|
 
Prepare yourself
for I am about to rip to shreds Zelda II in the following
paragraphs. If you have a closet shrine dedicated to Link
this is the time to click the Back button on your browser.
You have been warned.
I enjoyed everything
about the game; it's got great puzzles, challenge, characters,
music, gameply, and on and on. It's just if Nintendo spent
more time on the translation I could be able to take the
game's story a bit more seriously.
To
put it in a nutshell, at least one person of every town in
this game makes a grammar mistake. This puts Zelda II
in the number one running position as the NES game with the
most mispellings.
My
first example to verify this: "I am Error." When
I first saw this I really thought that it was a mistyping
error and had nothing to do with the rest of the game. Later
on, though, there's a guy that mentions Error's name. But
whhhhhyyyy Error, Nintendo? Translation problems.
He's
a man with few words: I am Error. I salute you Error!
Look
at this fiesty one! One of the WORST hints in any NES game
to date. Let's roleplay for a second here: I'm in a palace.
I am not allowed to continue through because there is a gate
with a lock blocking my way. I pick up a key. Thanks to this
helpful hint I wouldn't know what to do with that key! Thanks
hoochie-momma, here's food!
Duuhh,
thanks der mister! I was wondering why all my other spellz
except fire wasn't effective. I guess Iz forgot fire! .....Error?
The
first helpful tip so far tells us where to find an item. Everything
looks fine here except the grammar. I give it a D- for the
good effort.
The
fact that the translation team skipped over the cassete tapes
dealing with possesion and article use in their "How
to Speak and Write English in 24 Hours" kit is apparent
here. That old lady must be related to the old man
in the first Legend of Zelda!
Okay,
this one is just plain confusing. The others were worded badly,
but it's nearly impossible to understand what this woman is
talking about. If no one is here, then who is talking to me
right now and who is that lady over there? The translators
thankfully used an article (a) but chose
the WRONG one (correct article: the, since there is only ONE
church bell in the town.)
Again,
a fairly useful message here. It comments on an item you can
use to walk across water, but it is how Nintendo phrases a
simple conversation that makes it a real shame.
I
am not. Thanks for your helpful advice.
And
lastly the final comment. The most honest and "more correct"
statement that the old man from Zelda
1 could learn from. Besides the fact that a sentence
cannot only consist of one word, this is the most correct
use of ENGLISH in the game. Which brings
us to the moral, and that moral is:
"If all else fails use fire."
|
