The Origins of Video Game Names

Blogger Drew Mackie has posted a lengthy analysis of the etymology of dozens of names from popular video game characters. It examines the real-life and mythological roots of names from Final Fantasy, Zelda, Mario Bros., Street Fighter, and many other prominent franchises, complete with citations where appropriate. Quoting: "It's speculated that Street Fighter's Russian wrestler Zangief takes his name from a real-life Russian wrestler, Victor Zangiev. More interesting to me is that the working name for this character was Vodka Gobalsky. This is notable for two reasons — for one, that this name is amazing [and] deserves to enter into the public consciousness and, for another, that it bears a striking resemblance to the name of a Russian boxer in Nintendo's Punch-Out!! series, Vodka Drunkenski. I'm sure this says something about Japanese perception of Russian people. The latter Vodka, by the way, goes by the name Soda Popinski in US translations of the game, presumably because Nintendo of America didn't allow references to booze."

Comments

Re:Russia-Japan issue

[Hurricane78]

Well, about their affection to underage girls... I think this picture makes it pretty clear:
http://images.encyclopediadramatica.com/images/8/8b/Akihabara_Rail_Mechanophilia.jpg
Inspired by this very sick and NSFAnything image:
http://encyclopediadramatica.com/Image:Akihabara.jpg
Sorry, but I think, whoever did this image, deserves to rot in hell. (Yes, nobody got hurt. But: Seriously?? WTF!)