After the tremendous success of The Legend of Zelda, Nintendo got to work on its sequel: Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, sometimes also called The Legend of Zelda 2. Against all odds, the development team gave the saga a radical twist, creating one of its most unique and different titles to date.
Unlike the first game, Zelda II was conceived as an RPG in which Link could level up and acquire better skills and parameters. Indeed, it followed the classic leveling system of almost any role-playing game of the time.
This is not something particularly common in the franchise, since the sense of progress is usually less direct. In addition, it changed the perspective of combat. In the first TLoZ we lived the complete adventure through a bird’s eye view camera.
However, in Zelda II the situation is different. While traveling around the world, the camera remains in a bird’s eye view, but when entering a stage, a dungeon or fighting, it changes. When we reach a location that we can explore, the camera switches to a side view.
In other words, it becomes a side-scrolling game where we can use magic or our sword to fight. Here we can also interact with various characters. It is for these reasons that Zelda II is considered one of the most unique games in the saga.
What many may not know is that it also harbors one of the franchise’s funniest anecdotes, to the point of having spawned a very famous meme back in the 2000s. It is I am Error, a quote that even provoked cameos in other games.
I AM ERROR, a mistake that became part of The Legend of Zelda and Nintendo’s history
The origin of this peculiar story goes back to the original 1987 version of the game. In it, there is a character who introduces himself with the phrase “Ore no na wa Era da“. This translates to something like “My name is Error“, although in Japanese “My name is Era”.
However, when it was exported to the West between 1988 and 1990, it was mistranslated because it was not understood to be part of a joke. It was adapted as “I AM ERROR,” which could be understood as “I AM ERROR” or “I AM AN ERROR.” They were wrong, since it was all a play on words with another character: Bagu.
Bagu () should have been translated as Bug, but since it was not, the joke was lost. For those who don’t know, bug is a term that refers to a software error. This is why it is thought that this translation was done as a joke, although Nintendo has never confirmed it.
In other words, the theory says that the translation of “Ore no na wa Era da” and “Bagu” are incorrect and that the relationship between the two characters, who also live very close to each other, was part of a joke that broke the fourth wall in its own way.
Something that makes even more sense when we consider that both characters are practically identical, except for the color of their clothes, and that they are neighbors. However, as it was poorly translated, in the West we did not understand the joke until long after.
Bagu remained Bagu and Error introduced himself to the world inappropriately. As a result, not only was the joke lost, but many thought it was a real glitch. That is, thatZelda 2 contained a programming or coding error.
A translation error turned into a meme, legend and history
Over time, although it is unclear how it began to go viral, “I’m a Error” became an internet meme around the 2000s. Gradually it grew, causing the character of Error to begin to gain relevance despite being a secondary character with almost negligible importance.
Over time, he gained so much notoriety that he even appeared in various articles. For example, Brett Staebell, of The Escapist, considered that Bagu and Error are two of the first characters who dared to explore humor in the world of video games in less conventional ways.
Such was its impact that it even appeared in other Nintendo games, such as Paper Mario. In this game, the message appears when fighting the robotic dragon Fractail. At a certain point in the battle, it gets hacked and starts expressing all sorts of messages. One of them is “I AM ERROR”.
Other studios decided to pay their own tribute, such as The Binding of Isaac and Guacamelee, among others. It is not the only curiosity. In 2012, those in charge of nintendo.co.uk changed the message that appeared when error 404 popped up.
This error appears when we search for a URL and cannot access it due to a communication failure between the host and the server. On Nintendo’s website, the message “I AM ERROR” appeared alongside an image of the character. It was maintained from 2012 to 2015.
Subsequently, during a Nintendo Treehouse presentation showing Super Smash Bros. for Wii U (E3 2014), a bug page was shown that was based on this story. In 2019, also during E3, a similar image was shown after they suffered a power outage.
This is how, between memes, jokes and tributes, Error and his famous “I am error” became part of Nintendo culture.
