It's a simple question, really: What is a chocobo? Anyone in the gaming community could tell you in an instant and most likely pop in a copy of some Final Fantasy game and show you as well. But what about the random man on the street? Is Final Fantasy big enough that every person out there knows what a chocobo is?
After someone at a convention claimed to NeoGAF user NaughtyCalibur that Final Fantasy was so big that everyone now knows what a chocobo is he actually went out with a camera to find out if this was true. The results will shock you.
No they won't. Big ups to the random guy on the bike, though.
Matthew Razak is Destructoid's Associate editor and co-founder of film site Flixist. He began as community member "cowzilla" and was since sequestered to write brainy features material. He lives in Los Angeles with his beautiful wife.
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I wanted to do something like this back in E3 2009 when those giant Final Fantasy XIII posters were hanging on skyscrapers. Somehow I never got to it.
I don't think I could have done as good a job as thing guy though. He played it cool throughout, even when he was practically getting threatened for being a "beige mother fucker."
I wonder if the number of people that didn't make into the video and knew what a Chocobo was were outnumbered by the number that didn't and thought it was something to do with dicks. After seeing this I wouldn't be surprised.
Half the people in this video are fucking immature.
Like, only the first two people, and two others in video apparently didn't feel obligated to say something about sex, or blow up in front of the camera like an oversensitive moron.
That's a... Quite an experiment. You now can see what people think towards when they hear the word. Sex, chicken, and snakes which the latter two can be used as metaphors in sex... Then again what can't?
I've been a gamer since Asteroids and Zork and until I started hanging out on gaming forums, I had no idea what a Chocobo is. (and I still haven't managed to play an FF game long enough to see one). My husband is a newer gamer - about 4 years now - and he still has no idea what one is.
We gamers often think that video games are much more commonplace than they really are. It's because we spend so much time thinking about them, we can forget how relatively obscure they really are. The full extent of Average Joe's video game knowledge is that Mario and Luigi have been in a few video games.
I'd never heard of Cuyahoga Community College, but based on this video it is clearly one of our nation's finest educational institutions, on a par with Oxford, the Sorbonne, and Harvard.
@Elsa:
The first game that I can think of where chocobos appear more or less early on (about 3 hours in) is Final Fantasy IX. Check it out: the combat is not that great but the story and the characters are awesome :D
Yeah, the only people who play video games are 15-30 year old white males. Us blacks are too busy tilling the fields so we don't have the time for the luxury of playing FF.
Sarcasm aside, the whole point of the video is to test the assumption that NaughtyCalibur "would have to search far and wide" to find a person that doesn't know what a Chocobo is. His community obviously houses a large black population so that's who he mostly asked. And most did not know the answer so the video proved the fanboy assumption wrong. If he had asked the same question in a city in Rhode Island, where the population is mostly Caucasian, the results would have been largely the same.
You gotta wonder how much footage did not make it into the video though. Obviously he included only the most funny/interesting stuff (otherwise the video would not be very good).
Please, good citizens of D-Toid. We can make this happen. Start using Chocobo in everyday speech to refer to some sort of lewd sexual act, or as a racial slur. WE CAN CHANGE THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. HEAR MY PLEA.
This is the second final fantasy themed "street" video I've seen (the first being Mega 64's, as Mirax pointed out), and the second one that's almost caught someone a beat down. This guy wasn't even trying to piss anybody off, though; so I'm startin' think everyone's sick of Square Enix's shit. I can only imagine the rioting that would ensue should someone try anything with "Kingdom Hearts".
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Contest:
10:00 AM on 08.22.2010 | 
I don't think I could have done as good a job as thing guy though. He played it cool throughout, even when he was practically getting threatened for being a "beige mother fucker."
Like, only the first two people, and two others in video apparently didn't feel obligated to say something about sex, or blow up in front of the camera like an oversensitive moron.
Funny vid though!
'MERICA!
So much good in this statement.
I'm gonna go smoke some chocobo and then get a chocobo from my lady-friend... chocobo.
xD
just like the bike guy.
@Elsa:
The first game that I can think of where chocobos appear more or less early on (about 3 hours in) is Final Fantasy IX. Check it out: the combat is not that great but the story and the characters are awesome :D
*ziiiiiip*
*Pulls Chocobo Mystery Dungeon out of his backpack*
I liked it. Nice laugh before sleep :)
Yeah, the only people who play video games are 15-30 year old white males. Us blacks are too busy tilling the fields so we don't have the time for the luxury of playing FF.
Sarcasm aside, the whole point of the video is to test the assumption that NaughtyCalibur "would have to search far and wide" to find a person that doesn't know what a Chocobo is. His community obviously houses a large black population so that's who he mostly asked. And most did not know the answer so the video proved the fanboy assumption wrong. If he had asked the same question in a city in Rhode Island, where the population is mostly Caucasian, the results would have been largely the same.
Anyway, please stop with the racial stereotyping.
Precisely.
You gotta wonder how much footage did not make it into the video though. Obviously he included only the most funny/interesting stuff (otherwise the video would not be very good).
"A bitch?"
Fucking. YES.