Narm Charm / Video Games

• The 7th Guest — with the narrator's ghoulish puns and Cryptkeeper-style delivery, the lame lines spoken hammily by obvious non-actors, the honky-tonk closing sound track... So Bad, It's Good, and though it chased away any potential for horror, it managed to leave the mystery intact.
• Ace Attorney runs on this trope. Have you any... "OBJECTION!"?
  • How about the fact that everyone on the stand reacts to the revelation of problems in testimony like they were physical attacks? Or the fact that no one seems to take these things as out of place (most of the time)? The simple fact that Apollo gets away with calling out the scar on the back of Kristoph's hand turning into a demon face in court as part of his proof and it's accepted by all involved might be Narm in concept, but leads in to such well done scenes that you won't care.
  • The infamous scene in which you cross-examine a parrot is another good example. It's even treated as a stupid idea in-universe, but it's near the climax of one of the series' best cases, and somehow it doesn't take away from the drama.
  • The fact that nearly every killer has a Villainous Breakdown or a Motive Rant doesn't seem all that silly if you're not paying attention...but in Justice For All, when Adrian Andrews is wrongly accused of being a killer, the witness doesn't break down and confess, and everyone in the court is so confused that the witness isn't abiding by their cheesy tropes. But still, it seems more like a moment of self-awareness than clumsy writing.
    • What about the fact that absolutely nobody questions the fact that Adrian Andrews has her glasses EXPLODE at least 5 times, and she just pulls out a new pair from Hammerspace?
    • In the same case, the way the attorneys dance around not using gendered pronouns for Adrian Andrews results in some remarkably cheesy sentences, but it's a vital detail that helps expose Shelley de Killer's lies.
• Ace Combat: A promotional laserdisc for Air Combat 22 includes a vocal version of one of the game's background track, done in a style very similar to the Daytona USA tracks linked below. It is very silly, and by that token, very lovable.
• Advance Wars: Dual Strike gives us Jake, a Totally Radical CO who says complete nonsense about "serving his opponents bowls of smack down soup", but at the same time is a truly heroic and competent young man who really is hard not to like. Towards the end he gives a genuinely heartfelt speech about why he fights which he finishes with "...word", which should completely ruin it but instead only makes it complete.
  Jake: ...I'll tell you something, Sasha... No one will ever do this again. If some enemy appears and tries to wreck everything all over again... I won't lose. I will fight for the tiny life that has blossomed in this great land... ...Word.
• While it is the original Survival Horror and revolutionary for its time, the original Alone in the Dark trilogy is filled to the brim with Narm like a flask of sweet liquor. The polygonal graphics are extremely cartoonish, contrasting with the darker environments of more modern survival horror games and making the appearance of the Off-Model characters more frightening than the monsters. While the first game focused on puzzle-solving and evading monsters inspired by the Cthulhu Mythos, the other games went in more action-oriented and more over-the-top directions: the second game included the hero gunning down zombies with a Thompson while dressed in a Santa Claus costume while the third had Carnby mowing down cowboy zombies with a Gatling gun. The cherry on the cheesecake is easily the So Bad, It's Good voice acting: almost every text is read by an over-the-top narrator, often with overblown drama and ridiculous accents.
• The voice acting in Arc Rise Fantasia is absolutely hilarious. Its verges on sounding like Bad "Bad Acting" at times, and it is spectacular.
• Armed Police Batrider has a boss theme called "Let Ass Kick Together!"
  • "WELCOME TO VIOLENT CITY."
• The ridiculous simlish mumble in Banjo-Kazooie was so well loved that by the time Rareware had the money and technology to do full-on voice acting in the sequel, the fans wouldn't hear of it. The corny mumbling was part of what endeared the Banjo series to them. Rare noted the fans' remarks, and opted to keep the mumble. Likewise, Yooka-Laylee, a Spiritual Successor from some of the former Banjo-Kazooie personnel, retains the gibberish language.
• The first Baten Kaitos game. As abysmal as the voice acting was, the plot still manages to be both interesting and enjoyable.
  • Especially during Kalas' betrayal, where he gets Drunk on the Dark Side and promptly starts Chewing the Scenery. His lines ("MY WIIIIIINGS!") are ridiculous, but it still manages to be a shocking twist.
• Batman: Arkham Asylum has a few lines that would be ridiculous if they weren't being spoken by Batman (in Kevin Conroy's baritone, no less), such as the Badass Boast "I eat punks like these for breakfast."
• Bayonetta is a rare case of just being so hyper-sexualized to the exact point where it becomes delicious Narm, but before it becomes just porn.
• beatmania IIDX: "IIDX GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOLLLLLLLD!!"
• BlazBlue: BANG BA BA BAAAAAAAAAAAAANG!!
  • Being a World of Ham, BlazBlue is naturally full of this. Special mention goes to Terumi. He goes on constant Hannibal Lectures and nearly every word out of his mouth is incredibly overacted. This does not make him any less effective as a villain.
• Captain America and the Avengers is a beat-'em-up by Data East hailing from 1991. It's not the most advanced game even for its time, but while the gameplay is passable, the voice acting alternates between hilariously bad (for instance, Whirlwind's comeback to "You can't escape" is "You will be the one escaping!") and absurdly epic (the game will implore you to continue with a stirring "AMERICA STILL NEEDS YOUR HELP!"). There is no subtlety whatsoever in the delivery, but this just makes it more fun and enjoyable—making it surprisingly similar to classically cheesy Silver Age comic books as a result.
• The cheery voiceovers from Carrie's Order Up! are cheesy, fitting the '90s video game atmosphere, but are too cute not to smile.
• Castlevania: Symphony of the Night is a classic for many reasons, one of which is the hilariously over-the-top voice acting. This is so well-loved that some fans actually complained about Konami redoing the dialogue scenes when the game was ported to the PSP as part of Dracula X Chronicles.
  • Castlevania is often like this. Many of the bosses call their attacks in ridiculously overdramatic ways, and it is so epic.
    • DIE MONSTER, YOU DON'T BELONG IN THIS WORLD!!
  • From Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia: "DIE SHANOA! HOW DARE YOU...EVEN FORGETTING...WHO RAISED YOU...YOU...STUPID DISCIPLE!!
• In the MMORPGs City of Heroes and Champions Online, the sheer amounts of character customisation options as well as the superpower power combinations allow players to make for some absolutely ridiculous superheroes. Ordinarily, people find these types of characters in MMORPGs to be distracting (Somewhat of a base breaker), but not in City of Heroes or Champions Online - the sheer amounts of goofy characters wielding ridiculous powers is very much one of the main draws.
• Underrated masterpiece Cold Fear gives us what are obviously American voice actors doing Russian accents and speaking lines which would be narmy enough already. Since the game is so downright creepy and epic at the same time, its dedicated fanbase loves every second of it. Since it's also essentially a complete ripoff of Resident Evil 4, having Narm Charm is mandatory.
• Command & Conquer. Especially the Red Alert series. If it wasn't completely hammy, Campy, and over the top it wouldn't be nearly as fun.
  • The Tiberium series, not so much... Though it's interesting to see that a few of Tiberium's cutscenes fall into straight Narm so hard that one might wonder if Red Alert had the right idea.
• Crimzon Clover:
  • The game goes out of its way to ham up the BREAK MODE and DOUBLE BREAK MODE text whenever you activate either Break mode.
  • From the ending: "Shooting game never die." Despite the Engrish, it's a Badass Boast for the entire Shoot 'Em Up genre. When World Ignition was localized into English, this line was kept in.
• A rather silly plot, low production values, spotty acting, and it being Full Motion Video made a lot of the story in Crusader endearing at best... but occasional moments, such as Ely chewing you out if you fail the mission where Andrews dies, have real emotional resonance.
• Darius:
  • The second boss you fight in the first game is called Electric Fan. The boss in question is shaped like some combination of a sea anemone and, well, an electric fan.
  • "A HUGE BATTLESHIP MY HOME DADDY IS APPROACHING FAST"
  • Really, just the "HUGE BATTLESHIP" Boss Warning Siren. You see it dozens of times, yet it's an iconic staple of the series.
• The original congratulatory text for killing a boss in Dark Souls: YOU DEFEATED. Defeated what, you ask? Doesn't matter, YOU DEFEATED.^note Technically, it's correct English, but it's almost never spoken without a direct subject. It's been changed to the more sensible "VICTORY ACHIEVED" in updates, however.
• Dawn of War: Soulstorm is near-universally accepted as this, given the World of Ham nature of the setting. How can you not laugh at lines like "Our enemies hide in metal BAWKSES, the cowards, the fools!"
• If videogame music can have Narm Charm, then the music for Daytona USA definitely qualifies. The Engrish makes it so hard to take seriously, but it sounds so adorable nonetheless. Come on everybody: DAAAAYYTOOONNNNNNAAAAAAAA (let's go away)!
  • "Brue brue skiiiiies!"
• A very, very powerful moment in Dead Space 2 has Isaac confronting the hallucination of his now deceased girlfriend that the Marker exploits to make Isaac mentally unstable. Upon them dropping the act, the final boss fight begins, and Isaac says something that, normally, would be cheesy. But the frustration he's built up over the game, the bluntness of it, and the incredible delivery and power behind the line make it just plain incredible.
  Isaac: Fuck you! AND FUCK YOUR MARKER!
• The almost unimaginably incompetent Deadly Premonition enjoyed a lot of critical success from game reviewers, who praised the game's intelligence (especially in the way the relationship between the player and the protagonist is handled), the legitimately interesting plot and characters, and its moments of genuine Nightmare Fuel... surrounded by badly-mixed, terribly-written, dialogue; ugly graphics, poor gameplay and hilariously bad animation that looks like it was thrown together in five minutes in Garry's Mod. Naturally, those qualities of the game have a huge fanbase too.
• Devil May Cry, which seems to run on Campy Narm nearly as much as it does the Rule of Cool.
  • Which is why the game fills our souls with liiiiight.
• If one completes Lohse's personal quest in Divinity: Original Sin II in the best possible way (ie, Killing her demon Adramalihk, she will finally sing. The player of course has the option to do this immediately, meaning she might be doing it while surrounded by the bodies of Adramalihk's other victims, gratuitous amounts of blood, and possibly even standing over Adrahmalihk's dead body. While it sounds absolutely goofy as heck, players oft do this on purpose because they think it's so awesome.
• DonPachi: While the announcer normally speaks in Japanese, DoDonPachi DaiFukkatsu Black Label's Ketsui crossover arrange mode suddenly has her speak English for the phrase "Just a couple more shots desu!"
  • The iOS/Android arrange mode's True Final Boss music: Battle for the Last, along with the vocal version sung by Hyadain. The energetic music is rather out of place for the series, let alone a True Final Boss bent on ultimate Bullet Hell destruction, yet it's awesome in a Necrofantasia-like way.
  • Hibachi's pre-battle speech in the original DoDonPachi. You may be laughing at it now, but try laughing when his first form starts opening a can of danmaku whoop-ass on you 10 seconds later.
    "HOW DARE YOU PENETRATE MY TEARITORY? YOU HAVE ROBBED EVERYTHING I POSSESSED. YOU KNOE,WHAT YOU'VE DONE TO ME IS JUST UNFORGIVABLE. I'LL PUNISH YOU MYSELF AND SEE TO IT THAT YOU'LL DIE A MISERABLE DEATH BY MY AWESOME WEAPON. DIE,MAGGOTTS."
• Dragon Age:
  • While it's universally agreed that the sex scenes in Dragon Age: Origins are incredibly cheesy—thanks in no small part to the hilariously awful underwear everyone's wearing—the romances themselves are pure heartwarming (and heartrending, with the right choices). The sex scenes are made even more awkward by a certain bug that results in the player character still wearing full plate armor. There's also the fact that Morrigan, who clearly wears no undergarments under that outfit of hers, apparently puts on underwear to have sex.
  • This doesn't get much better in Dragon Age II. The sex scenes now happen while everyone's fully clothed, which is actually a little better, but the body positions are still really weird and there's a bit of awkward dialogue that the first game mostly lacked - but there are still many genuinely sweet moments, and you can, in one case, break the tension by offering your lover a sandwich.
  • Dragon Age: Inquisition continues the grand tradition with a cutscene just before the penultimate mission. It cuts between scenes of your soldiers receiving the news that a big mission is under way and they need to drop everything and get moving. Thing is every time you see a group get the news, they stab the nearest surface with a knife or sword, all of them, to super dramatic music. It's like the Inquisition secret handshake.
• Dragon's Dogma: The original version's theme, Into Free ~Dangan~, may be hilariously tonally inappropriate for a game that is set in a Dark Fantasy setting. Being composed by the legendary Japanese band B'z however, that's why it ends up being more awesome than it is funny. Sadly not present in Dark Arisen.
• The infamous 'iiyo' scene from DRAMAtical Murder is both Narmy and terrifying. In the scene, the protagonist loses control to his Superpowered Evil Side and mindlessly repeats "it's fine", accidentally breaking Koujaku's mind. It's hard to take seriously, but so unsettling at the same time.
• Duke Nukem: Nobody steals our chicks... and lives!
• The Dynasty Warriors series would be a LOT less fun to play if they ever got rid of the outrageously hammy voice acting, the atrocious pronunciation of Chinese names, the anachronistic dialogue and the across-the-board commitment to Mundane Made Awesome moments.
  • COW COW.
  • From around about Warriors Orochi onwards they've started getting that one right. Shame.
  • Also: COW PEE.
  • Cao Ren's line in DW6, "Our allies have arrived!", sounds less like a beseiged general trapped in a flooded castle, than a guy noting the arrival of his dinner party guests.
  • Zhao Yun's cry for help in DW6 "Someone! I am in NEED of ASSISTANCE!" leaves it unclear whether the player should save him from enemy troops or bring him his Xanax, but remains highly amusing either way.
• Earth Defense Force 2017. Cheap graphics, silly voice-acting, and a buttload of B-Movie monsters to shoot!
• Elden Ring:
  • The Starscourge Radahn boss fight, which seems to have been developed by people who were watching Dragon Ball Z while they worked. It's part of a massive 'Radahn Festival' whose sole purpose is to find some way to actually challenge the boss, who's a 20 ft. tall giant with a long red mane of Anime Hair, a horse way too small for him, and over-the-top Gravity Master attacks that include pelting you with meteors and a Ground Pound from orbit. It's also completely epic, featuring infinite summons, gorgeous effects, and an engaging, difficult-but-fair boss that really makes you feel like a Shonen hero. The circumstances also have a surprising amount of emotional intensity; The Radahn Festival is actually an attempt at Mercy Killing Radahn, who's become mindless and feral due to Scarlet Rot, as his soldiers loved him too much to let him go on like that. And that comically small horse? It was Radahn's childhood mount, and he loved it so much he learned gravity magic simply so that he could still ride it after he grew into a behemoth.
  • Most players giggle at the hammy introduction of 'The Loathsome Dung Eater', but that comedy only lasts until you meet the guy in-game. He's a prolific Serial Killer who defiles the souls of his victims, seeks to defile the entire world, terrifies everyone who's ever gone near him, and it's quite possible that he will kill and defile Big Boggart, a friendly NPC who sells boiled prawns. Not the sort of person you treat lightly, no matter how stupid his name sounds.
  • Hoarah Loux fights you with freaking pro wrestling moves, like the devs made Andre of Astora into a boss. It makes for a surprisingly fun and unique boss fight, especially since Hoarah spent the first half of the battle as the regal Godfrey, First Elden Lord. After getting him down halfway, he decides he's done holding back, drops his massive greataxe, and removes his chest armor. To reiterate, him wearing armor and swinging around an axe the length of a pickup truck is him holding back compared to fighting barehanded and shirtless.
  • Mohg's design is basically every Obviously Evil cliche in a blender, but his dramatic performance and epic boss battle have gained him quite a lot of Evil Is Cool cred with the fans.
• The Lusty Argonian Maid play from The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, written (In-Universe) by the perverted politician Crassius Curio, was so amusingly out-of-place and corny that one can't go far in an Elder Scrolls discussion without someone referencing it.
• Elite Beat Agents is positively powered by this. You're part of the EBA, a Men in Black organisation who go around helping the helpless through the power of dance. Songs include "Sk8er Boi", "Y.M.C.A." and "Material Girl". Missions range from helping a magician save the casino he works at from robbers, to helping a ludicrously rich Texan get his fortune back, to helping a baseball player recover his confidence so he can save a theme park from a gigantic golem (complete with a ridiculous catchphrase - "YOU BET, KID!"). You'd think the one serious mission, in which you help a little girl deal with the death of her father, would avoid this, and it does... except she comes back in the final mission to help you save the world from invading aliens through the Power of Rock. And yet, despite because of this, you'll be cheering along the entire time.
  Agents are... GO!!!
• Eternal Sonata is a game that ran on narm. It was didactic, pretentious, and overflowing with irritating characters who had the common sense of a carton of bricks. But the ending, where Fredric dies, and his soul rises from his body, slowly sitting down to play the ending theme Heaven's Mirror, while his final visitor rises to sing somehow loops around and becomes heartbreaking.
• Fable: Every last person in Albion has either British or Irish accents and they're very stereotypically exaggerated.
• Unlike previous games in the series, Fallout 4 doesn't have the rest of the world freeze when the Sole Survivor converses with other characters. This results in scenes where the Sole Survivor and their companion have deep conversations while the pieces of a destroyed Vertibird fall to Earth around them. However, this doesn't stop the talks with companions from being very touching, heartbreaking, interesting, surprisingly deep, and even deliberately funny.
  • The Fallout series as a whole is really good at this. Considering how the series is practically made of Bathos and it's telling a dark post-apocalyptic story set after a nuclear war destroyed a world inhabited by a (supposedly) cheery Leave It to Beaver-style 1950s U.S.A., it's been doing this for quite a while and is excellent at making something silly come across as serious.
  • A good example of this trope in action is with Caesar's Legion from Fallout: New Vegas. The Legion deliberately stylizes itself after the Roman Empire (albeit with a more tribal and Mad Max-influenced aesthetic), and at first comes across as cartoonishly villainous to an almost comedic degree. Virtually all of them are Card Carrying Villains who can't stop talking about their love of both rape and brutal cultural assimilation For the Evulz, and look utterly ridiculous in the bizarre lorica uniforms they usually wear (most of which come from Pre-War football padding). However, they're also surprisingly competent, have genuinely intelligent leaders with grandiose ideas for the future, and the game also takes enough time to show how nightmarishly hellish it is to live under their control. All of this combined together makes the Legion come across as a terrifying force of destruction and chaos instead of the joke faction they would normally be seen as.
• Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon is a cheesy, violent, over-the-top Affectionate Parody of 1980s action movies. Even though the story is Troperiffic and a Cliché Storm, half the fun of it is reveling in how silly it all is. Rex "Power" Colt's constant use of the Bond One-Liner, in particular, has a few pretty narmy lines like "peekaboo, I killed you!" and "I call shotgun!" after killing someone with the titular weapon. The entire setting has everything glow neon, you fight giant dinosaurs that shoot lasers out of their eyes, and the cutscenes even invoke Stylistic Suck of NES stiff movement.
• Final Fantasy:
  • Final Fantasy IV. "You spoony bard!" It's a silly line that doesn't match the Japanese original, but it's so well loved that it's preserved in all remakes and sequels. Fans of archaic slang have pointed out that calling Edward "spoony" is indeed correct, since he was indeed sentimental and hopelessly in love. That it happens to also be a really, really funny thing to call someone is just the cherry on top.
  • Most fans of Final Fantasy V cite the generally upbeat characters, silly dialogue, "save the crystals" Light Warriors plot and the game's tendency to lean on the Fourth Wall as the reason they love it... in other words, the very reasons many fans of "Classic Final Fantasy" (before Square ruined everything) seem to ignore it. Which is not to say the game is devoid of seriousness, because in certain scenes there may well be something in your eye...
  • Special mention goes to the GBA port, whose English translation Punched up the dialogue with some great cornball lines, while keeping the original intent intact. And you've gotta love Gilgamesh saying "It's morphing time!" and "Now we fight like men, and women, and women who dress like men!"
  • The super Super-Deformed look in Final Fantasy VII got noticed even when the game was raking in accolades. Yet it was an understandable consequence of Square getting to know the system. Even the game's detractors rarely use that as a negative against the game.
  • Similarly, when Final Fantasy IV was rebuilt for the Nintendo DS, several things got changed: the score was updated to match the style of the current Final Fantasy soundtracks, cutscenes, as well as CG graphics for the overworld map and voice acting for the cutscenes were introduced. The opening cinematic, as well as some of the cutscenes Paladin Cecil fighting his former Dark Knight self looked like this. But a majority of the cutscenes look like this, with plenty of the Narm. Yet, it still manages to keep the philosophy of Anyone Can Die, all the best Tearjerker-ing and heartwarming moments are still kept in, the battle system is true to its core, and it makes for great nostalgia fuel.
  • Final Fantasy X. No matter how heart-wrenching the scene where Tidus finds out what being a summoner entails, his voice actor fake-cried in that scene. This sentiment could be applied to the entire game. It was Square's first real attempt at voice acting, and so is often a point of criticism due to the performances being somewhat rough around the edges(as well as technical issues such as the english localization needing to bend itself around the voice clips having to be the same length as the japanese audio). Despite this, the game has been known to move many people to tears. To this day, it's still cited as one of the most heartfelt videogames ever made.
  • In Dissidia Final Fantasy, the scene between Tidus and Jecht, specifically after Jecht thinks Tidus is down for the count. Cue ''Otherworld'' theme and Tidus getting back up to fight, followed by "There's no tomorrow for me, unless I beat you today!".
  • Many considered the "Blind Idiot" Translation of Final Fantasy Tactics to be this, which is why the PSP version's Purple Prose was so controversial. Some consider the often over-the-top prose to have Narm Charm itself.
  • Final Fantasy XIV has a few instances of this. The voice work post ARR tends to be very good, but there are occasionally instances where it comes off silly.
    • One of the earliest examples would be the fight against the Griffin at the very end of Heavensward. Specifically his "Sloppy" line which he says whenever he does a particular attack, regardless of whether he hits anyone or not.
    • Yiazmat from the Ridorana Lighthouse raid is quickly becoming infamous for his in-fight dialogue. They probably wouldn't normally stick out much if not for the fact that Yiazmat has a very noticeable cockney accent which nobody else in the game has, not even the Bangaa that was transformed into him.
  • Prompto of Final Fantasy XV seems to be invoking this. Every time the party camps or rests at a hotel, the game will look over Prompto's pictures from his camera. Many of them are totally hilarious between Prompto taking pictures of monsters attacking Noctis or his friends, people knocked on their asses, Noctis picking up something and it looks like he's throwing up, or his bizarre facial expressions in his selfies.
    • What's more, sometimes he will take pictures wherein you can't see anything (like where there is a bush in the way) and the party might actually say "nice picture"... unfortunately close-ups of plants are a pixellated mess.
    • The Cup Noodles sidequest is so goofy and out of place compared to the game's rather bleak tone that it comes off as more needed comic relief. It's even better in English where Square-Enix used the take where the voice actors made fun of it.
• In Fire Emblem: Awakening, Laurent's Love Confession to Princess Lucina is full of Purple Prose and would be ridiculous in almost any other situation. However, the sudden burst of unrestrained emotion coming from him and the huge surprise to learn that an otherwise cool and measured character is having HUGE romantic woes make the scene really charming.
  • Similarly, Frederick's Love Confession to Sumia is horribly cheesy on paper... but since this is the already sappy and romantic Frederick we're talking about, it comes off as incredibly heartfelt and genuine. Sumia's cheerful and also super cutesy acceptance is the icing on the cake.
  • Several of the Love Confessions directed to the Avatar in the English version of the game fall into this too, since they come off as terribly tacky but surprisingly fitting.
• The comm officer of the Colossus during the "Their Finest Hour" mission of FreeSpace 2 delivers some horrific Narms, but somehow the shock and horror of the pride of the Galactic Terran-Vasudan Alliance being destroyed right before your eyes outweighs terrible voice acting.
  • The order to dive in one late game mission can be viewed in hindsight to be narmy and hilarious, but it's terrifying due to circumstances. It happens immediately after the mission starts, the commander who gives the order is known for being cool and collected, and if you don't obey you'll go splat against a speeding SJ Sathanas juggernaut.
• Kinda the whole idea of ...Freedom Force.
• From F-Zero X: TOO BAD! YOU LOST YOUR MACHINE.
• Ghost Trick constantly plays the line between silly and dramatic, but at the end, Missile-Prime says that he protected Lynne over a ten year period because "That's what doggies do!" It easily could be Narm, but it ends up as a Heartwarming Moment.
• Gradius: When you reach Final Boss Doom in Salamander 2, he says "I'm going to scare you like you've never been scared before!" This may sound cheesy, but he means it because unlike most other final bosses in the Gradius series, he's actually difficult.
• House of the Dead is well known for its bad voice acting, and many fans of the series like it because of the bad acting ("Suffer like G Did?"). It helps that the games are still regarded as well-built, if pretty difficult, and the developers absolutely did not skip out on the designs of the undead enemies; depending on one's tolerance for them, the cheesy voice acting may not be enough of a Nightmare Retardant. The spinoff The House of the Dead: OVERKILL, took the Narm football, ran it back for a touchdown, and ended up with a perfectly corny narrator, a Bond One-Liner dropping agent, and a Cluster F-Bomb dropping detective. Plus the deliberate grindhouse B-Movie look for the game and cutscenes...
• Jade Cocoon for the Sony Playstation. It's a mons game with a Native American...ish(?) theme, a story that goes nowhere and makes little to no sense, voice-acting that ranges from surprisingly serviceable to SERIOUS narm, only 8 levels, and a final boss that, even though it's properly set-up, STILL makes no sense. Somehow though all of this adds up to create a weirdly charming world to explore, and to this day it's remembered fondly as a classic and has a considerably large fan-following.
  • Kikinak the Bird Man: His voice actor sounds like a 15 year old kid trying to recite lines from a tv show he saw last night, but it fits the character's personality so well that it works.
    Kikinak: I go by many names... such as Bird Man.
• John Cleese as "Sir Roderick Ponce von Fontlebottom the Magnificent Bastard" (but not really) kind of stole the show in Jade Empire, at least during the chapter in the capital, because he is such a magnificently overdone interpretation of the Chinese view of Western Imperialists.
• One of the songs featured in the Jet Set Radio Future soundtrack yells at you to: " Understand the CONCEPT of LOVE!" What saves it is the extreme enthusiasm the MC shows while yelling it.
  • Rugal's arranged '95 theme in The King of Fighters had it first. Nothing says "Get ready for the fight of your life!" like THE CONCEPT OF LOVE!
  • "Extra sugar, extra salt, extra oil and the MSG. OH JUST SHUT UP AND EAT! YOU KNOW MY LOVE TASTES SWEET!"
  • Drunken, Japanese-accented woman: ""Yesss I'm KOOKING for my SSSON, and-u his wiffe. eets hiss sturthifth burthday..."
• Judgement Silversword: "WARNING - HERE COMES THE JUDGE!" (What, is he gonna SOCK IT TO ME?)
  • Lose your last life, only to respawn again due to a 1-Up on the screen? NICE RECOVER!
• Ketsui: "Approach your target and attack! Your mission starts now. Are you ready?" Moreso if you're playing Ketsui Death Label, in which you get to hear it far more often.
• Kingdom Hearts:
  • Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days. Xion's death scene includes this line from Roxas as Xion fades away.
  Roxas: No! Xion! Who else will I have ice cream with?
  • Kingdom Hearts: "KINGDOM HEARTS IS LIGHT!"
  • Quite honestly, the premise of the whole series runs on this. You're running around with a gigantic key, fighting with Disney characters against villains who vary from being rather ineffectual to outright terrifying, but are always hammy. There are friendship speeches galore from the incorrigibly optimistic main character and all sorts of cheesy lines being said by everyone you meet. On a meta level, the game is a fusion of Disney canon and Final Fantasy canon, with some original characters thrown in, so basically it's a glorified crossover fanfiction with a huge budget. The whole idea sounds too silly to work. But it does. And it's awesome.
  • Birth by Sleep. Okay, yes, mecha Keyblades that turn into mini sky jets are stupid and completely unforeshadowed, even by the setting's standards, but fuck, do they look cool.
• The Legend of Zelda:
  • The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past: Some find that the game's simplistic presentation and awkward dialogue give it a sort of nostalgic charm; it helps that the game has a greater focus on gameplay than story compared to modern Zelda games.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword: Demon Lord Ghirahim would be ridiculous, what with his gaudy outfit, campy demeanor, and oddly casual lines...except he's also so damn crazy that it makes him come off as Creepy Awesome.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. The deranged grin Ganondorf made after he killed Queen Sonia managed to be both hilarious and terrifying. Hilarious because of the exaggerated nature of it and terrifying because this Ganondorf is an explicit Axe-Crazy murderer who glees at inflicting death upon others and at how unhinged he is on his quest for power.
• In LEGO Dimensions, Batman delivers a line that is simultaneously narmy and badass:
  Gandolf: Young man, I believe you've bitten off more than you can chew.
  Batman: Impossible. I'm really hungry.
• This is the key to the Like a Dragon/Yakuza series' success. You play as a former member of Japan's organized criminal underworld, randomly beating up thugs on the street for money, resist injuries that would kill someone at least three times over (likewise for your enemies) and enthusiastically engage in lighter side activities that are unfitting of his stature (like RC car driving and bowling), looking like a badass the entire time. Yet you can't help but be engrossed in the gritty storylines and personal tragedies they go through, even when later entries add in sillier elements like a chicken finance manager and fantasy JRPG battles being acted out. While it started off as a Cult Classic in the West, it has since become a worldwide best-seller for Sega.
• If you're romancing Tali at the time of the Citadel DLC for Mass Effect 3, she can sing along with one of the musical numbers from her favourite movie. The words aren't all that good and while Tali's accent is cute in speaking it's really not suited for singing, but the result still works because Tali was already Adorkable and there's enough sincerity in the performance to make it at least believable.
• The Mega Man (Classic) series can be seen as silly for many things, including the awkward translations, some Robot Master designs, and Dr. Wily's eyebrow-wiggling and plot-monopolizing. Yet, for many, the wackiness is all part of its charm.
  • Mega Man X4's memetic "What Am I Fighting For ARRRRRGHH" is this. Zero had to Mercy Kill Iris, and screams this as he loses it. People remember this line because of how poorly delivered the entire death scene is. It strengthened Zero as a character, because people will NOT forget it.
    • And then it got redubbed with actual competent voice actors (with Zero being voiced by his then-current VA,) which stripped most of the Narm out of the scene and made it absolutely heartbreaking.
  • What's the thing people remember most about Mega Man 8? That's right, Doctor Fudd Light.
• Metal Gear:
  • People in the fandom who complain about the guy covered in bees, the fourth wall breaking, the possessed arm, Big Boss being defeated by an aerosol can and a lighter or the "deadly poisonous Zanzibar hamsters" (or even the endless melodramatic dialogue) are usually quietly resented/pitied by the other people in the Metal Gear fandom, who love the games because they're really quite silly. When the creator is notoriously irreverent of his creation, the best response is to be an irreverent fan. It all becomes quite charming with that mindset.
  • A lot of the fun of Metal Gear Solid comes from the insane Gameplay and Story Segregation regarding the Genome Army. In the story they're the Elite Mooks of the military, the cream of the crop who have been enhanced with gene therapy to be super soldiers with enhanced senses, reflexes, and combat abilities. In gameplay they are as blind as bats, so stupid that you can play ring-around-the-rosie all day long with one by luring him around a crate with knocks, will inexplicably become suspicious of a cardboard box only if it stays in place as a good box should, and can be decked in the back or yeeted to the ground or even shot and respond only with "Huh?" before returning to their patrol as if nothing happened. It's the video game equivalent to watching kindergarten students do a play — they're so bad at it but so proud of themselves you can't help but get swept up in it and enjoy it.
  • The Psycho Mantis fight in Metal Gear Solid is famously well-sold for a scene where a tremendously over-the-top weirdo talks directly to you as a player, reads your memory card, vibrates your controller, and can only be defeated by physically switching controllers on your machine. The absolute conviction with which the game delivers this makes up for how ridiculous it should be.
  • Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty: "We've managed to avoid drowning!" Well, consider that navigating underwater sections while escorting someone with a smaller Oxygen Meter and Life Meter is rather awkward...
  • Early into Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, Major Ocelot calls for his reinforcements by loudly meowing like a cat, and it's done with an echo and an epic camera pan-out as if it's supposed to be glorious rather than laughably silly. Which, somehow, rolls the meter around and actually succeeds at making it glorious and a perfect fit with Ocelot's Bunny-Ears Lawyer Young Gun but Memetic Loser when compared to Snake Gold Fish Poop Gang characterization. The Last Days Of Fox Hound devoted an entire page to Fox Hound watching it over and over again and laughing their asses off at it.
  • In Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, even the eponymous Metal Gear models are now produced with bendy, organic legs and cattle SFX.
• "Okay...Let's PARRRTY!" Metal Wolf Chaos turns the insanely Hot-Blooded Patriotic Fervour up to eleven, delivers epic Say My Name moments ("RIIIICHAAAARD!!"), ludicrous dialogue and a plot of stomping around AMERICA saving it by blowing famous parts of it to bits. If it didn't go so over the top, or showed the slightest self-awareness about how ridiculous it was, it wouldn't be so much fun.
• Metro Exodus: Tokarev's quoting Anakin's infamous "sand" line from Attack of the Clones should be narm of the highest order, but given that Tokarev is the group's gunsmith, and responsible for getting a month's worth of desert gunk out of the team's guns and repair any damage it did, you are far more likely to sympathize with Tokarev's grumbling than Anakin's.
• In Monster Hunter 4, players often get a laugh out of the otherwise cool-looking Zamtrios—a huge amphibious Threatening Shark with frog-like legs—once it activates its infamous inflation mode, making it look like a giant beanbag with a shark embedded inside of it. To add insult to injury, the inflated belly becomes a major weakpoint, ensuring that the monster doesn't stay alive for much longer particularly at Low Rank. Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate introduces the Tigerstripe Zamtrios, a subspecies of Zamtrios that inflates and deflates far more frequently. This would be even more hilarious, but most players don't think so. Thanks to its high mobility, difficulty in trying to mount it (since it can't be mounted while inflated), and the massive damage it can inflict with its various attacks, especially its very fast Ground Pound attack, it becomes one of the frustrating and terrifying bosses in early G-rank quests.
• The voice acting in the Nancy Drew games in many ways is a product of the games' low budgets - it's not going to win any awards. But many people have grown to appreciate them as part of the charm of the games, especially because they sound more like people having casual conversations instead of hamming it up for the camera (until it's needed).
• Travis Touchdown's intro in No More Heroes, which ends with him storming Rank 10's gate and screaming "Fuckhead!".
• Ōkami: You'd think that God herself getting shrunk to the point where brooms are deadly and a shishi-odoshi is usable for platforming would be sillier than it is, yet it works. Even when you have to jump down the Emperor's throat while he snores and fight a boss in his stomach.
  • The final boss fight. Your powers are stripped, the final boss is about to eat you, and then...all the people you've helped along the course of the game start praying for your victory, restoring your powers through the sheer power of their faith. The graphics are cartoony, the scene is full of cheesy lines, all of it is a hopelessly clichéd concept...and it's also a Moment of Awesome and a guaranteed Tear Jerker.
  • Like Banjo-Kazooie above, Ōkami uses a gibberish language for all of the characters, but for many this fits the game's painterly style of graphics. Another area of charm in its handling of speech is how all human characters don't have mouths, but instead their heads stretch and squash to indicate that they're speaking.
• Reaper from Overwatch is practically made out of this trope. He should be an utterly ridiculous character dreamt up by a 9-year-old boy during the 90's trying as hard as he can to be "cool;" a dark and edgy assassin dressed in a black Badass Long Coat and white skull mask, who dual-wields shotguns (which he doesn't even bother reloading, he just pulls an endless supply from his coat!) with a deep, gravelly voice saying incredibly unsubtle lines like "I will feast on their souls!" and "Die! Die! Dieee!" By all accounts, his character shouldn't work... and yet he does, and is both legitimately badass and incredibly threatening in-game and out. It helps that what a children's interpretation of a badass is appears in a stylistically Pixar-esque universe, as well as having a genuinely intriguing backstory.
• Persona:
  • Persona: "Mark danced crazy!"
  • Persona 2: deuteragonist Maya's Catchphrase, "Let's Positive Thinking!"
  • In Persona 3, Aigis has apparently finally tuned in to human emotions and confesses her love for the hero. This kind of touchy-feely dialogue is endemic to anime and JRPGs and it always turns out sounding gut-wrenchingly corny in English. Not this time. Could be considered a Crowning Moment of Dubbing, but it's really no surprise considering the excellent quality of the rest of the dub.
  • Persona 3 managed to make the line "Let's put a smile on everyone's face." sound cool.
• Pokémon: "Hi! I like shorts! They're comfy and easy to wear!"
  • The phrase "It's super effective!" not only made it into the original Pokémon games, but is still the standard "for massive damage" line over a decade later, enough so that the Pokemon Trainer's final smash in Super Smash Bros Brawl references it with no gameplay need to do so. For similar reasons, variations on the "I like shorts!" kid appear in many of the games.
  • A Pokemon example that's sad rather than cool is Tectonix on Five Island in Pokémon FireRed and LeafGreen. A kid's propped up a chain of rocks to honor his dead partner; the rocks may even be the Onix just sticking out of the ground (not exactly the most respectful mode of burial), but the delivery is genuinely sorrowful.
• Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box — especially the climax and The Reveal. There are at least two extremely lackluster voice actors; there's a fair amount of melodrama; and if you're smart enough to have played through the game to this point, then you're smart enough to spot the plot holes. And you'll still bawl your eyes out.
• From the Private BEMANI Academy trailer:
  MAX MAXIMIZER: "My name is MAX MAXIMIZER, the last guardian of corruption and despair."
• Puyo Puyo Tetris:
  • One of the arguments against the English dub of the game is the fact that it (naturally) loses all of the Asian Speekee Engrish, particularly in the case of Suketoudara.
  • While Klug's English voice has mixed reception, a handful of players found his character selection line, "YOU CHALLENGING ME!?", to be oddly endearing.
  • Lemres' English voice. He's already very laid-back sounding in Japanese, but the English dub goes all the way into making him a Surfer Dude, which many consider oddly fitting even if they personally dislike it.
• From REFLEC BEAT: "Wow Wow VENUS!" Doesn't help that "VENUS" sounds a lot like "PENIS" in this song.
• As noted by Yahtzee on the quotes page, this is one of the reasons why fans love Resident Evil. You'd expect a zombie game to have a basic plot that says "Zombies! Shoot them!" but Resident Evil has a winding detailed story that makes little logical sense to some. Combine this with characters ripped from B movies, awkward dialog and more awkward voice acting. Then put it all in between two slices of self-unawareness and you've got a delicious Jill, er, narm sandwich.
  • A lot of the fun of Resident Evil 4 is that its story manages to be simultaneously serious and wacky to the point of Bathos. On one hand the backstory and lore is surprisingly deep, well-written, somber, and dark. The idea of a cult using Puppeteer Parasites to turn people into, in effect, worker ants and that the entirety of a decent-sized community has already fallen to such a thing without anyone else knowing is a really strong setup for a genuinely dark and serious horror plot, which the game takes very seriously. However, at the same time, Lord Saddler and his henchmen are straight out of a Saturday-Morning Cartoon, complete with Saddler's gag-penis tentacle that borders on belonging in a hentai, a "personal" rival to Leon who's never been so much as mentioned before acting like he's a major character who the audience should recognize and a giggling midget who acts like Chucky, Leon's constant puns and dad jokes, Ashley chastizing the player for happening to gawk up her skirt, a "save the president's daughter" plot that's a few ninjas short of Bad Dudes, a vaguely Spanish village that dresses like it's the 18th century, zombie cultists chanting "brains" in Spanish, silly action setpieces, hand-to-God a GIANT ROBOT STATUE THAT CHASES YOU, and non-stop corny dialogue from everyone that often sounds like it's trying to be commentary on something but has no clue what. It's like the creators were asked if they wanted to make a horror movie or Scary Movie and answered "yes."
  • While Resident Evil 4 (Remake) takes itself a lot more seriously than its predecessor, with much of the Narm removed and lines tweaked to make them more serious, the Shooting Gallery is this. Oh so very much this. It's now pirate-themed, and Ashley goes in with you, cheers you on, comments on your shooting, and even giddily comments that "it's like the carnival!" despite the fact that she and Leon are in a race against the clock to prevent a Puppeteer Parasite from pulling a Grand Theft Me. It manages to be so ridiculous, out of character, and clashing with the tone of the rest of the game, and yet it manages to be so heartwarming, so funny, and adds some much-needed catharsis to an otherwise fairly terrifying game that it's one of the most enjoyable aspects of it. Ashley will go from having an emotional breakdown from trying to kill Leon under the control of Saddler, to a giggling high-schooler having the best night of her life watching her crush play a carnival game, to having noxious black goo poured down her throat by psychotic cultists, all in the span of about a half hour without skipping a beat. And yes, you can take Luis with you as well, and he cheers you on too!
  • These lines from Resident Evil 5 aren't any less ridiculous even in-context:
    "Complete. Global. Saturation."
    "CHRRIIIIIIIIIISSSSSSSS!!"
  • When one of the bad guys exclaims, while morphing into his One-Winged Angel form, that he just got an "Extreme Makeover" you know Capcom's in on the fun that is Resident Evil, and they're loving every minute of it.
  • When Liz dies in Resident Evil 6, her father lets out a wailing sob that manages to be both narmy AND heartbreaking at the same time. Despite how silly and over the top it is, you feel so bad for him that all you want to do is hug the poor guy.
  • Resident Evil: Outbreak has a zoo of zombie animals. We've had zombie dogs, spiders, snakes, plants, crows, lions, wasps, piranhas, monkeys (Yeah, zombie monkeys) and a zombie elephant, and the animalesque bosses. At first it seems hilariously silly but then when you realize these animals are much more dangerous than any human zombie it's too late.
  • Barry comes back in full narm charm mode in Resident Evil: Revelations 2, and gets unbelievably cheesy lines, up to and including a reference to the now infamous "master of unlocking" line from the first game. At the same time, he gets so many Pet the Dog moments with Natalia such as holding her hand as she descends steep hills and becomes such an unstoppable Papa Wolf to her who says his lines with intense dedication and conviction. You can not help but take him dead serious, get completely invested in his story, and cheer him on every step of the way:
    Monster Alex Wesker: My imposter... you must... die!
    Barry: YOU!!! FIRST!!!
• Robot Alchemic Drive has a crappy dub, there's no denying it. What makes it So Bad, It's Good is the fact that it's, for the most part, ridiculously over-the-top and dramatic, evoking a feeling like one is watching an old dub of anime from the 1980s, before quality control in dubbing was a concept (and there is word that this was actually intentional on the part of the dub VAs). Special mention goes to Mika Banhara, the news correspondent with a ridiculously thick Japanese accent (despite the fact that the game takes place in Japan and the only other foreign accent is equally thick German).
• S4 League: SUPERSONIC! SUPERSONIC! SUPERSONIC! SUPERSONIC!
  • YEAH YEAH YEAH YEAH YEAH YEAH YEAH YEAH
  • The entirety of Xlasher, sung in what sounds like an attempt at English. That it's composed by Shinji Hosoe, a reputable composer, makes it all the more hilarious.
  • YOU FAILED! GAME. OVER.
• The Saints Row IV DLC How the Saint's Save Christmas. Shaundi, who is now a cyborg, is Hell Bent on saving Santa from the Zin, and she does it with as much seriousness as a Batman movie.
• Sega Rally Championship: "GAME OVER YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!
• Every Silent Hill game contains what can perhaps be best described as lackluster voice-acting coupled with some truly silly lines, the first game being by far the worst offender ("Huh? Radio?") although the second is certainly not bereft either ("You're not friends with that red, pyramid thing, are you?"). The charm comes from a combination of the characters being steadily and constantly Mind Raped (and/or completely fucking nuts to begin with) and thus one can hardly expect them to be particularly articulate, the slight reprieve it provides from all the Nightmare Fuel, and that it makes the important scenes, most of which are completely devoid of Narm, all the more effective by comparison (see anything involving James and Mary in the second game).
• Sin and Punishment: Star Successor: Ariana's "My blood...is on FIIIIIII-YAAARRRRRRRR!!" There are some players who normally play with the audio in Japanese, but will switch to English on a Stage 4 run just to hear this line. Also, dolphins. And cow-launching on Stage 6.
  • The original Sin and Punishment is a shining example as well, with the voice acting being very lazy and underwhelming. Especially narmy with the crude N64 graphics. But it works, giving the game a cheesy atmosphere that compliments the awesome gameplay.
    • "GET BONUS!"
    • Saki: "So you're the leader of these killers!
    • Airen: "Well, commander, now I'll avenge my friends!"
    • Everything that the tiny cat-thing, Leda, says. "Thinking of reee-vveng-ge?"
  • The plot of the original is also hilarious, in that it doesn't make any damn sense. But who really gives a damn when you're suddenly turning into a giant kaiju with little to no explanation, or fighting the final boss, who transforms into a 1:1 copy of the Earth?
  • Deko's line before he goes into fighting game mode:
    "I'm really going to enjoy this. Prepare to bleed."
• In Slender: The Eight Pages, the model for the Slender Man resembles a blowup doll. It's only slightly less terrifying then Slender: The Arrival's model.
• Sonic the Hedgehog:
  • Sonic CD started the tradition of cheesy yet catchy music in Sonic games:
    • The intro and outro songs of the Japanese soundtrack have cheesy motivational lyrics which Keiko Utoku's weird pronounciation only makes weirder, but the combination of Casey Rankin's rapping with her passionate singing on awesome music tracks make them all the more endearing.
    • The robotic voice in the Japanese Bad Future music for Metallic Madness sounds like the Software Automatic Mouth and is basically saying the opposite of the lyrics of that version's theme song, but the song in general (especially the instrumentation) doesn't refrain from reminding you that you screwed up.
      "YOU CAN'T DO ANYTHING, SO DON'T EVEN TRY IT. GET SOME HELP.
      DON'T DO WHAT SONIC DOES.
      (Ge-g-g-g-get outta' here!)
      ...
      SONIC, DEAD OR ALIVE, IS M-M-MINE."
    • Even the Japanese Game Over music has this effect. It may not be as horrible as the infamous Ominous Pipe Organ of the American version, but the music gives the impression that the game is collapsing after your failure, and the distorted "Toot-Toot Sonic Warrior...", being a Dark Reprise of the aforementioned intro song, makes a good job at mocking you for your failure by subverting an otherwise cheerful tune.
    • On the other hand, the infamous American boss and Game Over themes, despite being over-the-top, still do a great job at raising tension before and keeping it when fighting Eggman for the former, and frustrating the player after they lost all their lives for the latter. Considering the game is Darker and Edgier than other 2D Sonic games, they may fit better than their funky Japanese equivalents.
  • The soundtrack of Sonic R follows the tradition. The lyrics may be cheesy, but the singer's implication and the dynamic music will make you sing along before you realize it.
  • Sonic Adventure 2 memetic Escape From The City and Knuckles' rap themes are the definitive proof that any music with lyrics in the Sonic franchise tend to be cheesy, yet strangely catchy.
    • On another note, Last Story's ending is considered very memorable, with mostly good dialogue, but Tails' "we all did it together" line is considered notoriously cheesy even apart from the Accidental Innuendo. Also: "Let's get back to the planet that's as cool and blue as me!".
    • The cutscenes are absolutely loaded with characters talking over each other, which can make them incomprehensible thanks to the voice direction not bothering to make the dialogue fit the cutscenes' pacing. But there's one place where it works surprisingly well: when Sonic confronts Shadow in Green Forest, the former interrupts the latter's taunts with "I'll make you eat those words!". It fits very well, given Sonic's impatient and cocky personality, and if that was the only instance of it happening it'd be very easy to see as an intentional voiceline overlap.
  • In Sonic the Hedgehog (2006), Mephiles is given some pretty bad dialogue, but Dan Green manages to make it work.
  • Most Sonic dialogue falls under this. This narm is awesome narm. (Especially Sonic Adventure narm.) From anyone else it would sound stupid, but from a cast of characters that are either Large Hams or invoking Totally Radical, it really works.
  • A large portion of Sonic games have a voice clip from Eggman that's repeated over and over, contributing to its memorability.
    • Sonic Adventure: "GET A LOAD OF THIS!"
    • Sonic Adventure 2: "Yosh!"
    • Sonic Heroes: "Take this!" and "CHARGE!"
    • Shadow the Hedgehog: "You know what they say, the more the merrier!"
    • Sonic Unleashed (Wii/PS2 version): "You little...YOU LITTLE!"
    • Sonic Generations: "Time for a change of pace!"
  • Shadow the Hedgehog, what with lines like:
    Where's that DAMN fourth Chaos Emerald?!
    Find the computer room!
    Damn...not here.
  • The strange, over-the-top expression in Shadow's various "I Am" Speeches, particularly "THIS is WHO I AM" underscores his mental instability. So does his whining, five-year-old like protests to Rouge about his identity in Sonic Adventure 2 and his lame puns in Sonic Heroes.
  • Espio's stereotypical ninja lines in Sonic Heroes come off as Narm Charm. His voice actor at the time made them sound cool. These lines include:
    "DASHAAAAA!"
    "Behold, ninja power!"
    "Evil must die! Beware my ninja power!"
    "Spirits unite!"
• The Soul Series, good golly, this series of fighting games has some of the corniest dailogue and voice acting out there, whether you're hearing pre-fight or post-fight one-liners like Sophitia saying "You're in pain, it's painful isn't it?" or the brutish Astaroth shouting "Squirm! Scream!", it's likely the voice actors were having alot of fun with these lines.
• "Purge's evil plan to dance the galaxy mad has come to an end! Now happy days are indeed here again! I'm Ulala, brodcasting along with all my friends! SPAAAAAAAACE CHANNEL 5!"
• The intro of the original Splinter Cell is a goofy action montage set to the tune of The Crystal Method's "Name of the Game". Though at odd with the tone and nature of the game (Splinter Cell being a Stealth-Based Game where running around slapping and shooting people won't get you far), it is such a strong piece of 2000's cheese many fans love it regardless.
• The English voice acting in the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series fits the bill. "STOP POINTING THAT THING AT MAH BALLS!"
  • Especially in the sequel, Call of Pripyat.
• Stardew Valley:
  • The Help Wanted fetch quests posted outside Pierre's are randomly generated. Some of the requests are so ridiculous that they wrap back around to being funny. Like Demetrius wanting to dissect a grape, Pam wanting to use Joja Cola in a casserole, or Kent wanting to serve up an iron ingot for breakfast.
  • During Shane's six-heart event, you find him passed out in the forest surrounded by empty beer cans in the pouring rain. It starts off absolutely cheesy ("I'm just a p... piece of soiled garbage fluttering in the wind *bluurp*"). But it quickly drops all humor when you realize you're interrupting a suicide attempt. Suddenly, the emotional impact of the scene changes.
• Star Fox 64 is considered far superior to all the Star Fox games in the series that came after. There are several reasons, but chief among them is the awesomely corny voice acting.
  "Are you gonna listen to that monkey?"
  "DO A BARREL ROLL!"
  "Can't let you do that, Star Fox."
  "You're not so tou— What the heck?" *static*
  • This Let's Play contains, among other things, every single ridiculous line in the game, from Falco continuously calling Fox "Einstein" to Slippy's impassioned scream of "FOOOOOOX!" to Fox propositioning Falco to Andross being the brainiest brain to brain the brainlat. Interestingly, the one with the highest Narm ratio is General Pepper ("There's an enemy base there?!" "So you're going to attack the enemy base? Great idea, Fox!").
    Slippy: I HAD NO IDEA THAT SO MUCH OF THE ANDROSS ARMY REMAINED INTACT!
    ** Everything Slippy says.
    • The 3DS version even had the original voice actors re-record their lines. And it's still wonderfully cheesy.
  • When you fight the real Andross's brain form, he makes this wonderfully-cheesy Pre Ass Kicking One Liner:
    "Only I have the brains to rule Lylat!"
• Street Fighter has hilariously bad voice acting. All by one dude.
• The whole Super Mario Bros. series runs by this principle. It's an irreverent and bizarre Constructed World, populated by funny-looking characters with a very quirky sense of humor. But the games are done with such sincerity and charm that when they try to take themselves seriously, it works.
• Even Super Robot Wars has this. The opening to Super Robot Wars Alpha shows the robots looking so chibified that at first it's impossible to take seriously, which isn't helped by the music (voiced in what sounds like slightly lisped English). Once the music picks up, it immediately swings right around to being kickass, and everything some found rather stupid becomes rather charming (especially the parts where a Chibi EVA-01 goes completely berserk, and the AVF's from Macross avoiding Massive Macross Missile Massacres.
  • Most of the music in SRW falls under this. There's the sheer Hot-Blooded bravado of the Neppu! Shippu! PSYBUSTER (Masaaki Andoh) and Everywhere You Go (Ryuusei Date/R-1), and the fantastic Engrish of Ace Attacker, and a hundred other examples, but nothing quite outdoes Kotetsu no Cockpit, the theme of the Grungust Type-2, a completely unabashed homage to every cheesy Super Robot cartoon of the '70s, describing in loving detail the Nishiki and each of its attacks, in the grand tradition of Mazinger Z, Combattler V, Brave Raideen, and all the other classics.
• The only line spoken by the player character in System Shock 2 is a response to SHODAN's We Can Rule Together. It's "Naaah."
• Tales Series:
  • Tales of Symphonia: After Lloyd gave her so many speeches about what you are not changing who you are, you're still you never mind how much of your humanity you lose, Colette reciprocates and reminds him he's still the same Lloyd, never mind who his father is. You've had about a hundred of those speeches by then but it's still touching, especially given the situation and Lloyd's current Heroic BSoD.
    • Lampshaded a few seconds later, rather nastily.
    Mithos (voice dripping with chilling sarcasm): Wow. That was an amazingly corny speech.
    • Kratos's wangsty quote after releasing Origin's seal: "It looks like I've failed to die once more." He's looking at the camera and his head is at a pretty creepy angle. But it's forgiven because the rest of the scene is AWESOME. It is also pretty funny that Lloyd's response to this is "You stupid jerk!"
  • Tales of the Abyss: Some of Asch's quotes right before the final confrontation with him are just beautiful, beautiful Narm. And yet, a line like "Shut up! This isn't about logic!" is surrounded by heartfelt declarations of identity and independence wrapped in Tear Jerker, so the scene overall is painfully sad...up until the extremely infamous Big Word Shout: " RRRREPLICAAAAAA!!" But then? Cue Meaning of Birth and Duel Boss awesomeness.
    • A more minor one: Jade has a couple of lines that trigger sometimes when he survives an attack with low HP. This happens regardless of whether anyone else survived it, so he will cheerfully announce, "Looks like we're still okay!" when the rest of the party just got nuked. This would be narmy and obnoxious... except that this is Jade, and that line under those circumstances is entirely in character.
• The newer Tomb Raider games, especially Legend, contain several instances of narm charm by dint of dealing with the story of how Lara deals with the death of her mother. '''"WHERE" bang "IS" bang "MY" bang "MOTHER ?!?!" bang'''
• Trails Series:
  • Estelle and Joshua's final scene in The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky FC skirts the line between tragic and slightly over the top. But since it's Joshua confessing his heart, it's as sad as the game has hyped his past up to be. The beautiful piano score in the background followed by a vocal version of the main theme crushes any cheese the scene might have had into a pure Tear Jerker.
  • Similarly, Estelle running away from the castle at the start of SC hits all the cliche angst notes, she's in denial about her love being missing, she's sad in the rain only for an anonymous character to accidentally inspire her, she goes digging through her house looking for him, and so on. But it's the fun-loving, endearingly dimwitted Estelle the player's gotten to know so well who's doing this, and it's all the sadder for it.
  • The final duel Rean has with Crow in The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel II has so much cheesy dialogue that the other party members lampshade it thoroughly. It's also one of the best moments of the game considering they act like they're in a Super Robot show and also concluding their arcs together.
• Trouble Witches NEO! got a pretty terrible English dub when it was released overseas on XBLA (worse still, it came out in 2011); AcCENT upon the Wrong SylLABle, Unexplained Accents, and Dull Surprise everywhere. However, one character's voice acting has managed to be this: Sakurako. It's unclear whether or not this is the case, but she seems to have retained her Japanese voice actress for the dub. Whoever was voicing her clearly gave it her all despite her obvious difficulties with the English language, and it's actually sort of endearing.
• Undertale:
  • Photoshop Flowey comes off as something right out of a stereotypical, badly-written creepypasta, and Asriel's powered-up boss form resembles a child's self-insert Mary Sue character complete with ridiculous attack names. So, why do these bosses still work so well? Because Asriel, and by extension Flowey, is a kid at the age where they would find such things cool and want to incorporate them into their fights. Even his abysmally on-the-nose choice of name, "Flowey The Flower", fits perfectly when you consider his father's similarily awful ability to pick clever names.
  • Endogeny's battle theme is a succession of muffled barks, but repeated faster and faster to the point it genuinely becomes unsettling, and it ends with the goofy "Dogsong" playing. While it would normally sound ridiculous, it sounds like a relief here, not only because of the previous theme, but also because deep down, it's a Big Friendly Dog who was more curious than aggressive and needed affection before anything else.
  • Wingdings is one of those inherently funny words, and it's a pretty silly font. That doesn't make Dr. W.D. Gaster or the line "Beware the man who speaks in hands" any less chilling.
• F* DedSec from Watch_Dogs 2, surprisingly, on account of playing so many hacker stereotypes straight, and being so colorful, fun-loving, and energetic that it becomes endearing rather than annoying.
• The final battle of Wild ARMs 2. A "No More Holding Back" Speech from the hero is expected, and an 11th-Hour Superpower fueled by hope and The Power of Friendship is acceptable. But when each Combined Energy Attack is preceded by all of humanity reciting sappy philosophical concepts that are rendered awkward due to a rushed translation, things start approaching critical Narm. And yet the amazing music puts you in just the right mood to accept the cheesy nonsense as genuinely inspirational.
• The creators of The Wonderful 101 were pretty clearly aiming for this, and they nailed it. The opening theme is extremely corny, the dialogue is Resident Evil 1 levels of goofy, and the bad guys are called GEATHJERK (Guild of Evil Aliens Terrorizing Humans with Jiggawatt-bombs, Energy-beams, Rayguns, and Killer-lasers) However, all of this is either Played for Laughs or so visually awe-inspiring and over-the-top it's hard not to love. Considering the pedigree behind the game, this really isn't too surprising.
• The boss yells in World of Warcraft tend to be extremely narmy... but they're just so epically narmy.
• Xenoblade Chronicles 2's Ardainian soldiers. Or as many players know them, THINK YOU CAN TAKE ME? DON'T FORGET ME! THINK YOU CAN TAKE ME? YER DUN! THINK YOU CAN TAKE ME? THINK YOU CAN TAKE ME? YER DUN! DON'T FORGET ME! Sadly, it was later patched out, removing most of their lines and the frequency with which they scream them. "DON'T FORGET ME" indeed.
• Xenoblade Chronicles 3 makes heavy use of Pardon My Klingon as opposed to real profanity, so there are a number of serious scenes that come across as Gosh Dang It to Heck!. However, most players are willing to roll with it because it adds a considerable amount of flavor to the game's dialogue, there are in-universe reasons for the characters to use a modified vocabulary, and the voice acting is good enough to get away with using phrases like "snuff you" or "for sparks' sake" and making them sound natural.
• It's doubtful you'll find anyone that claims that either Zeno Clash or its sequel have good voice acting. But there are defenders who claim that the voice acting is just the right kind of bad to fit with the general bizarreness of the setting.

---