I was reading Tomato’s Super Mario Bros. Legends of Localization series when I suffered a random memory. Back when I was a kid, a friend of mine bought The Legend of Zelda, and we’d hang out and play it together from time to time.
Midway through the game you begin encountering dungeon monsters called Bubbles. In the main quest, touching these guys (which flash rapidly between red and blue) will cause Link to lose the ability to swing his sword for a few seconds. In the Second Quest, the Bubbles come in separate red and blue variants; touching one color causes you to lose your sword skills entirely until you come into contact with the other.
As is the wont of children everywhere, my friend liked to ignore the enemy names given in the manual and come up with his own. Some of them made sense; others came out of left field.
For whatever reason, he decided to call the Bubbles “AIDS Viruses.” AIDs was big in the news back then — an epidemic sweeping America with no cure in sight. It was a terrible thing that left people crippled and weak before dying helplessly. So, basically: Kids are jerks.
For absolutely no reason I typed in “MR.AIDS” as my username when playing Zelda back in the day, and I thought it was so stupid/funny it became my default username in every game since then.
A few months ago an HIV-positive friend of booted up my copy of Mario Kart Wii and raised one hell of an eyebrow when he saw that “Mr. Aids” was a playable Mii character. He gave me the finger, selected Mr. Aids as his racer and wouldn’t stop shouting “MISTER AIDS GONNA GETCHA” at everyone else all afternoon.
This wasn’t ha-ha ‘funny’ as much as it was cosmically-surreal. (Also, I’m lucky I have friends who are tolerant of my 12 year-old self’s sense of humor.)
Really, though, anyone who hangs out with you should know what they’re getting into!
Neat link; hadn’t seen it before. Thanks!
Oh snap, there’s a Totally Rad one in there too? Man, this is going to kill my productivity.
How can you be sure he wasn’t reffering to the weight loss pills? You negelected to mention if he was chubby or not.
Reminds me of a childhood friend exclaiming “Get the fairy before the devil gets her!” every time a fairy would appear. Pretty pointless a memory but in the same vein as yours.
Yeah but then the blue ones would be like the triple cocktail.
My brothers and I typically gave our own names to enemies and objects in old Nintendo games, and most of those names were pretty crass. Mario 3 had those Para-Goombas that dropped Micro-Goombas on Mario, and my older brother called the Micro-Goombas “Abortion Goombas” since it looked like–well, you know.
My mother caught up saying it, and she didn’t think it was very funny.
A less horrible story, also Mario 3 related: We called the item-matching minigame “The Nuh” because of the N-marked spade that showed up on the map. I still call the game “The Nuh” to this day (also, my mother had every board memorized).
That’s not the first time I’ve heard them called AIDS Viruses. I can’t remember exactly where I heard it, but I did hear it. I thought it was kind of mean, even as a kid.
You know those eye-robots with the rotating suction-cup feet from Mega Man 3? The Internet tells me their name is “Peterchy,” but my friend called them… “AIDS.” Man, what was with our friends?
That doesn’t even make sense! I can at least understand it with the Bubbles.