Remembering Dunoo’s most memorable voice line in his DOTA 2 casting career

As you may have heard, the DOTA community has lost an iconic shoutcaster.

Aldrin “Dunoo” Pangan was best remembered for his “Lakad Matatag” voice line, spammed to oblivion by OG in their TI8-winning run. However, apart from that, he has had even more memorable moments in his esports casting career. Let’s take a moment to remember his most legendary phrases that cemented him both as a local and international hypecasting icon.

“Lakad matatag. Normalin. Normalin.”

“Lakad matatag” is arguably the most memorable voice line in DOTA 2’s history.

This was a phrase uttered by Dunoo during the dying moments of Fnatic vs Secret in ESL One Katowice 2018. However, most people wouldn’t have heard it since they probably would have been in the official stream of the game.

But this all changed when Valve included the MineskiTV’s cast as one of the available voice lines in the Epic Caster pack for the 2018 Battle Pass. It was easily one of the most spammable voice lines in the whole battle pass. The all-chat phrase was a perfect battle cry for your team, and a frustrating sound for your enemy.

In fact, it was one of OG’s weapons of choice in their arsenal of voice lines. 30% of the voice line uses came from them. Did Dunoo’s voice help OG’s championship runs? OG certainly believe so.

“Your voice lines carried us to 2 Aegis”

 – OG gives tribute to Dunoo

Where did Lakad Matatag come from?

For long-time players of DOTA, the “Lakad Matatag” portion could sound a bit familiar.

 

Watch this clip of the Warcraft 3 Mountain King hero shouting “For Khaz Modan”. It’s the sound of activating BKB (or Avatar for purists)  in the original DOTA 1. Then listen to the voice line. Three heroes popped their BKB, which prompted Dunoo to give his best Muradin impression, in his native language of course.

The line could be interpreted as “Stand strong.”, as that’s what you typically do when you use BKB. The whole phrase can now be interpreted as “Stand strong, just hit the enemy”. (Normalin means “to normal attack”)

Dunoo and his shoutcast partner Lon hold the record for most voice lines in shortest period.

While “Lakad Matatag” was the most famous phrase, the casting duo had even more voice lines that made it into the battle pass stardom, all from the same game.

They had a total of five voice lines in 36-seconds:

• “Lakad matataaaaag. Normalin. Normalin.”
• “Easiest money of my life!”
• “Echo Slamma Jamma!”
• “The next level play.”
• “Oyoy, oy oy, oy oy,…”

Other memorable voice lines

Dunoo and Lon had a long journey to international recognition. And they had a couple of memorable voice lines on the way.

“USA! USA! USA!”

They were first recognized in 2015 when SEA was still a rising region. The Philippines had yet to win a major international tournament with a full Filipino lineup.

Mineski with a younger Kuku beat Fnatic in the SEA qualifiers for a spot in the Summit 4 in the United States. Dunoo and Lon embodied years of Philippine aspiration with their chant.

“The Filipino Huskar”

It turns out that while Dunoo helped OG’s mind game strats in 2018, he also had the loudest cheer when OG had their most dramatic loss. 2016 was looking to be OG’s year when they were coming in as the clear favorites to win TI6. However, TNC Gaming had other plans as the DeMoN-led Filipino squad pulled off the biggest upset in DOTA 2 history.

Dunoo’s ear-deafening and incomprehensible ramblings as TNC hit the ancient is still one of the most revered casting performances in the Philippines.

Dunoo had been shoutcasting his vocal cords out since DOTA 1

Dunoo and a couple of other long-time talents set their sights on making a DOTA 2 broadcast channel. They partnered with Mineski Events Team to start MineskiTV in 2013. MineskiTV was one of the first media channels dedicated to esports in the Philippines.

However, Dunoo and Lon’s shoutcasting career started even way before. In the days where tournaments and LANs were held at computer cafes, the duo would literally shout to cast the games or use megaphones.

Dunoo’s legacy

It is sad that Dunoo’s voice won’t be heard again on the stage, but fans of DOTA 2 will have a hard time forgetting his thunderous lines. In fact, there is currently a petition on Reddit to add the famous voice line pack to pay tribute to the fallen legend ahead of TI10.

 

(Header image via @BossDunoo)