Gratuitous English / Video Games

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Sonic the Hedgehog has so many that it has its own page.

• A Winner Is You is one of the most popular examples of this, and is effectively a subtrope of Gratuitous English.
• As a rule of thumb, in almost EVERY Japanese or East Asian fighting game, when your character is K.O'ed and the words "K.O" appears, it's ALWAYS spelled or announced as K.O. instead of Knock-out, since it's impossible to pronounce that word in many East Asian languages.
  • Though, "K.O." is a common abbreviation of the term even in English-speaking countries
  • Samurai Shodown IV instead proudly proclaims "VICTOLY!"
  • In Advanced Variable Geo, all the announcements are written and not-so-fluently voiced in English.
  • In Mobile Suit Gundam EX Revue, the fight outcomes are written and announced in Engrish: "YOU DEFEAT" and "YOU VICTORY."
• Ace Attorney:
  • In the original Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, Redd White would regularly throw out phrases in English in an attempt to seem cooler and more worldly than he was. In the English version, they were all changed to either Gratuitous Spanish or Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness.
  • The Japanese demo for Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Dual Destinies has Athena giving out "Let's do this!" near the beginning. In English, it's rendered as various European languages.
• The back cover◊ of Mad City (called The Adventures of Bayou Billy outside Japan) reads, "STREET-FIGHT GUN-SHOOTING CAR-ACTION: THIS IS TRIPLE HARD ACTION GAME." They aren't kidding (though it's not as hard as the international versions). There's also Billy shouting "OH GOD" in the intro, which surprisingly got past Nintendo of America's censors.
• EXEC_CUTYPUMP/. from Ar tonelico Qoga: Knell of Ar Ciel is a strange mixture of Japanese and English. Rather unique and strange for the series, as all other songs in it used either Japanese or the series' own Conlangs for their lyrics.
• The entirety of "Space Merry-Go-Round" from the lesser-known BEMANI arcade game Toy's March.
  Is such big merry-go-round seen until now? On which does it ride? On which do you ride? Riding and moving on the Earth...
• In Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg, the voice actors are clearly Japanese people saying English phrases such as "RETSU GOU!" ("Let's Go!") and "GUU MOUNII!" ("Good Morning!"), even in the North American release.
• Blazing Star, and its memetic "YOU FAIL IT! YOUR SKILL IS NOT ENOUGH" screen. Then there's the female announcer who yells English phrases such as "BONUS!" with hilarious results.
• The Boong-Ga Boong-Ga arcade cabinet, made in Korea, has "Have a fun!! Enjoy" written on several spots, and "What the heck...!! It's just waiting for the stress of city life. Give a shot!" on the side.
• Magnolia Arch in Bravely Second does this in the Japanese version of the game, though the English translation uses Gratuitous French instead.
• All the characters from Castle Shikigami 2 speak in horribly butchered English and make so little sense that it falls into the So Bad, It's Good category. Especially notable because the voice actors were native English speakers who had to read the Engrish(Though sometimes they would correct it).
• All of the songs in both Clockwork Knight games for the Sega Saturn consist entirely of this. Not only that, but because the singer has such a heavy accent, some people may have trouble understanding some of the lyrics.
• Cooking Mama:
  • The voice clips in the American versions of Cooking Mama are entirely this, ranging from simple stilted-sounding R/L inversion ("Look, a swarrowtail butterfry!" in Gardening Mama) to more awkward sounding phrases ("DON-TUH WARRY, MAMA WILL FEEX EET" and "WUNDAFAH! EVEN BEDDAZEN MAMA!" in Dinner With Friends)
  • Cooking Mama 2 has "Great! Yuu gayvid yua best effah!" ("Great! You gave it your best effort!") "Don warri, Mama will fix zis" and "Triffic! Even bettah zan Mama!"
  • DO NOT MIND
• Danganronpa:
  • Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc: One of the clues in the first murder case makes the identity of the killer extremely, almost frustratingly obvious to English-speakers from the get-go. The victim wrote "LEON" (the given name of her killer, Leon Kuwata) in English upside-down behind her before dying. Because all the characters involved are Japanese high-school students, though, most of them thought it was the number 11037.
  • Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair: Sonia Nevermind, the only non-Japanese character in the series, whose family name will raise a few eyebrows for fluent English speakers — although in fact her origins are a Shout-Out to Nirvana, with her being the princess of a small fictional country called "Novoselic". Sonia's dialogue also sees her let out one or two Cluster F-Bomb in English^note Only made obvious in the Japanese original where she switches to English suddenly; in the English localisation, she just... keeps speaking English. Since canonically the language the characters are speaking in the localisation is still meant to be Japanese she presumably still switches, but as a joke it's a bit lost in translation in rare moments when she loses her composure and, while she claims to speak 30 languages, English feels like an odd choice for her to revert to in moments of stress, given that Novoselic is implied to be in central Europe. But to be fair, its location is never technically specified beyond "Europe", so English is just about as plausible as anything else for her first language.
  • In the Gaiden Game Danganronpa Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls, the logo on Yuta Asahina's jacket reads "dog can go like 3 cups rice dog oh love since 1981."
  • Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony:
    • In the original Japanese version, Monokuma Files have their information written in Japanese and English, with the English texts looking like something out of Google Translate.
    • The Monokuma Kubs' theme, "Rise and Shine, Ursine!" has the lyrics "He is all that remains of a once-powerful nation. SHOWTIME." and "Right now, you're on the threshold of amazing adventure." The fourth execution music also has English lyrics sampled from the song "Bottom of the Sea" by Dhruva Aliman.
• This is fairly common in the song lyrics in Deardrops and Kira☆Kira. It's pointed out that some of the band members have no idea what they actually mean.

• Donald No Magical World is a Japanese-exclusive Game Gear game based on McDonald's, which becomes Ronald in the Magical World when played on a North American Game Gear. When Ronald comes to an M sign, he can play a mini-game to earn power-ups. In the English translation, the first and second Fry Kids say "SEARCH FOR SAME PICTURES!" and "LET'S MAKE AN ITEM PANEL!" when selected, but the third one says "DON'T GAMES!".
• The very name Donkey Kong is perhaps the most famous example of this trope.
• This warning◊ from DoDonPachi and other early Cave Shoot Em Ups.
• The opening video of the videogame Dote Up A Cat is totally Engrish.
• Dragon Quest V: In the Italian version, Rodrigo Briscoletti sprinkles English words into his speech.
• The names of Aether Relics in Duel Savior Destiny are frequently in gratuitous English and have little real meaning. For example, the sword Traitor is perfectly faithful to Taiga. Though Traitor is actually the subversion of this trend of the name meaning nothing: Traitor is rebelling against God.
• This is more or less the mode of international communications in eRepublik.
• The attack names in Eternal Sonata are mostly in gratuitous English (Even on the English language track, which just has the English voice actors say the original phrase), with Chopin getting lines in gratuitous French and Italian. Fortunately they make a reasonable amount of sense.
• In the Japanese version of Evil Zone (Fujin Ryouiki Eretzvaju), the scenario and episode titles for Gally "Vanish" Gregman and Linedwell Reinrix are all in English. Also, the scenario for Ihadulca is titled Fujin Ryouiki Eretzvaju ~I wanna kiss in the dark~.
• This often extends to names, too: in Final Fantasy VI, the name Tina was considered exotic. If you don't recognize them, they were somewhat thankfully re-translated into English when they were translated, so the character became Terra. And then there's the whole "Claude and Alice" rumour.
  • Then there's Siegfried, who abandons battle with some gratuitous Spanish. "Adios Amigos!"
  • The entire Final Fantasy franchise in general LOVES it self some Gratuitous Foreign Language. The names of almost everything — titles included — are pronounced the same way in Japanese as English. Example: "Barret Wallace" is pronounced roughly "Bayrlet Walrus."
  • The alternate ending theme of Final Fantasy Type-0, "Colorful — Falling in Love," has gratuitous English, while the English version of it has gratuitous Japanese.
• In a similar vein, Sodom from the Final Fight and Street Fighter games is an American who's trying to be Japanese. He actually inverts the trope because he never speaks English, but instead speaks Gratuitous Japanese by mashing English words together that sound like Japanese phrases. For example, when trying to say "shoushi senban" (meaning "truly pathetic") he says "SHOW SEA SEND BANG!"
• Many of the song names in the F-Zero OST seem to be random combinations of English words, such as "Decide in the Eyes", "Climb Up! And Get the Last Chance", "Crazy Call at Cry", and "Fall Down to the Scream".
• Sagittarius from Granblue Fantasy solely speaks in English. This trait is so heavily associated with him that even trophies for beating his Xeno version are written in English in the Japanese version of the game.
• Chipp Zanuff from Guilty Gear is supposed to be an American who doesn't know Japanese, but due to the Translation Convention of the game he speaks it most of the time anyway. This is balanced by his large amount of gratuitous English, usually when swearing or surprised ("HOLY ZEN!"). The example here also points out his inversion in gratuitous Japanese. Like in that example, on the rare occaisions he's actually using Japanese, rather than it being an effect of the Translation Convention, it's random nonsense that makes no sense in context—he actually shouts "sushi" during one of his attacks, for another example.
  • In addition, about 75% of the attacks in the games are called out in English. This ranges from the good (Chipp and Sol Badguy call their attacks with good English for the most part) to the laughable (Venom's Double Head Morbid: "DOUBAH HEAD MORBIDOH!").
  • The PS2 version of Guilty Gear X had pretty terrible English, every single fight. "Are you ready? Let's go! Let's enjoy a great time!" And... "Heaben o' Hell. Doo wan. Lez rock." This was replaced by better a better English speaker in the English version of Guilty Gear XX...at least until Accent Core, where they replaced the old speaker with a worse one for some infathomable reason when the original/#Reload/Slash speaker was perfect.
  • By Xrd, Ishiwatari had recruited Naoki Hashimoto to perform vocals for the series' soundtrack, which are always in English.
    • You also get a lot of this in Guilty Gear's Spiritual Successor BlazBlue. Try performing Ragna's "Gauntlet Hades" and watch how the Japanese voice actor mangles the phrase. And don't get me started on "The Wheel Of Fate Is Turning". Of course, you can set the game to English voice actors as well.
    • GAUNTORETTO HAHDEHZ! GORILLA FATE IS TOINING!
    • IZOCHI SUPAA KURASH!
  • The same developer gives us this in their Fist of the North Star fighting game: "The Time of Retribution. Battle (1,2,etc). Decide the Destiny!" Probably one of their better attempts.
• The "Hacker Loft" from House Flipper's Cyberpunk Flipper DLC is stated to be in "Neo-Tokyo", but all of the neon signs that can be seen in the loft and in the cityscape outside the window are in English, which is notably not only not the right language for what is presumably a Japanese city, but is also not the native language of the developers. (Empyrean are a Polish studio.)
• The Swedish game Jönssonligan: Jakten på Mjölner, despite often playing with Just a Stupid Accent instead, has a few instances of this (not just when the protagonists visit England):
  • Vanheden mixes Swedish and English weirdly in a few voice clips, like saying "Aldrig... Never!" if you try to get him to do something really stupid by the game's standards, or "Look-a här!" when he wants the others to pay attention to something. Despite this he'll ask his leader Sickan to handle the talking when in London, on the basis that "your English is better!"
  • An Italian criminal may apprehend the protagonists with a "Gimme your money, pronto!"
• KanColle has Kongou, who, as a nod to her real-life counterpart being constructed in Britain, habitually inserts random English into her speech ("BURNING LOVE" etc.). Later, the game would give us their take on American battleship Iowa, whose English is infamous for bring not only more frequent than Kongou's, but far, far worse. Naturally, this resulted in a collective "wut" from Western fans. Kadokawa Games seem to have since learned their lesson, if the later Allied Fleet additions Warspite and Saratoga are of any indication.
• A number of the songs from Katamari Damacy are loaded with Gratuitous English, including the Title Theme Tune "Katamari On the Rocks" ("Don't Worry, Do Your Best / Picnic kibun Feels So Good / Suteki na Afternoon / Furachi no Midnight, Yeah!") and "Song for the King of Kings" from We Love Katamari ("Everyday, Everynight / Kimi to ousama no Rainbow, Yes!")
  • The King of All Cosmos loves doing this, and not just with English. In addition to the Song for the King of Kings, he'll also shout "IT'S SO BEAUTIFUL, WOW!" if you manage to roll him up (which is easier said than done).
• Parodied in Katawa Shoujo. Misha has a shirt that says "Bush Cheney 2004" (referring to an American presidential election), completely oblivious to what it refers to.
• The Remnant Psyches in the Japanese release of Killer7 spoke Gratuitous English by means of the Apple MacinTalk speech synthesizer. The US version ran the voice through several filters to scramble the speech to the point where it's indecipherable.
  Iwazaru: The Master, it is good. This place is no, thank you. Hurry, let's hurry to the meeting.
• Kingdom Hearts:
  • Most of the main concepts of the game are rendered in English even in the Japanese version: Keyblade, Heartless, Nobody, ect. Most Keyblades also have English names, though the actual English release often tweaks or outright changes the names to be less clunky (e.g., the "Kingdom Key" keyblade is known as the "Kingdom Chain" in the Japanese versions).
  • The Japan-exclusive Final Mix versions of Kingdom Hearts, Kingdom Hearts II, and Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep use the English dubs with Japanese subtitles for almost every cutscene and battle voice clips.
  • In Kingdom Hearts II's musical mini-game world, Atlantica, the existing songs from The Little Mermaid (1989) are translated into Japanese, with the exception of the "Under the sea!" line, which remains in Engrish.
• One Japanese Kirby Super Star Strategy Guide featured a Great Cave Offensive comic (it read left-to-right a la a Western comic book) at one point, that featured a fedora-wearing Kirby with oddly masculine features in a nonsensical Indiana Jones spoof. The kicker? The people writing the guide apparently wrote it in Japanese first, then translated it into English themselves — as a result, we got gems like "More SKINNY, less ATTRACTIVE to my baby!", "Gra'ma said, NO PICK up EVIL", and, best of all, "SHIT!".
• Averted by Knights in the Nightmare. The Japanese version is fully voice-acted in English, and while the delivery is often highly enunciated for the Japanese audience, leading to alternate cheese and ham, it's still good English with a good accent. Atlus even saw fit to leave it in during localization, probably for the occasional Narm Charm. Sadly, this only holds true for the voice acting. The Japanese version of the game also featured a lot of English text, including such instant classics as "How to Reinforce Least Knight" and "Touch the Box to Be Defeated Enemy".
• The H-game Koikatsu invokes this with the Returnee personality. The girl will occasionally pepper her dialogue with English words, given that she grew up in an English-speaking country and returned to Japan to work on her poor grasp of Japanese.
• Last Breakers, a PC-98 Doujin Soft Shoot 'Em Up, has this Engrish text in the intro sequence:
  AMBITION OF ASTROGATER OBSTRUCT
  SALLY OUT WAS BREAKERS
  FOR PROTECT OUR PLANET
  
  BEGINING OF FIGHT
  DO NOT RUN TO ESCAPE
  GOOD LUCK!
• The Legend of Zelda and its opening scroll: "Many years ago Prince Darkness 'Gannon' stole one of the Triforce with Power. Princess Zelda had one of the Triforce with Wisdom. She divided it into '8' units to hide it from 'Gannon' before she was captured. Go find the '8' units 'Link' to save her." (Un)fortunately corrected in some later releases.
• Played With in Little Busters!: Kud is a foreigner who is constantly speaking in broken English... because it isn't her first language and she's really, really terrible at it, so she uses every opportunity she can get to practice it. For a straighter example, Komari speaks in English for a couple of her battle phrases, though her pronunciation is much better.
• In Live A Live's original Japanese version and its remake (along with some other languages), some sentences (usually very plot-relevant ones in cutscenes) are in English, such as "Kill you...", "After all... everything was blown away...", "Never End" and "Sad End".
• Lost Dimension has George Jackman, the Token American whose Japanese voice clips include several of these. Mainly "Justice!", "Judgment!" and "AMERICAN!"
• The War Was Beginning intro screens for Great Mahou Daisakusen have English captions in massive screaming letters, subtitled in much smaller Japanese.
  "ARE YOU GREAT? WE ARE GREAT!"
• Mario & Wario, despite being Japan-only, is entirely in English. Kinda makes one wonder why it never saw an international release...
• On the subject of the Mega Man Battle Network series: in the original Japanese, Eleki Hakushaku (lit. "Count Elec"; Count Zap in the English versions) often spoke in gratuitous English. There, we got such gems as "Yeah! Rock and Roll!" and "God Damn." Of course, the English versions couldn't include the second phrase^note Well, they could, but that would mean it couldn't get an E rating..
  • In the Mega Man X series, all the games after X5 use Gratuitous English in the names of the bosses. This ended up with atrocities like Metal Shark Player, Infinity Mijinion, and Tornado Tonion. This also the case for the boss names in the games before X6, but only in the Japanese versions of those games.
  • The names of X's weapons are also this trope. This became... interesting once he started Calling Your Attacks in later games.
  • And from the classic series, we have "JUMPU! JUMPU! SLIDINGU! SLIDINGU!"
• Metal Gear:
  • The MSX version of Metal Gear gave us such well named villains such as the "Shoot Gunner" and "Coward Duck". The sequel, Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake, isn't much better with the likes of "Black Color", "Ultrabox" (named after the New Wave Music band Ultravox) and "Night Sight".
  • In Metal Gear Solid, the scrawlings on the lab door say "HAL's labo. Keep out!"
  • One of the cassette tapes in Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker features Snake and Kazuhira Miller talking about the origins of Cecile's full name, Cecile Cosima Caminades. Kaz notes that in Japanese, "Cosima" is pronounced the same way as "Kojima," an obvious fourth wall-breaking reference to Hideo Kojima, creator of the Metal Gear series. He then realises that Caminades is pronounced (almost) the same way as "kaminandesu," which, in Japanese, means "is God." He then puts two and two together and proclaims that "Cosima Caminades" means "Kojima is God."
    • We then get this in the Japanese version:
    Kaz: コジマ・イズ・ゴッド！ コジマ・イズ・ゴッド！ コジマ・イズ・ゴッド！ エヴリボディ・セイ！ (with Cecile) コジマ・イズ・ゴッド！ コジマ・イズ・ゴッド！
    Snake: カズ？
    (Transliteration:)
    Kaz: KOJIMA IZU GODDO! KOJIMA IZU GODDO! KOJIMA IZU GODDO! EVURIBODI SEI! (with Cecile) KOJIMA IZU GODDO! KOJIMA IZU GODDO!
    Snake: Kaz?
• The ending from the first Metroid game is written entirely in dodgy English even in the Japanese version. The American version only removed two extraneous "the"s.
  "Great !! You fulfiled your mission. It will revive peace in (the) space. But,it may be invaded by the other Metroid. Pray for a true peace in (the) space!"
• In Super Metroid, Samus's narration over the opening sequence was in English even in the Japanese version. All the American release did was remove the subtitles. (They were re-added for international versions.)
• Not typical Engrish, but when MLBPA Baseball, also known as Fighting Baseball, was released for the Super Famicom, the creators came up with a series of fictional American names for all the players. The results◊ are not pretty.
• Mother 3: "Welcome to MOTHER3 World." Also, the voice clip played when you name your characters is Itoi himself saying, "OK desu ka?" (Is this OK?) According to Itoi, he was tricked into saying it by Hirokazu Tanaka (who had a tape recorder behind his back). Mother 2 also has many random NPCs (including the Runaway Five's announcer) speaking English in katakana, though the English translation just has them speak like anyone else.
• Kongōyasha Myōō from Namu Amida Butsu! -UTENA- is basically a reverse weeaboo – he likes studying foreign languages and decided to take English because it's popular, but his trouble getting proper education in it means he spends more time speaking broken English than his native Japanese.
• Some Nintendo-developed games with voiced cutscenes will have only English voice acting, even in the original Japanese release. A great example can be found in the intro cinematic of Pikmin 3, which is entirely in English, with added Japanese subtitles.
  • "The last Metroid is in captivity. The galaxy is at peace."
• The titular character in Onechanbara Z: ~ Kagura ~ has an affinity for saying her one-liners in really exaggerated English, usually before boss fights. Examples include "Okay, start to gain muscle!", "Okay, I give it a training!", and "I can't make a heroic drain," the latter of which actually seems to be a complaint.

• The Persona games have a weird relationship with this trope:
  • Persona 2 features the famous "LET'S POSITIVE THINKING!", courtesy of Maya Amano, and Eikichi shouts random English phrases a lot. Funnily enough, Lisa Silverman, a Caucasian girl who cannot speak English at all, does this with Cantonese instead, and early in Innocent Sin, Eikichi gives her crap for it despite, you know, his own "OKAY ERREYBODY!"
  • Persona 3, 4 and 5 all feature a lot of gratuitous English in almost all their vocal songs, most notably the intro screens and battle music... except it's surprisingly good. There are plenty of parts where words are misemphasized or mispronounced, but if you know what they're trying to say, the actual lyrics makes complete sense.
  • The slogan for Junes in Persona 4 is the nonsensical "Everyday younglife Junes", which was changed in the English translation to something that makes a little more sense ("Everyday's great at your Junes").
  • Persona 3:
    • Mitsuru calls this trope on pretty much every scene where she's in. It was changed into Gratuitous French on the American release. Lampshaded by Junpei:
    Mitsuru: Tres bien.
    Junpei: Tray Ben...? What's that mean?◊ That's not English, is it?◊
    • In the English localization of the PSP version, Junpei says something along the lines of "Lousy seniors with their lousy French" instead, presumably to avoid any confusion resulting from the Translation Convention of having English stand in for Japanese in the dub.
    • Akihiko also sort of jumps in with Mitsuru on the English bandwagon with an English catchphrase of his own ("GOOD JOB") that he says from time to time. This wasn't carried over in any capacity in the localization, sadly.
  • Persona 4: Dancing All Night's trailer features some of the most hilarious and excited-sounding broken English you'll ever hear.
  "Could you imagine the step? He's GENIUS!"
  • Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth features the pre-battle messages "Enemy Advanced" and "Player Advanced" that precede enemy and player ambushes, with these messages seeming a bit Engrishy.
  • Persona 5: Even if it's surprisingly good, English litters the UI even in the Japanese version, and almost every party peppers their speech with random English phrases... despite the game being set almost entirely in Tokyo, Japan.
  Morgana: THE END だ.
• Pokémon:
  • Several of the first generation mons' Japanese names are simply English words, like Spear (Beedrill), Fire, Thunder and Freezer (Respectively Moltres, Zapdos and Articuno), or Sleep and Sleeper (Drowzee and Hypno).
  • Similarly, the names of several Z-Moves in the Japanese version of Pokémon Sun and Moon are word-to-word English phrases written in katakana, the Japanese alphabet for loanwords, and shown as a flashy text for extra flavor.
• "Cuddle Core" from pop'n music has its lyrics entirely in mangled English. "Murmur Twins" is right.
• Inverted in Resident Evil Extinction, where a Japanese subway sign sports nonsensical kanji.
• Several games in the Rhythm Heaven series use Gratuitous English for certain audio cues in the Japanese versions, with some of them being entirely English. Notable examples include Fever's [[Cheer Readers ("Hey you can do! Let's everybody go!") and the DS version's DJ School ("Break, c'mon, ooh! Sukuracho, hey!")
  • The lyrics for the GBA game's "Karate Man" game are entirely in English, despite the game never getting an English release.
  Hey, baby. How's it going? This. Beat. Is non. Stop.
  • At the end of the "Frog Hop" minigame in the DS game, the singer says, "Sankyuu! Verrrrry much-a!" For whatever reason, this remained untranslated in the English version, unlike the rest of the song.
  • "I'm a Lady Now" from Megamix is mostly in (actually pretty decent) English, which was left as-is in the international release.
• In the Taiwanese video game franchise Richman, there's a character named Daniel whose dialogue is entirly in English.
• The opening Theme Song to the American release of Rune Factory: A Fantasy Harvest Moon contains nothing but word salad Engrish. See for yourself. The carries on into the sequels, of course, but at least there the lyrics are comprehensible.
• In 2000, the Satellaview, an SNES peripheral that allowed users to play games that were broadcasted via a satellite, broadcasted a good-bye notice (skip to 1:49 for the notice) before it ceased transmissions. The notice has a short English-language section that uses rather... interesting grammar.
  Thanks for all Players and Staffs and Supporters.
  
  I beleve We've made good cooperation and had lots of superior fun experiences human never seen!
  
  I ploud of You forever!
• In the Sengoku Basara series, Date Masamune frequently uses heavily-accented English phrases whenever it's time to kick ass in the original Japanese version, you see?
  • Also happens in the anime adaptation. PUT YA GUNS ON! BURNING UP!!
  • The intro to the North American release of the third game has the same intro song from the original sung completely in English. It's something to behold.
• In Shining Song Starnova, the half-Japanese, half-American Julie Watanabe peppers her voiced Japanese dialogue with the occasional English curse word.
• Shogo: Mobile Armor Division achieves this through nesting it in Gratuitous Japanese — as befits the Animesque style of the game, the theme song is in Japanese... with one sentence in English for no apparent reason.
• Lampshaded in The Simpsons Game, which features a level parodying Japanese RPGs entitled Big Super Happy Fun Fun.
• In the Japanese versions of Snatcher, JUNKER was originally an acronym for "Judgement Uninfected Naked-Kind Execute Ranger".
• SNK may well be the kings of this trope, as any foreign character in their games will have Engrish in their quotes.
  • As a matter of fact, the most numerous and well-known Engrish quotes in all of videogames primarily come from Fatal Fury protagonist Terry Bogard, particularly from his appearance in Garou: Mark of the Wolves. Here are just a few:
    • "Hegh, cummow cummow!" (Hey, c'mon c'mon!)
    • "Geht seedeeyahss!" (Get serious!)
    • "Standahh!" (Stand up!)
    • "Aw yoo woahkeh?" (Are you okay?)
    • "Bustah Woaf!" (Buster Wolf!)
    • "Jezzass!" (Jesus!)
    • "Sheet!" (Shit!)
  • Terry's arch-nemesis Geese Howard isn't any better himself.
    • "Bow beefoh me!" (Bow before me!)
    • "Yuu ah nat worss mai deeescasss." (You are not worth my disgust.)
    • "Ayyy wheel stehhh mah hans, wif yo brahhh" (I will stain my hands with your blood.)
    • "Predictabo!" (Predictable!)
    • "Yuu cannoh esscae fwohn desss" (You cannot escape from death.)^note Also leads to the mishearing "You cannot escape long desk"
    • "Die fouwevahh!" (Die forever!)
    • Geese's use of Engrish has led to a long debate over what to call his first Desperation Move. Calling Your Attacks applies, but it's anyone's guess if he yells "Raising Storm" or "Raging Storm", to the point official move lists can't make up their mind. Fans generally go with "Raging Storm". "THUNDAH BREAK!" (Thunder Break) is a bit harder to misinterpret.
  • Iori Yagami of The King of Fighters has an image song, "Kaze no Allegory", where he sings "Don't break my soul, woah oah tonight".
  • Krauser, unlike other SNK characters, has been voiced by English-speaking actors in almost every game he's been (Michael Beard in Fatal Fury 2 and Fatal Fury Special, and B.J. Love in KOF and Real Bout games).
  • RAWKET LAWNCHAIR!
  • King of Fighters 2003 has a particularly amusing one where Mary speaks English in her intro with Terry. "Yewwww rookinforwa noooo pattenha? Awen't yewwwww zaaa wucky lon?" (You lookin' for a new partner? Aren't you the lucky one?)
• Space Channel 5 engages in this trope in the Japanese voiceovers. All of the controller commands are shouted out in English ("Up", "Down", "Left", "Right", "Hey", "Shoot").
• In the PlayStation game Speed Power Gunbike, the game over screen happily informs you that "Anergy empty! You all over!"
• In an interesting gaming parallel, the SSX series of made-in-Canada snowboarding games features a Japanese character, Kaori, who speaks in a 50/50 mish-mash of fluent Japanese and extremely accented gratuitous English. Given the lack of other non-English-fluent characters, the makers were apparently trying to jointly appeal to trendy Japanese audiences and American fans of Japanese culture. Interestingly, this lack of fluency doesn't impede her interaction with the other snowboarders at all, even a romantic interest.
• The Japanese version of Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike has the memorable "Let's Blocking" intro for the parry practice bonus stage. (Blocking is what parrying is called in Japanese, but the incongruous "let's" is what makes it Made of Win).
  • The Japanese track of Street Fighter IV has a lot of this when calling attacks and giving introductions. Particularly amusing are Balrog (the boxer), who shouts nothing but Engrish in the Japanese track, and El Fuerte, who is Mexican.
    • Cammy from the same game also supplies with some Gratuitous English, such as (among other things) saying "Mission complete" when she wins a fight, and calling her attacks (as expected from a Fighting Game), all of which are in English.
  • Also of note is Rolento's victory phrase in Street Fighter Alpha 2/3: MISSHON KONPURIITO.
• Super Mario Bros.:
  • Super Mario Sunshine has "SHINE GET!" (the "get" was wiped from the English releases)
  • Super Mario Galaxy has "Star Get!" and "Grand Star Get!". The English release had it rewritten this time, however.
  • In Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story, Broque Monsieur originally used Gratuitous English, such as "Oh my dog! What's happen?". The English version changed it into Gratuitous French instead.
  • "GOAL!"
• Super Smash Bros.:
  • Ness and Captain Falcon use gratuitous English when calling their attack names out.
  • Fox and Falco had this in Melee but gained appropriate voice actors for the English versions of Brawl onwards.
  • In Brawl, Lucas and Zero Suit Samus avoid this by having American voice actors—even in the Japanese version.
    • Ditto the announcer in all the games in the series for Japanese and English. In Ultimate, this also applies to the Korean version.
  • The aforementioned Japanese Sonic the Hedgehog in Brawl onwards and Terry Bogard from Fatal Fury in Ultimate, per the norm.
• Taito was particularly notorious for this in their arcade games in the 1980s. Notable examples include the opening screens for both Arkanoid and Volfied. Although one game, Rastan Saga (or just "Rastan" depending on the version) does have the other kind of English.
• In the Japanese version of Tales of Vesperia, villain Yeager speaks in a rather peculiar manner, randomly interjecting English words and phrases where Japanese would have sufficed, such as "Come on, boy!", and "Oh my god...". Naturally, his manner of speaking was completely changed in the English dub ...into Gratuitous German!
  • Karol has a somewhat unusual case in that the names of his arts in the Japanese dub are half Japanese and half English in their pronunciation (Examples being Houshuu Thunder and Kasshin Heal Stamp), perhaps to reflect his childish nature.
  • In the Japanese Tales of Symphonia, two of the main characters were named in Gratuitous English: the healer was named Refill, and her brilliant little brother was named Genius. These were thankfully changed to Raine and Genis for the English translation, although some fans use them anyway.
  There once was a young elf named Genius
  Whose English name was God's gift to limerick writers...
  • Any Tales Of game will feature this, for this reason: While most weapon techniques are three-to-five kanji compounds, spells are generally named in English. Now remember that the series has had voice acting since the beginning, and, well... faastueido! fiafurufurea! shirufu! and the ever unforgettable indignayshun! And for the exceptions who have their tech names in Gratuitous English, this applies again. There are also a few examples of Gratuitous French and Gratuitous German techs, as well.
• In the French version of Team Fortress 2, one can hear the Spy scream, "Oh my God", in English as part of his Jarate responses. What makes this strange is that he says that phrase in French in the original English version (and all of the other languages the game was dubbed in), suggesting an attempt to Keep It Foreign.
  • The Japanese version of the game keeps the English names for the player classes, thus, turning their names into this trope. In addition, only the interface's translated — the voice acting stays in English (at least by default).
• The item shop in Tears to Tiara is called "The Good Folk" and is run by an Honest John of an Elf.
• In the Japan-only Tetris: The Grand Master 3, if your game ends prematurely in Master or Shirase mode...
  "EXCELLENT — but...let's go better next time"
• Aside from the title itself, Time Gal gives us "STOPPU!" Time Gal yells this whenever a Time Stop is performed. The very last time this is done in the game, she yells out the whole phrase, minus the extra syllable.
  TIIIIIIIIIIIIIIME STOP!
• Total Distortion's Yuji Dude speaks in Japanese, but with the occasional English expression thrown in like "cool beans and rice" or "stone cold crazy".
• The save screen in Twilight Syndrome's second volume shows the chapter names in English. Mika also occasionally spouts out an English catchphrase or another.
• Arcade game Twinkle Star Sprites starts off with a shout of "TUWINKERU SUTAH SPURAITO".
  • Which isn't all that bad, but there are characters named Load Ran and Really Till.
• Under Night In-Birth isn't dubbed into English, but several characters call their attacks in English nonetheless. Examples include Gordeau's "GRIM REAPAH!" and Hyde calling the three hits of Vacant Shift as "FIRST! SECUNDO! THIRDO!". Yuzuriha's jumping elbow drop is called out as "el-BOW!" and one of her reaction lines to getting hit is an inappropriately-funny "OHHH NOOO!"
• In the original French version of Uncle Albert's Magical Album, the countdown before the rocket ship takes off is said in English.
• In Way of the Samurai 4, members of the British faction sometimes speak in heavily-accented Engrish. Of particular note are the photographers, who act as your Save Points in the game, and speak to you in broken English ("Hold still unmoving, please!"), somewhat justified by the language barrier between your samurai and the British nationals (until the language school opens up, most of the other foreigners won't be able to understand you at all).
• In the NES game Wild Gunman, there is a clearly (digitized) Japanese voice saying "FAIYAH!" ("Fire!") in both versions.
• Very prevalent in the Japanese dub of Xenoblade Chronicles 1 while the characters are calling their attacks. Only Dunban and Riki are exempt from this, due to having Japanese art names.
• The X-Men arcade game has many plainly spoken engrish phrases, including "Pyro will burn you to toast!", "I am Magneto, Master of Magnet!", "Magneto is in another place" and the (in)famous "X-Men, welcome to die!" as spoken by Magneto. (This line was parodied in Marvel vs. Capcom 3.) While not exactly engrish, he also makes the ridiculous insult of "X-chicken!"
  • More X-Men engrish: the first Japanese theme song produced when the '90s animated series was brought to Japan has a few random English phrases. The most obvious one is at the end where the singer practically screams with much gusto the line "CRY FOR THE MOON!"
• Likewise, the European Sega Mega Drive release of Zero Wing that spawned the "All Your Base Are Belong to Us" meme. The meme spread only because of its badly worded opening sequence. The arcade version's ending is similarly hilarious.

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