Holler Button

"C'mon!"

—Link, taking a break from being a Heroic Mime to demonstrate this trope in The Legend of Zelda the Wind Waker

Video games with a holler button allow the Player Character to call out to NPCs. This may be for a variety of reasons: telling them to follow you (or stay put for a while) during an Escort Mission, or to call for assistance if the NPC is capable of helping you out. Frequently used to call for the player's mount, allowing them to ride.

A Holler Button must have an effect in terms of game mechanics. If it's purely atmospheric, then it's a Taunt Button instead. Related to Summon Magic, but distinct in that the effect isn't actually magical (even though the called NPC may inexplicably appear from nowhere).

Examples of Holler Button include:

• The former Trope Namer was Heavy Rain's "Press X to Jason," which has you pressing "X" to call for your missing son.
  • A glitch led to a hilarious showdown. Warning, some spoilers.
• In Shadow of the Colossus you can have Wander call for his horse, Agro.
• Ico lets the PC call out for Yorda, a girl he escorts around. Doing so prompts her to come to you. Before you find her or if she's far out of range, he'll just make an odd yell.
• Can be done in the Dead Rising games to herd survivors. Oddly, it also works in Infinity Mode, where it is completely useless (all the survivors are trying to kill you.)
• The up button in Red Dead Redemption calls your horse. As an Acceptable Break From Reality, you will always call a horse even if the one you legally own has died. This can be abused for a source of income.
• In Samurai Warriors 2, Keiji can call for his horse, and so can any player character as long as they have a horse equipped in Dynasty Warriors 5. Warriors Orochi expanded it so anybody could call a horse (with the default being the worst horse in the game).
• In most of the Harvest Moon games, there are buttons to whistle for your dog or horse. In some games this also catches the attention of nearby NPCs.
• The Maw has a button so the main character can yell "Maw!", usually to call him to you.
• If a Shadow Pokemon goes into Hyper Mode during battles in Pokémon Colosseum, there is an option to use up a turn calling out to the Pokemon, which snaps it back to normal. It also wakes them from sleep and, in the second game, boosts their accuracy. It's also useful for passing turns when trying to catch a trainer's shadow Pokémon.
• Wind Waker featured partners and statues that would follow Link once he called out to 'em with a "c'mon!"
• The Zelda series has Epona's Song in The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time and The Legend of Zelda Majoras Mask, the Command Melody in Wind Waker as mentioned above, and the Horse Grass and Horse Call in The Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess.
• Valve's online games tend to have a series of voice commands that you can use to alert your teammates to something quickly if you don't have a mic.
  • Team Fortress 2: The "Medic!" call will let anyone nearby that you want to be healed—notable because it actually adds an icon to any nearby medics showing the location of the caller and how much health they have. There are also voice clips for everything from "yes" and "no" to "go left/right" to "put a sentry/dispenser/teleporter here". Plus stuff that has no real use except entertainment value, such as unleashing a battle cry, insulting the enemy team, or insulting your team.
  • Left 4 Dead: There's a generic "look" command that is context-sensitive and will alert other teammates to whatever weapons, health, enemies or allies that you happen to be looking at. Similar to TF2, there are also a bunch of meaningless-but-amusing Taunt Button-style commands.
  • Atlas and P-Body of Portal 2 can't really talk, but they can create visual cues like beacons or timers to communicate with each other.
• The Team Fortress example is obviously inspired by the Starsiege: Tribes series, which had dozens of voice commands you can use in a well-designed system to communicate without a microphone. V-F-D stands for "defend the flag!" (V = voice, F = flag-related commands, D = defend.) At the end of a round, you'll hear a lot of V-G-C-G "good game!" (V = voice, G = global, goes to both teams, C = compliments, G = good game.) The most famous of these is V-G-S, "shazbot!"
• The first Kingdom Hearts used the Triangle button to call over your friends to you (or, if you where in the air when pressing Triangle, make them jump). The second game his Triangle as the Action Commands button instead, where it functions as this when escorting Minnie to the throne of Disney Castle.
• Hunting for Ames in Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty is done by pushing Triangle with the Directional Microphone equipped, causing Raiden to ask "You're Ames, aren't you?". There's just the one inflection, but if you spam it repeatedly Raiden's questions will get increasingly bored ("I bet you're not Ames either."). Perhaps Lampshaded by the fact that there's a parrot who can learn to say the phrase if you spam it at it enough times.
• Neverwinter Nights let you give orders to your party members.
• In Final Fantasy XII, there is a minigame of sorts where you must spread the word throughout the town of Bhujerba that your comrade Basch, contrary to popular belief, is still alive. By pressing a button, you could call attention to this by yelling out such things as "I'm Basch fon Ronsenberg of Dalmasca!" Your effectiveness in spreading this message would rise or fall upon your proximity to sympathetic or unsympathetic ears. Don't do this next to guards; the local guides, however, are particularly effective (they're all members of La Résistance).
• Battlefield games have a commo rose with a context sensitive "Spotted" command that will reveal whatever you're looking at that belongs to the enemy on the radar. However, it also has other commands, such as "Negative," "Sorry," and the ever-popular "Enemy boat spotted!"
• In Drakengard 2, there's a button that calls your dragon down. What makes it fall under the trope is that Nowe shouts out "Legna!" when you hit it. (Caim would likely have done the same with Angelus if he had vocal cords.)
• Disaster Report has this, as part of the point of the game is to look for other survivors in the huge (not-so-)natural disaster going on at the time.
• In Haunting Ground you can use the right analog stick to give commands to your canine companion, Hewie. Pushing it down calls him, leading to different hollers in different situations, from "Hewie!" to "Hewiiiieeeee! Help!"
• In Luigis Mansion, you can press the A button to make Luigi shout "Mario!!" in various inflections. There's little point to it, though it does serve as an auditory check of Luigi's health.
• Silent Hill: Shattered Memories briefly allows Harry to call out for his daughter Cheryl in the first several minutes of the game. He even has two variations—yelling when outdoors, and saying her name in an anxious whisper while indoors, and each of those have further variations.
• In Pikmin and Super Smash Bros. (starting with Brawl), one of Olimar's most important moves is using the whistle to call Pikmin to order.
• In Okami you can press a button to make Amaterasu bark
• The X-Men Legends and Marvel Ultimate Alliance games have a button for summoning your allies when the party gets separated. In combat, it commands the AI to use characters' special powers.
• The Bard's Tale lets you use the directional pad to give your allies four different hollers.
• Resident Evil 4 has a button for controlling Ashley, which alternates between "Follow" and "Wait," along with "Hide" if you're near a dumpster.
• Resident Evil 5 uses a button to change how your A.I. partner reacts; "Attack" makes your partner fight more aggressively, while "Cover" makes your partner fight more defensively and stay closer to you.
  • You also have a button to shout encouragement during the boss fight with Jill. Doing so will sometimes make the boss hesitate and open for an attack.
• Assassin's Creed II introduced basic stop/follow/act commands for commanding the courtesans, mercenaries or thieves when using the context-sensitive Head button, but Brotherhood replaced the former "context-sensitive camera" button with the Call Assassins (tap)/Arrow Storm (hold) button, the animation for which is Ezio raising his fist and whistling.
  • Brotherhood also features, like Red Dead Redemption above, a button to call your horse. Luckily, all horses in the game know the art of Offscreen Teleportation and will gladly appear even on the top of the Coliseum's ruins for you - not that you can do much with them there.
• In SWAT 4, pressing the use button with no context makes you yell at a suspect to drop the weapon and get down. You must do this for every suspect you see or lose points for unauthorized use of deadly force should they resist.
• Practically the entire point of the Oddworld games with Abe in them (especially the first two)) is to use voice commands to lead your fellow Mudokons (and, in Munch's Oddysee, Fuzzles)) to sweet freedom.