This quick and short obligatory All Hallow's Even post will be looking at a few interesting speech patterns from the horror-themed beat 'em up, Vampire. The roster boasts everything from ancient mummies to insectoid hive-mind demons that along with bizarre and unique move-sets - fighting game term for sets of specific fighting techniques - have as individualistic speech patterns, we will be looking at the most outstanding of these.
Anakaris
The token pharaoh of the series, he uses Classical Japanese speech along with ware, nanji and nari, respectively the "I", "thou" and "to be" in Old/Middle Japanese. He furthermore has a habit of adding a haunting echo of sorts to the last syllable of his speech, such as in:
敗者よ、神のみまえにひざまずけずけずけ
我こそは偉大なる王なりなりなり
Haisha yo, kami no mimae ni hizamazuke mazuke mazuke. Ware koso wa idainaru ou nari nari nari.
"O vanquished one, kneel thou before the Majesty of Goooood...
I am none other than the great Pharaooooh..."
The official English translation does away with this stentorian voice and renders it in semi-archaic regular speech, which can be seen in their official translation of this quote.
Japanese one first:
今我が国民となればればれば もれなく王の慈愛ありありあり
Ima waga kokumin to nareba reba reba morenaku ou no jihi ari ari ari
"Now, be thou of my kingdoooom, and receive shalt thou, in full, the Royal Lenityyy..."
The official translation:
"Be one of my people and I shall grant you my love."
Which removes most if not all of his bizarre speech patterns and ominous personality.
Note that "be" in my English translation of the quote is in the subjunctive, i.e. Anakaris states that if the person becomes a member of his kingdom then he will receive the full royal kindness from Analaris, where the term in question jihi can also be translated as "affection" or "love," hence the official English translation of the Japanese quote. I chose the formal lenity to reflect his archaic diction.
Victor von Gerdenheim and Q-Bee
Both of these speek in distinctly contrasting styles, one in an childish hiragana manner and the other in an alien katakana style. That is, both uses purely phonetic scripts to render their diction where one comes across as innocent and the other as threatening.
Victor, the Frankenstein's Monster of the game, for example says:
おれ たたかう きょうも あしたも
Ore tatakau kyou mo ashita mo
"I fight today and tomorrow, too."
Note that he uses the hiragana おれ rather than 俺, which is the kanji-form of ore, the masculine assertive first person singular pronominal. He also drops most if not all of his grammatical particles, such as ga in Ore tatakau (I fight), which could just as easily be translated as "Me fight", where more correctly it would be ore ga tatakau (I am fighting/I fight).
アナタ ナゼコワガルノ？ アタシノナカマニナレルノニ
Anata naze kowagaru no? Atashi no nakama ni nareru no ni
"WHY ARE YOU AFRAID? YOU COULD BECOME ONE OF MY FRIENDS"
The angular nature of the script and the fact that katakana is sometimes used to convey robotic speech adds to the creepy tone of her voice, being a being composed purely of sentient flesh-eating bee-demons. I have rendered this in all-caps to illustrate the effect in English, which in the official translation is nigh-identical in meaning, but is written in regular casing.
This concludes a short sampling of the weird and wonderful diction of the fighters in the game.