“Retched” in Devil May Cry
Was checking the back of #DMC’s PS2 case and noticed the word under one of the screen captures.
At first I thought it was “wretched”, but suspecting of a potential mistake like that being too obvious to pass, I still went to check. Apparently it’s Old English for “vomited”? Curious choice of word if so.
Tangentially, these old cases are being interesting to check imo, to see how titles tried to be relevant back then.
It’s 100% a mistake. “Wretched souls” is a well-known phrase that goes back to Shakespeare’s Macbeth, if not earlier.
I’m guessing they didn’t catch it because retched is also a word, even though that use is grammatically incorrect (unless they were souls that’d been vomited up).
Makes me think, maybe I’m getting gritty aesthetics of DMC mixed with the nasty aesthetics of the 2013 reboot, being several years since I played either, and because of that it wouldn’t sound as off.
Retch is still a word in modern English usage, but yes this is absolutely just an error and it’s meant to be “wretched”.
Its possible they meant “vomited souls,” or that the translation of what was given to them translated to that*, but it is much more plausible that they made a spelling mistake.
*It is common in Japanese media to depict a person’s “soul” leaving their body through the mouth, thus “vomited soul” may be correct depending on the original material provided, if this box art text was written originally in Japanese before being translated or sent for English box printing.
Oooooooooh
Time for a GameFAQS rabbit hole to find scans of the Japanese covers then. e.e"
It will be interesting to see.
The Japanese one may be completely different and not have this text at all, or they may have used katakana to indicate an English loan-word for “wretched,” which when translated back into English could translate to “Retched” if it is treated like a proper noun and the translator is dull or doesn’t have the full context.
Retch, meaning to vomit, is still a word in use nowadays, just infrequently. As the other commenter said, it’s definitely a spelling error.
Sometimes…even a devil may misspell things
