Virtual Hydlide’s Backwards-Speaking Vampire in Japanese

Posted on by ‧ 13 Comments

Joey sent in a quick question a while back that is pretty simple and interesting:

Anyway, you’ve already covered a JonTron topic, so let’s pay one of his NormalBoots compatriots a visit. At about 11:23 in ProJared’s Virtual Hydlide review, Jared expresses confusion at a vampire boss saying… something.

Well, it struck my ears with the trademark wrongness of human speech played backwards, so I reversed it. Then I sped it up by 50%. I’ve attached the result.

Now, I don’t speak much Japanese, but that’s certainly “kudasai” at the end there. Any insight as to what’s going on with the rest of it?

Here’s the sped-up audio clip for reference:

 
Yep, that’s definitely Japanese. It sounds like it’s saying:

プレイする人数を選んでください

or

purei suru ninzuu o erande kudasai

In which case it means something like, “Please choose the number of players.”

I’m not sure where this clip comes from – I doubt it’s from this game since it doesn’t seem like a multiplayer game and definitely doesn’t seem like it would feature anything like this. If anyone knows or has more info, please share!

Anyway, hopefully this helps solve ProJared’s mystery! It also kind of reminds me of the unused “creepy Claus” music from MOTHER 3 and how it actually turned out to be a completely different voice clip just slowed down a lot 😛

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13 Comments
  1. joeymartin64

    I really love how “hey just screw up some sound file we’ve got lying around” that is. Also love slowing down and reversing pretty much anything spoken by a human will make it sound so demonic and wrong.

    Thanks again, Mato!

    1. joeymartin64

      Ack. That second sentence should read “Also love how slowing down…”

  3. taizou

    this reminds me of (of all things) a PS2 theme park management game called Rollercoaster World. One of the attractions you can build is a haunted house, and by entering the haunted house you can play a mini-game which involves navigating a maze while avoiding ghosts (bearing more than a passing resemblance to Sadako from the Ring), with some creepy distorted whispering in the background.

    Someone recently ripped the soundtrack, reversed it, and found.. this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZzQUbH9wTk

  4. taizou

    also – T&E Soft developed quite a few golf games for the Saturn (and other systems), this sounds like something that might fit into one of those quite well.

    1. Lance Boyle

      It’s definitely plausible since Virtual Hydlide uses the same engine as their 3DO/Saturn golf games, so they probably repurposed a clip from one of them for that.

      Which one, though, I have no idea. Maybe it’s from Pebble Beach Golf Links.

  5. Darien

    Of course, the iconic example of this would be the Icon of Sin’s “demonic speech” in Doom 2, which is a reversed clip of John Romero saying “to win, you must kill me, John Romero.”

  6. Steve

    I can understand repurposing sound files on a cartridge where you have limited space, but it seems unnecessary to do this on a disc. Did they just run out of time?

    1. Darien

      What would be the point of creating a new clip just to scramble beyond recognition anyhow? May as well use something you already have, and then you don’t need to arrange studio time, even if it’s just for yourself.

  7. Lilfut

    What’s that about creepy Claus music?

    1. Reynard

      In Mother 3, there’s an unused battle theme. I don’t know what it was made for, but it has a creepy sound that’s really just “1, 2, 3, 5!” Over and over again.

      If we’re thinking of the same track, that is…

      2. Reynard

        …Or, alternately, referring to the fact that the strange sounds in Mother 3’s last battle theme are also in game sound effects.

        Wasn’t sure which creepy sounds were being referred to~

        Mother 3 seems to do that a lot.