The Oldest Unsolved Zelda Mystery

Nani?!

Zelda Jewelry and Monster Maze Pins:

Special Thanks to:
- Gail Tilden
- You!

#zelda #thelegendofzelda

[treelineresearch]

As as kid in '89 having no idea what a Famicom was or that the controller had a mic, I thought "Pol's Voice doesn't like loud noises" in the instruction book meant use bombs.

[hairball]

Lisa Simpson: "I thought Dinosaur Island was just a name!"

Other guy: "It is! Dinosaur Island is actually a peninsula!"

[aratherbritishdinosaur]

I appreciate you spending 4 hours animating a single joke. It was worth it 💯

[BismuthBorealis]

"I have altered the hints... pray I don't alter them further..."

[Charlespp]

As a mid 40s person that played this when it was new I just would like to point out that I found out I could walk through the wall because the location map clearly showed there was something in the top right corner and I did everything I could possibly think of for what seemed like hours in that screen. Eventually I walked through. And THATS how they made a game last longer in the 80's.

[GreenOfFields]

Nothing is more quintessentially “Zelda fan” than taking a single awkward sentence and analyzing it enough to make a nearly half-hour long video to share your findings. Bravo on that, and the excellent Pol’s Voice animation!

[Wyrdwad]

As a professional localizer myself, I really appreciate how in-depth you went here. It really is striking how far game localization has come lo these past 40 years!

My favorite example of obvious "Engrish" localization in The Legend of Zelda is the classic line "It's a secret to everybody." After I'd learned Japanese and gone back to Zelda 1, I instantly knew exactly what the original Japanese must have said when I read that, and exactly what error was made when translating it. And after looking it up... yep, it was just as I expected! The line should have been translated as something like, "Don't tell anybody about this." Which, when you're trying to save on character count in Japanese, can be abbreviated as "minna ni naishou wo" -- literally, "To everyone, a secret..." It's not a complete sentence, but in Japanese, that's completely fine -- it's perfectly acceptable in Japanese to trail off if the remainder of what you're saying is something that can be easily inferred. And any Japanese person reading this sentence fragment would absolutely be able to tell that the Moblin is trying to say, "Keep this a secret from everyone." As in, don't let other people know I'm helping you, or it'll ruin my reputation as one of Ganon's minions.

But a non-native speaker of English will just translate what's written, and when all you have to work with is "To everyone, a secret...", it's totally understandable why the final line wound up being the rather nonsensical "It's a secret to everybody."

...I don't know if you actually care about any of that, and I think it was gone over in Legends of Localization as well, so I probably didn't need to type all of it, but I love talking about linguistic quirks like this, so I figured I'd share anyway, because why not? ;) You got me thinking about it with this excellent video, after all! So if I can share even a tiny tidbit of vaguely related info as a thank-you, then that works for me!

Looking forward to future videos from you on similar mysteries, should you decide to make them!

[CricketStyleJ]

Imagine if you contacted the original developers, and they responded with a hint just as cryptic as the one you're asking about.

[aomccaskill]

Gail Tilden is awesome.

I used to write Nintendo Power and ask questions about games. I swear at least one of the responses was from Gail herself. All of them got thrown away at some point or another, but I wish I had kept that one.

Also, imagine not knowing what to do next in a game and having to wait four weeks for an answer.

[ongakutanuki]

The oldest Zelda mystery is how can you tell a child that it's dangerous to go alone and then actually let him go alone.

[NoTimeForGoblins]

"The inferior sequel to Train to Busan" Speaking facts but I didn't expect it lmaoooo

[MonsterMaze]

Sorry I'm late folks! My dog ate my computer...
Hope you all had a great weekend

[targetplayer]

When originally playing, I interpreted it as the location of the boss and triforce. A simple, self-evident 'hint' didn't feel out of place in the game's first and introductory dungeon.

[soggysoup]

I love when Youtubers give a little love to the OG's of LOZ franchise. They seem to a lost legend all in themselves.

[Troggbot]

I loved the little animation, not because it was silly and goofy but because it really shows that you care and have passion about the videos you make.

[apushman]

watch this be a multi-decade old troll by a programmer leaving a message leading you to a meaningless treasure hunt

[TheIdiot-dljr]

Can’t wait for Zelda to use the wisdom of triforce in echoes of wisdom.

[OtherMike]

Back in the 80s, when I was a kid, my dad had developed a device that would automatically switch out the cartridges on our Nintendo NES console.

There was nothing like it in existence at that time. It would automatically remove the current game cartridge, and insert the next game cartridge.

It would also automatically blow on the contacts to make sure they were clean!

He never went to market with this great invention, and I wish he would have. It would’ve been a real game changer.

[jharrison]

Part of the confusion I think, is it's not obvious the NE portion of the map *is* actually a peninsula during game play. For awhile, the only maps were the ones included with the game, which omitted the NW and NE portions of Hyrule (to include the peninsula).

[CheesyX]

You also have to take into consideration how games were programmed back then. In simplified terms: You called the function to draw the textbox with a memory pointer and it was most of the times hardcoded to read a fixed number of bytes so in many cases text strings could not be changed at will because it would throw off the entire rest of the textboxes. You could get away with shorter textes if you replace the removed letters with empty spaces but longer texts weren't possible without extensive reprogramming of the text display routines of the game. This is why you often see weird abreviations of words or sentences that aren't really grammatically correct but still convey the meaning.