Translation be hard time for people.

There is no denying that most of the gaming gold brought to the United States is shipped over here from different countries, but no one country gives us more to ogle about than the Land of the Rising Sun. Japan keeps packing our gullets full of their delicious gaming gravy and I myself can’t help but to come back for more. But like most foods, those yummy morsels pass through many a hand before they are properly processed and packed, and a lot can go wrong along the way, specifically in terms of translation from Japanese to English. Here are some games that didn’t quite get it right when they made the hop over the Pacific.

Number 5: Ghosts and Goblins

Ghosts and Goblins was developed and published by Capcom for use in Arcades but, was later ported to many older consoles including the Nintendo Entertainment System. In the game the player (that’s you) takes control of a “not so fearsome knight” named Arthur. His job is to go on a scary adventure across the land of ghosts and monsters to rescue, you guessed it, a princess. And while Arthur may be good at crushing the undead and rescuing damsels in distress he didn’t exactly do well in his English class. As thanks for your tiresome journey and relentless killing sprees, you will be presented with the iconic phrase, “Congratulations, The Story is Happy End!, Thank you!” Personally, I am just thankful Arthur didn’t have to battle any conjunctions or adverbs, I am not so sure he would know how to handle them.

Number 4: 10 Yard Fight

Developed and published for the NES by Irem, 10 Yard Fight was a football game of pixeltastic proportions. Horribly unrealistic, the characters moved like snails, and the players looked more like the creatures from Ghosts and Goblins only in cute little football uniforms. Needless to say, 10 Yard Fight isn’t as glorious as Madden 2010, but it was a “game of its era.” What it wasn’t was grammatically correct. Take a look at the image above and tell me if you can correctly identify what they are trying to say here. It’s there, just buried in a pile of incorrect verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. Let’s hope the teams play better than their cheerleaders speak.

Number 3: Super Mario Sunshine

For those of you who haven’t played Super Mario Sunshine, shame! Of all the Mario games it was by far the most “unique” in terms of gameplay. Released for the Gamecube by (shocker) Nintendo, Super Mario Sunshine took the red hatted hero on a journey through the world of water, flowers, and oddly enough, jetpacks. The gameplay was very addicting and the colorful characters and epicly large landscapes were to be expected from the juggernaut Nintendo. What wasn’t expected was the fact that a loss of translation would slip through the fingers of the “perfectionist” developer. Whenever you captured an elusive “shine” you were presented with the victorious statement “Shine Get!.” What Nintendo should have “got” besides shines was a better translator. What do you think, miscue of translation or just lazy grammar?

Number 2: Bloody Wolf (In Europe, Battle Rangers)

Bloody Wolf was released in 1988 by Data East for use in Arcades but was later ported to the TurboGrafx console in 1990. This game appeared to be a mixture of “Double Dragon” and “Contra,” allowing players to literally “run and gun” their way through seven different levels. Players battled different solider types with army like weapons including machine guns, bazookas, and shotguns. Unfortunately the players couldn’t choose what type of translator they wanted. This game is notoriously bad for its English translation and it is no more present than in the image above. At least you can use your Bloody Wolf game cartridge as a coaster when you get tired of deciphering the language.

Number 1: Zero Wing

Zero Wing was ported to the Sega Mega Drive by Sega Europe in 1991. Think in terms of the game Galaga, only in a side scrolling type manner. The game became the brunt of some massive internet talk and gained a lot of notoriety, but not the positive kind. While the game premise was classic and the gameplay was fun, the dialogue was disastrous. Zero Wing became the subject of a massive joke, spiraling all over the internet for its horrible translation and some speculate that it basically began the world of “Engrish” and translation issues as we know it. Click the image above to see an animated version of entire beginning cutscene for the game Zero Wing. Go ahead, bask in the glory of its incredibly horrible English translation. Sorry to say Zero Wing but, “All your translators are belong to unemployment.”

Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed my homage to the art of translation. Special thanks to Engrish.com for providing and finding all these wonderful images of language slaughtering. Good luck to everyone at Rekuru and may you never get lost in translation.