "What a goal!" a lot during matches.
• Smite:
  • The VGS is often abused by particularly salty players, who likes to spam the voiceline "Good Game!" if the game goes south, even just a little (like getting first blooded), or spamming "You Rock!" when they see someone else die. When that happens, it becomes the trope and it might be the cue to mute those guys.
  • When Erlang Shen went idle in the God selection screen, there is a chance that he will roar and then chuckle a bit for startling you. Those two things gets a little annoying according to some.
  • Ullr when changing stance will let out a Badass Boast, and both allies and enemies will hear him saying those. Seems okay, except Ullr's play style require him to change stances a lot, this can make his Badass Boast get repeated ad nauseum that you might think that he should shut up once in awhile, since not every Gods speak loudly when changing stances a lot (such as Hel or Tyr)
  • Cernunnos does loud grunts of exertion...every single time he autoattacks (though thankfully if he's attacking that fast, he won't grunt again to overplay the last). Needless to say, he's probably going to be the loudest character in the game at any given time while he's attacking. Thankfully, they decreased the percentage chance that Cernunnos will make a sound while firing his basic attacks on patch 6.8.

Pinball

• A number of early solid-state pinball machines featured an "endlessly rising tone" to increase tension during play.
• In The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle and Friends, once you have at least one of the left stand-up targets lit by hitting it, any hit on any of those targets will have an unusually loud voice clip of Rocky saying "Wrong hat!" In addition, these targets face inwards towards each other, so the ball will often bounce between each other repeatedly. Hence, until you accomplish the Hat Trick, any shot to the left will likely result in you hearing "Wrong hat!" repeated over and over and interrupting itself, and can be heard clearly even in loud and busy arcades.
• Data East's Batman pinball suffers from a lack of sound clips, meaning that every quote can become this in longer sessions of play.
• Skull, the announcer from No Fear: Dangerous Sports, has a problem with repeating his quote too much, turning them into this.
• Pinball RPG Rollers Of The Realm includes a Ranger as a playable character/ball, and while he's a great character to use due to an automatic ranged attack against nearby enemies, be prepared to hear a lot of "This is a turkey shoot! This is a turkey shoot! This is a turkey shoot! This is a turkey shoot!"
• The Hurry Up music from The Simpsons Pinball Party.
• That woman in Space Station who keeps going "Redock now, redock now, redock now..."

Rhythm Games

• In any rhythm game that sound-codes timing judgements, such as Tone Sphere, REFLEC BEAT, and Love Live! School idol festival: The sound you get for not getting the best note judgement.
• Nearly any Rhythm Game with Variable Mix lets you do this by spamming buttons. Schlagwerk's another chart in beatmania IIDX, at the very end, has its last note, a scratch note, be a sample of a Bad Boys character saying "FUCKED UP!" Needless to say, FUCKED UP FUCKED UP FUFUFFUFUFUFUFUFCKED UP. Of course, since this song only appears in Japanese installments, none of the game's intended demographic really gives a damn.
• crossbeats REV.: "MISSION CLEAR!" It would normally be a Most Wonderful Sound but given how often players tend to clear missions, especially new players who end up clearing a ton of "first time playing x song" missions, "played y songs" missions, "played a chart rated above level z for the first time" missions, etc., it ends up becoming "MISSION CLEAR! MISSION CLEAR! MISSION CLEAR!..." in practice. Even long after you stop being a newbie, you'll still probably cringe every time you hear "MISSION CLEAR!"
• DanceDanceRevolution:
  • The announcers, especially during the song, where they have about 5 good things and 5 bad things to say total, and they say something every 20 seconds or so. "HEY! IT'S A UFO!" "You're not an ordinary fella!" "NOOOOO!" Most of the complaints tend to come from Western players, whereas Japanese players tend to find announcers to be an important staple of the series.
  • And from DDR X onward, dear God. It's as if he was made to be as obnoxious as possible. "I crown you king — the Combo King!" "You're going combo-wombo!" And, worst of all, "We're dancing, we're groovin', you know this floor is MOOOOVIN'!" in a singsong tone, most likely to a different beat than you're dancing to.
• DJMAX Technika:
  • The loud notes at the end of "I want you". Worse because it's an arcade game played around others, so if you spam the screen at the end of the song, you can get some mean faces.
  • *CLANG* YOU FAILED.
• Whenever you lose in Gitaroo Man on single player mode, you get greeted with "AAAaaawwww... YOOooouuu LOOOOoooose..." This may be pretty funny the first time, but it REALLY gets tiring when you keep losing on that one level you just can't quite beat.
• The booing crowd and stereo distortion sounds when you fail a song in any Guitar Hero game may count as this, although it can be bypassed by pausing as soon as it comes up and then restarting the song. However, this can only be done in I-III, so if you're playing World Tour or beyond, you're gonna have to either pause and restart before you fail, or face the madness like a man.
• HarmoKnight: The sounds made by the Noizoids, whose name explains everything. They were made to make annoying sounds.
• Patapon: PATA PATA PATA PON. In this game, you give a troop of characters orders by playing certain beats on some drums, and this is the order to advance. Which means you have to play it a lot to get through the levels.
• Rhythm Heaven: Any sound that accompanies failed actions will become this very easily. Examples include:
  • The generic "boink!" sound.
  • Munchy Monk groaning when he catches a spider in Rhythm Heaven Fever's "Packing Pests".
  • Wrong-pitched rapping in Fever's "Love Rap" is either weirdly high or weirdly low pitched, and it ruins the flow either way.
  • The scratchy sound that plays when you fail a perfect run is super jarring, especially if you're almost done with the game.
• How to make any WACCA player salty: "Missless!" Despite the phrasing, it actually means you missed 1-5 times (no misses is declared a Full Combo).

Shoot 'em Up

• If you can get through the entirety of the NES port of 1942 without muting it to avoid its BGM, you'll earn our respect.
• Armed Police Batrider: "PLEASE CONTINUE! PLEASE CONTINUE! PLEA-PLE-PL-PL-PLEASE-PLE-PLEA-PLEASE CONTINUE! NOOOO!"
• Berzerk, every time you die:
  "Got the humanoid! Got the intruder!"
• Bosconian: "CONDITION RED! CONDITION RED! CONDITION RED!"
• The alarm that sounds ad nauseam when your plane is low on fuel and becomes an One-Hit-Point Wonder in Carrier Airwing and games with similar mechanics as Area 88 or the 1942 series.
• Cybermorph on the Atari Jaguar:
  "Where did YOU learn to fly? Where did YOU learn to fly? Where did YOU learn to fly? Where did YOU learn to fly?"
• Dangun Feveron's secret Uo Poko character makes a meowing sound every time you move. Oh, and to make matters worse, Uo Poko is regarded by many players as a Game-Breaker, meaning that to get the best scores, you have to use this character.
• Dodonpachi Daifukkatsu:
  • Arrange B, particularly if you play like this: "Youi wa yoroshii desu ka?^note Are you ready? Youi wa yoroshii desu ka? Youi wa yoroshii desu ka? Youi wa yoroshii desu ka? Youi wa yoroshii desu ka? Youi wa yoroshii desu ka?"
  • Saidai Oujou: "BARRIER! Heiki da mon~"^note A somewhat femininely cheeky way of saying "I'm okay", Hibachi gleefully reminds you about her bomb immunity. Every. Single. Chance she gets.
  • The Element Dolls' death screams whenever you lose all your lives. Especially Shuri's and Maria's.
• Freelancer: the *CLANNNNNNNGGGGGG!!!!* of a gun hitting directly your ship's metal when your shields are depleted.
• Galaxian: The sound the aliens make when charging at the Galaxian ship is an incredibly ear-grating Bomb Whistle that repeats itself from the beginning whenever another set of aliens begin charging. And unlike Galaga, where the whistle peters out after a few seconds, the whistle never stops if an alien is in an endless charge loop, and it eventually gets to where its pitch is lowered to the point that it no longer sounds like a whistle and sounds more like a repetitive beep.
• In Gradius IV: Fukkatsu, the first time you try to fire missiles without your Missile powerup activiated results in the announcer unnecessarily informing you that "the missile is not equipped yet!"
• Heavy Weapon:
  • "CEASE FIRE!", "QUIT IT", "STOP!" and "AAAAARRGGHH!", the first three are played as the white support helicopter sustains damage, the last is played when you kill it and get a score/time penalty. It doesn't help that it's very easy to accidentally shoot it down on later levels.
  • The sound played whenever an enemy drops a bomb, especially when there's loads of carpet bomber mooks on the screen.
  • "POIK POIK POIK POIK POIK", the sound played when your rapid fire Spread Shot regular shots hit a Reflex Fighter's Deflector Shields and turns into an indestructible purple shot flying out in a random direction.
  • The morse signal sounds made by the Romanov Attack Satellite, as well as their frequent spouts of Gratuitous Russian. It doesn't help that the Satellites are Demonic Spiders equipped with death rays that insta-kill you regardless of shields.
• House of the Dead: The first game has the Hangedman boss say "Die!" literally every single time he attacks.
• Hong Kong '97: By the moment you turn the game on, you're greeted with a five second loop of "I Love Beijing Tienanmen" which can easily make you get stuck in your head. Good luck trying to get rid that song off.
• Lethal Enforcers 1: "Eat lead, copper! Eat lead, copper! You can't kill me, copper! You missed me, pig! Eat lead, copper! You can't kill me, copper! You can't kill me, copper! Eat lead, copper!"
• The bomb sound in Raiden, a reminder that in this game, Smart Bombs take about a second to explode instead of exploding instantly like in other shooters.
• RayCrisis: Encroachment over 90%! Encroachment over 90%! Encroachment over 90%! Encroachment over 90%!
• The "music" in rRootage very quickly gets maddening; it's quite literally a handful of notes of music with a minimal beat looped over and over.
• Touhou Project:
  • In Touhou Suimusou ~ Immaterial and Missing Power, the sound of Youmu Konpaku's sword swishing can get so incredibly annoying. Especially, God help you, if you chose to play as her. Luckily, it seems to have been fixed for Touhou Hisouten ~ Scarlet Weather Rhapsody.
  • *spoon*/*pichun*, the death sound, can very quickly become very annoying, then again, surviving is a main goal in the games.
  • The klaxons when Utsuho declares a spellcard can be annoying, apparently.
  • Marisa's focused magic missile shot in Touhou Shinreibyou ~ Ten Desires makes a fairly loud ticking noise upon hitting. Something of a mixed blessing, actually, as, despite being annoying, the audio feedback can be quite helpful, and it's the only shot in the game with any.
• Tyrian takes the same idea of Critical Annoyance from Zelda and Pokémon and makes it even worse: the Low Armor alert is a klaxon that increases in tempo as your armor drops. Even worse if you just missed the armor pickup that only appears in few stages or is delivered by a ship that only appears when your armor is low.
• Under Fire: "What do you think of that?! What do you think of that?!" "Yaaahaha! Yaaahaha!" "Kill you!"
  • There's also "CHANGE MAGAZINE! CHANGE MAGAZINE! CHANGE MAGAZINE!" The game even tells you this even if you have some ammo left.

Sports Games

• Any game with color commentary. That witty banter is amusing at first, not so much when you hear it for the umpteenth time.
• Backyard Sports: In the first three Baseball games, there's the nonstop "Hey, batter batter!" and "We want a batter, not a broken ladder!" chants from the defending team. It was likely included to emulate the chatter in real life Little League games, but the developers went overboard. The chatter can be turned off in the audio options, and it was toned down in later games.
• Thanks to Giant Bomb's Quick Look at the Kinect and Motion Sports, in the horse-riding mode: "Oh, please. All right, let me reintroduce you two. Rider, meet horse. Horse, meet rider."
• Madden NFL: Since 17, every time you skipped the halftime show, Brandon Gaudin roasting you for doing that.
• From NFL Blitz:
  • "The kick is up...NO GOOD!"
  • "THE HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAIIILLLL MA—incomplete pass!"
• Pangya:
  • If you play as Arin, and use the Miracle Voice club set, God help you.
  • The "out of bounds" sound, especially on difficult courses.
• When playing Sega Superstars Tennis, we hope you like hearing Beat say "Go-go-goooooo!", because you're gonna be hearing it a lot whenever he scores a point.
• In forgotten SEGA arcade game Sports Jam, one of the selectable games is a tennis challenge where you try to hit bulls-eyes on the other side of the court. The announcer says "return" before every hit as the target moves to a new location, and this will become grating even in a 60-second challenge.
  "Return!" *thwack* "Return!" *thwack* "Return!" *thwack* "Return!" *thwack* "Return!" *thwack* ....
• In Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3, the crowd booing at you or cheering in the competition levels would start to annoy you if you hear it for the 100th time.
  • In the same series, the abrupt and incredibly frustrating goal failed sound effect in 4 and the Underground games.
• In Mario Golf: World Tour, if Daisy misses a putt, she says "No!" in a petulant tone. If Bowser Jr. does the same, he provides a drawn-out "Yeow!".

Survival Horror

• Fatal Frame: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse: Majority of the hostile ghosts, because the echoes of their voices was overladden with white noise and made them difficult to understand, even for some Japanese players. Worst offender, though, is Sakuya Haibara, whose white noise practically outdoes her voice whenever she appears and the player needs to run away from her. Her repeated lines of "You shall bloom, too" during the final battle are also very frequent.
• Five Nights at Freddy's:
  • Whenever you go to close the doors, and instead of the door closing you hear a jamming sound. The sound means you are dead and the game's rubbing your nose in it.
  • Freddy's laugh. Especially on 20/20/20/20 mode where he just won't stop doing it.
  • Do we even need to say it? SCREEEEEEEE!!!
• Five Nights at Freddy's 2: If you let Balloon Boy get into your office, he will laugh loudly at you for the rest of the night without leaving you alone. Doubles as Hell Is That Noise.
  • Mangle's strange radio garble manages to be worse than Balloon Boy's laugh to some, as it is constant and that it plays whenever you see it on the monitor or when it gets into your office.
• Five Nights at Freddy's 3 has Phantom Mangle and Phantom Puppet, who, when triggered, will introduce themselves with what are possibly the most annoying sounds in the entire FNaF series. Mangle's sound is a heavily distorted electronic screech, the Puppet's is a mishmash of high-pitched tones. Both are likely to startle/scare unsuspecting players.
• The Nightjar: Even for fans of Benedict Cumberbatch, the constant repetition of "Run too fast, you'll fall down. Then it knows you're here." can get really old really fast.
• Piggy:
  • Just about anything if the game is being played in another room by your obsessed younger brother. Please, turn the volume down...
• Silent Hill: Shattered Memories: While Cheryl's line announcing her feelings over her father are cute the first time, it's played over and over again just in the opening credits, then later in the game on televisions over and over and OVER. "I love my daddy! I love my daddy! I love my daddy! I LOVE MY DADDY!
  Chip Cheezum: "I don't know about you, but I love my daddy."
• The Suffering:
  • Hermes Haight just won't shut up. EVER. Throughout your final battle against him, he continues to babble inanely in that obnoxious, breathy voice. The worst part came once when he apparently got stuck in a loop, and repeated, "That's what I like about life, first it giveth then it taketh away," four times in a row.
  • A lot of the companions get really annoying if left alone long enough: the first time you meet him, you may find Kyle the heroin addict tragic and heartbreaking. When he's standing in front of an obstacle that he could get past if he looked around for a minute or two, whining "Come ooooon, pops, I gotta get my fix" you may find a newfound loathing for NPCs deep within the tortured depths of your soul. The good news is that you can just kill these people if their dialogue gets too much- or better still, just leave them to die to avoid negatively impacting your Karma Meter.
• Zombies, Run!.
  • Molly's wailing in "A Lost Child". It's high-pitched, repetitive, and it gets so annoying many players have expressed wanting to just leave the kid to be eaten by zombies. Unfortunately, Zombies, Run! is an audio-only game where the player doesn't actually control the story.
  • Similarly, Carena's screeching "Jamie! Jamie!" in "Relight My Fire".

Visual Novel

• In the surreal Japanese interactive movie, Gadget: Past as Future, half the soundtrack consists of an endless series of mechanical "chug-chug-chug" noises to fit the the countless train rides you take throughout the game. Becomes especially grating towards the end when you're using a small-scale spacecraft called the Ark, with the same music playing overtop.
• Umineko: When They Cry's System menu includes a family tree of the Ushiromiya family, which is handy. However, as more characters are introduced, the small corner of the screen starts to lack space for them, so a "next page" button is added so you can switch between different groups of characters. But for some reason, each time you click that button, somebody thought it would be a good idea to have the screen shatter loudly each time you change the page^note Switching to the witches' page also adds a "spiral" effect and a "whoosh" sound. Oh, and the glass shattering sound also plays when you close the System menu, so you have to hear it every time you want to save.

Non-Video Game Examples

Toys

• Fisher-Price's Laugh & Learn Puppy. It can be turned on just by moving it, and it'll exclaim "HUG ME!" and "YOU'RE MY FRIEND!" loudly until it finally screeches, "BYE BYE!". And god forbid if you accidentally set one off in a store. Also the power switch is not accessible unless you take the toy out of the packaging. To be fair though, the toy arrives in stores in demo mode- which means it should quickly shut itself off, unless someone has taken out the demo tab. This is why the UK packaging seals off almost the entire toy to make it harder to accidentally set it off in-store.
  • That has got nothing on the other Laugh & Learn toys, some of which^note notably the Happy Apple and the Light-Up Fishbowl have a tilt sensor and accelerometer. Meaning that after accidentally setting them off, a light shake is all it takes to get them to start making noise again (the only way to make them stop is to keep them completely still for three minutes). They also do not have a demo mode. Cue parents silently cussing red-faced while carrying one to the car after buying, since the power and volume switch isn't accessible while the toy is in packaging.
• Leap Frog's Sing and Snuggle "plushes"^note the name is an oxymoron, by the way, since the body of the plush is hard plastic and they're only about seven inches tall, making them impossible to snuggle are up there with the Laugh & Learn Puppy. It's worse because there is no power switch and volume control at all, and the toy does not have a demo mode- what you experience in stores are what you'll experience at home. And when set off, they'd sing and talk loudly for up to a minute after the interaction has stopped. To be fair, holding down the belly of the toy for 5 seconds shuts it off, but not before it screeches "GOODBYE!". But the packaging does not mention that, and it is quite easy to bump on another button just after turning it off.
• One of the My Little Pony Generation 3 Scootaloo toys. It can crawl around, which makes a grating mechanical noise, and then, over that, it repeats, "I'm Scoooot-a-loo, and I'm the best crawler ever!"
• Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen:
  • The Leader-class Optimus Prime is a marvel of engineering, the kind of thing that will convince you that yes, we landed on the Moon. It's also fiendishly complex to transform. Experienced Transfans can expect a good half an hour the first time they convert him to vehicle mode...as well as many, many, many accidental jostlings of the button that trigger's Prime's speech. And since he only says one thing, horrifyingly enough, Peter Cullen's voice saying "I am Optimus Prime" can become a Most Annoying Sound. The horror... the horror.
  • Worse yet, when both Armada Megatron and Armada Galvatron are lost, together, at the bottom of a four foot box of toys, and the box gets bumped in the middle of the night on the way to the bathroom...
• This is why so many people hate Furbies. The worst part is that there is no Off button. Most people locked them in cabinets which only resulted in nightmares and sleepless nights.
• In his Lock and Load special, Denis Leary advises against "buying the toys that make the noise". He did a bit about the Darth Vader bank toy. Put a coin in, and it says, "I am your father, Luke!" complete with loud, grainy breathing effect. Later on, the mechanism breaks, causing it to go off randomly. At one point, Denis is going to the bathroom in the middle of the night, and hears, "Denis, I'm on again, turn me off!"
  So you stop buying the toys that make the noise. Then you know what happens? The INLAWS buy the toys that make the noise, they drop 'em off at your house and then they LEAVE! And you're stuck with the toys that make the noise!
• The above was parodied in Baby Blues, where Wanda looks over a toy with all sorts of noisemaking things described as "Grandma's Revenge".
• A toy replica of Zabuza's sword from Naruto that was released when the show aired in the West. All it does is make really annoying clashing and swooshing noises. Not to mention that it is really easy to activate the sounds if you use it for cosplaying. The only way to get it to stop is if you take out the batteries.
• In India, many baby walkers are sold there that contain very awful renditions of nursery rhymes. Worst of all, parents complained that the sound on the walkers are too loud, and can hurt their babies ears.
• The buzzer on the board game Operation. Could also double as Hell Is That Noise.
• Parodied in an Xfinity commercial where an electronic doll constantly rocks back and forth, screeching out some unidentifiable phrase every other second in front of an unpleased little girl. There really are dolls like that...
• Zhu Zhu Pets. The on button is 'hidden' on its back, where it's easily pressable. And if you do, the zhu zhu pet will make noises until you work out how to switch the thing off again.
• Sing-a-Ma-Jigs. Their stutter-like "singing" in their robotic voices is pretty annoying, but things get worse once you set them on "chatter" mode. "EE! OOH! AAH!"
• Lalaloopsy's Harmony B. Sharp doll. She constantly nags you to "tickle her belly" in her nasally voice when you don't play with her.
• A line of singing and dancing terrorist dolls known as "Warfare Puppetry" were sold in Pakistan and Arab countries in the 2000s. The "singing" mentioned is actually a loop of a verse in the song "Sister Sister" by obscure Eurodance group Java. It's enough to make your ears bleed.
• Many knockoff toys, such as the bump and go type (for example, this Spider-Man and Ashens "The Goose) will play loud versions of songs ranging from nursery rhymes to popular pop songs to obscure Chinese tunes. Most of them play one verse of the songs on repeat, which will give many parents headaches.
  • This is parodied in The Loud House episode "The Crying Dame" in where a Foxy knockoff plush named Fenton plays a song that annoys the Louds.
• Bop-It. The noises that the toy makes can be fun for a while until that they're repeated to the point that can easily annoy parents. Parodied in The Simpsons episode "Rednecks And Broomsticks" in where Bart, Lisa and Maggie play with the Bonk-It which is the toy that parodies it. Homer gets annoyed of those noises and throws to the car window until it lands to other children but another father gets annoyed and throws the toy to the Simpsons children. Then the batteries run out and Bart turns the cigarrete lighter which makes the toy play faster much to Homer's even more annoyed to the point he can't longer handle the noises and decide to smash the toy with his foot.

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