Spartan: Total Warrior - Archimedes' speech in full

In 2005 there were two major releases of action games involving Spartan heroes who gain superhuman fighting skills through a pact with Ares and end up fighting him one-on-one. The other one is more famous, so let's feel sorry for Spartan: Total Warrior. Many things are interesting about this game, which plays hilariously fast and loose with classical myth and history, but here's something that I guarantee exists nowhere else on the internet (if it does, they pasted it from me). Transcribing it was laborious. I'm talking about Archimedes' Speech from the Athens segment of the game (before you power up his lightning gun).

In around 300BC, The Spartan, unnamed protagonist of the game, is travelling the world in a bid to save it from Tiberius and the evil Roman empire. He has come to Athens to support the resistance movement, led by the old but fearless inventor and political agitator, Archimedes. In the first part of this sequence, Archimedes stands in the town square (forum? agora?) and delivers a long speech to the population. The Spartan's task is to rush about killing snipers and assassins in order to keep Archimedes alive and safe, but if you stop and listen, you get a superb example of 'Greece versus Rome' stereotyping, with evidence that the writers did their homework (or at least kept it from when they were at primary school). Here's the looped monologue in full - it's pretty good rhetoric, and I love the fact that Archimedes quotes himself:

'The Roman dogs that besieged our city have now entered our sacred streets. Our liberty is under threat, and our culture is no longer safe from those brutal Roman invaders. Today, every Athenian man, woman and child must stand up to face our greatest foe and defend our city and our ideals. These Roman aggressors shall not crush our hallowed nation of learned art and wisdom. For I say to you this day, we will fight these tyrants with all our strength. We must stand united against our enemy, or risk losing all that we have achieved. These marching military men are not content simply to occupy our city. They will crush our knowledge and bury our thoughts. Can we live like barbarians, mired in ignorance and stupidity? No! We are Athenians! I will humble myself before this nation of natural leaders, and offer myself as a figurehead for our greatest struggle! I may be old, and my corporeal presence diminishing, but my mind remains as sharp as ever. Remember that I discovered the secret of enticing water to flow uphill! Now my invention, the screw, is used throughout the civilised world to turn the very tide. The time has come for us to stem the flow of the Romans, and force them to turn around, and surge upstream, back where they came from. We can take back our great city, and return her to her rightful rulers. The people of Syracuse have called upon my skills, and I have created war machines for their defence. My inventions, combined with the resolve of the people, will save us all. We will scupper their ships with my claw, and burn their bodies with the brilliant rays of Helios! We can win this battle – we will win this battle! Hear the words of the great geometer: ‘Give me a lever and a place to stand, and I can single-handedly move the world’. We have the power to stand firm in our place and move the world the way we want. I am as certain of our victory as I am certain of the movement of the heavens around us. I tell you this, Archimedes and my fellow Athenians will not be enslaved, nor die at the hands of these imperialist Roman dogs! Solidarity, my brothers and sisters! Solidarity! Heed my words and act on my message! I say to you again: The Roman dogs…'

Classical Names, Unclassical Games

A number of computer games have had classical-sounding names but completely different content. There are lots of reasons for this. For example, fantasy games are often borderline classical-mythical anyway, and classical cultural references are arty and stylish and 'mature'. So Asheron's Call sounds like Acheron, one of the rivers of the Greek underworld; Dirge of Cerberus is a vaguely intellectual and Gothic-sounding title for a Final Fantasy game; and Via Domus, being Latin, is sufficiently cryptic (but not too cryptic) to be the title of a game based on the TV series Lost.

But here are three reasons for games to have nothing to do with Classics beyond the title, with a selection of the many examples of each.

1) Greek and Latin are spacey. The first five years of arcade games were predominantly spaceship shooting games, and the sci-fi nerds still enjoy a large slice of the market. Games therefore have titles designed to evoke planets, spaceships and other astronomical things named after classical mythology, especially all those eighties Space Invaders rip-offs.

Examples:
Andromeda (ARC: 1981)
Arcadia (ZXS 16K: 1982)
Arcadians (Acorn Electron, BBC Micro: 1982)
Argonaut (Amiga: 1992)
Cerberus (ARC: 1985)
Darius (ARC: 1986)
Erebus (Amstrad, C64: 1986)
Hades Nebula
Juno First (ARC: 1983)
Mars (ARC: 1981)
Pleiads (ARC: 1981)
Pollux (ARC: 1991)
Regulus (ARC: 1983)

2) Geometry and Arithmetic are Greek. The sad truth is that all of the fun of video games is based on maths (i.e. programming), and this was even more obvious in the days when games were often single-authored pet projects. A few puzzle games refer explicitly to the maths basis of both their gameplay and their design, presumably to imply that they are for intelligent players. One of my burning desires is to understand the place of Classics in Japanese culture. It's remarkable how many games with names from classical science were initially made and marketed in Japan.

Examples:
Archimedes’ Screw (ZXS 48K: 1983)
Gigas (ARC: 1986)
Palamedes (ARC: 1990)
Riddle of Pythagoras (ARC: 1987)
(Archimedes' Screw is a special case, since the coding of the game, when mapped visually, is shaped like the object after which it is named. Meta!)

3) Antiquity has the best heroes. A fighter whose present or past adventures are synonymous with Western civilisation is bound to make people want to play the game. At least, this must be what marketers are thinking when they give the names of classical heroes and warriors to entirely unclassical characters. Sometimes this is done only for the Western audience - but not always.

Examples:
Ares (ZXS 48K: 1990)
Ares No Tsubasa – The Legendary Soldiers (JP)/Legendary Wings (US)
Argos no Senshi – Legendary Warrior (JP)/Rygar – The Legendary Warrior (US) (ARC: 1986)
Legionnaire (ARC: 1992)
Odyssey: The Legend of Nemesis (MAC: 1996)
Soldier Girl Amazon (US)/Sei Senshi Atalass (JP) (ARC: 1986)
Spartan X (JP)/Kung Fu Master (US) (ARC: 1984)
Tantalus (ZXS 48K: 1986)
Trojan (US)/Tatakai no Banka [War Elegy] (JP) (ARC, PC: 1986)