History BlindIdiotTranslation / Videogames

*** The "Mirelurk Hunter" (a more dangerous version of the Mirelurk type of enemy) was translated as "Hunter ''of'' Mirelurk" ("Chassuer de Fangeux") [[AmbigiousSyntax rather than]] "Mirelurk that hunts" (which would have been "Chasseur Fangeu").

* ''VideoGame/FateGrandOrder'': In every other piece of ''Fate'' media, Saber's true name is translated as "Artoria" ([[InconsistentSpelling though sometimes it's written "Arturia" instead]]). It's a feminine version of "Artorius," and is a real, though old and rare, name. ''Grand Order'' for some reason insists on using "Altria," which is literally what you get when you put the Japanese version of her name into Google Translate. Made worse by connotations - Altria is the name of the parent company of Philip Morris Tobacco, [[SmokingIsNotCool not exactly the impression you want for a character known for purity and nobility]].

* ''Franchise/{{Persona}}'':
** ''VideoGame/Persona3'', including ''FES'' and ''Portable'':
*** The ''Portable'' version's English localization, while as good as the Platform/Playstation2 versions for the most part, has translation hiccups on some lines, not helped by its VisualNovel format adding more text and the female main character's route on top of that. Very few certain lines do not sync with the voiceover, there are typos and missing punctuation marks, and, in a couple minor events, ''outright untranslated lines''. The most notable ones seem to be "You told Junpei of you rfeelings." from Junpei's rooftop event and "Wanna go at it agian?" from Rio's hangout event, as these were fixed via patch for its remastered port (though modders beat them to it first), but other errors remain.
*** From the male protagonist's route in ''Portable'', Yuko's Rank 8 S. Link event renders the line ">Yuko is a bit troubled." in broken Japanese (due to the ''kanji'' characters being removed). Another instance of untranslated text comes from talking to Fuuka in the dorm on 7/25 or 7/26. In this case, the translators forgot to translate Fuuka's response to the player's "No" option on the latter date.
*** In ''Portable'', the "Attack" description on the battle menu for Strike-type and Pierce-type weapons [[DepartmentOfRedundancyDepartment repeats the "equipped" part]].
*** Remnants of the male route still show up in the female route, like as in the intro to the OptionalBoss fight with the Velvet Room attendant and Yukari using a voice clip meant to refer to the male MC when "I was scared, too." is picked during the first hospital scene.[[note]]Both of these in particular were fixed in the remaster edition, though at the expense of voice acting in the former as there is no way to redub the fixed lines. [[/note]]But special mention goes to one particular flavor text on the battle result screen. The bright color scheme and low resolution make it hard to read at a glance, but the text "He is an uncanny fellow!" under the Bonus EXP text is the same even for the female MC. One might think it is because there is only one graphic file and the developers did not bother to make another, but nope, both main characters' menu graphics are separate, including the Bonus EXP flavor text. This was fixed in the remastered port by changing the text to "Great! Nice going!"
*** The Oracle command and the Summer Dream fusion spell were reworked in ''Portable'', but the English translators just copied the battle text from the Platform/PlayStation2 version. This is often mistaken for a bug, when it is actually the battle messages not matching the new effects.
*** The description for the Herculean Strike skill mistakenly refers to it as a Slash-type attack, never mind the name and icon used.
*** The remastered edition of ''Portable'' does not seem to bother with the English translation for the "good ending" texts (outside the default one) that are added to this version[[note]]In the original, only the voice is played as the screen fades to white. In the remaster, for possibly accessibility reasons, a text box is overlaid to show what they were saying.[[/note]]. For the NewGamePlus endings, the speaker's name label is untranslated, in full display, during what would be an emotional ending. Akihiko's ending suffers this the worst, as not only is his name label untranslated, but also his ending text does not match his dub voice clip, apparently using a direct translation of his original Japanese line as if unaware that his dub line already exists.
** ''VideoGame/Persona5'' has so many issues in the translation department that [[http://www.personaproblems.com/ a fansite]] was made to bring these to light, ranging from grammar errors, awkward wording, DubInducedPlotHole, to downright straying from the original Japanese lines entirely.

* For that matter, the "standard" translation for the ''Franchise/{{Pokémon}}'' games is an example too.

* The UsefulNotes/GameBoyColor ''Literature/{{Animorphs}}'' game, despite being an American-created game that presumably needed no translating, was burdened with this to the point of its script being largely incomprehensible.

** The official English translation of ''VideoGame/TalesOfPhantasia'' on the UsefulNotes/GameBoyAdvance translates every single instance of the word "Ragnarok" as "Kangaroo". Why is this the case? According to Clyde "Mato" Mandelin, [[https://legendsoflocalization.com/how-did-a-kangaroo-sneak-into-tales-of-phantasia/ the infamous "Kangaroo" error]] is due to using an old copy of MS Word and putting the game's script through spell check. It believed Ragnarok was an error and the first suggestion was Kangaroo, likely due to the two words being ''almost'' anagrams, and someone clicked "replace" to remove Ragnarok. Even if the developers did notice, it might've been too close to release to remove the broken script and re-insert the fixed one. Combine this with a change in several translation routines for main character names, and the (correct) removal of the hilarious fan-translation for a certain hot spring scene, and many English-speaking players decry the translation as incredibly inferior to the hacks they had played for years prior.

** ''VideoGame/{{Ys}} II'' has a location known as the Solomon Shrine in Creator/HudsonSoft's UsefulNotes/TurboGrafx16 version, which Creator/XSEEDGames reworded slightly as Shrine of Solomon in its translation of Creator/{{Falcom}}'s own port to the UsefulNotes/PlayStationPortable. When Creator/{{Atlus}} translated Interchannel's UsefulNotes/NintendoDS port, which was released between those two, it gave the location the rather fishy name of Palace of Salmon.

* The "instructions" for the cheaper UsefulNotes/{{Commodore 64}} games on tape often consisted of nothing more than "Type LOAD and press Return key". In one instance, this got translated into German thus: "Type LADUNG und presse zurück Schlüssel," which contains exactly ''one'' correct word.

* In all platform versions of ''VideoGame/RaymanLegends'' except for UsefulNotes/WiiU, Murfy can be found in several levels exclaiming "Over here!" as a hint for the player to press the button used to control him (due to the lack of a touch screen). In the Swedish translation it was translated as "Come here!", suggesting that something would happen only by approaching Murfy.

* The Genesis version (the only one to be translated) of ''VideoGame/{{Valis}}: The Fantasm Soldier''. For example, "Get Fantasm Juely!", and "Welcome to fantasy world, Yuko". And ''VideoGame/{{Valis}} II'' for the UsefulNotes/TurboGrafx16 CD has gems such as "I am the Red Salamander Zaruga, one of Roglas' 12 generals. Come warrior Valri, let's engage in combat." Also, Roglas (the BigBad of the first game) is referred to as "the Roglas King" in the localizations, and his minions are collectively called the Roglas Army.

** And then in ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaTheMinishCap'', there's a line near the end spoken by Vaati: "I will have no more of you interfering with '''of''' my plans!". In later copies and the UsefulNotes/WiiU Virtual Console re-release, this is fixed. [[spoiler:This is one of the few that makes some sense; Vaati was originally a Minish teenager/young adult (it's hard to tell) who wouldn't have known much of the Hylian tongue in only about a week of being in the Hylian realm.]]

* The Italian translation of ''[[VideoGame/KingsField King's Field IV]]'' is notorious in the Italian video game community for being the best example of this trope. Both voice acting and text lines are so hilarious that the game is mostly played to laughing at the translation. The translators clearly didn't have a single clue about Italian language and made everything up with a translator engine: for example, "Equipment" became "Equipaggio", that means "Crew", and you can find weapons like the "Spada che Uccide" ("The Sword that Kills") and the "Club Legno" ("Wooden Club", where "Wooden" was translated and "Club" was not. Furthermore in Italian the word "club" is used, like in English, to indicate groups of people with a common interest, or the buildings in which meetings of these groups take place. The Italian word for "club", as in "heavy stick", would be "mazza", "clava"), and in addition to that they probably had to cope with memory segments for texts and the fixed length of [[FullMotionVideo FMVs]]: the results are that some words were abbreviated or changed to something else with less characters (the infamous "H20" instead of "water", "acqua" in Italian). And then, there is ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PC32Xs4GQZM the incredible intro FMV]]'', where the voice actor doesn't even try to pretend to be Italian and everything is randomly sped up to match the FMV's length.
* ''[[VideoGame/SaltAndSanctuary Salt And Sanctuary]]'': if you are Italian or capable of understand the Italian language, you must play this game with the Italian translation. Everything is translated with a translator engine, the translators literally fed all the texts to a software and then CTRL+V the results into the game without even bothering to check a single word. The best example of this is "Strike Defense" translated to "Difesa Sciopero": "Sciopero" is the Italian translation of "Strike", as in "to refuse to continue working because of an argument with an employer about working conditions, pay levels, or job losses".

* Happens many, many times when translating games to Italian. For instance, in ''VideoGame/ShogoMobileArmorDivision'', they translated "intelligence", as in "military intelligence", as "intelligenza", which means "intelligence" as in "intelligence quotient".
* In the Italian version of the official ''VideoGame/TheEmperorsNewGroove'' videogame, at the very beginning they end up mistranslating 'lethal drops' as 'gocce letali', which is technically correct, but in Italian 'gocce' means drops of a liquid, while 'burroni' suits the game's use of the word 'drops' much better.
* The Italian version of the adventure game ''Cruise for a Corpse''. Creator/{{Delphine Software|International}} (which was a ''French'' company) didn't hire professional translators and handled translation by itself - the results have to be seen to be believed. For instance, the title was translated as "Crociata per un cadavere", which means "''CRUSADE'' (no, we're not joking) for a corpse", with "for" meaning "in favor of"! Add to that dialogue translations ranging from hilariously bad to completely nonsensical and you've got one hell of an unplayable game version - most of the time you can hardly understand what people are telling you.

* In ''VideoGame/StarWarsGalacticBattlegrounds'', the Italian translation got a really nice error: Someone translated "carbon" into "carbone", which in Italian means "coal". Who could seriously think to produce durasteel for darktroopers armor and whatnot with coal ? This mistake probably occurred due to the fact that, in Latin (the root language for Italian), "carbo" means "coal". And coal ''is'' composed of carbon.

* The Italian localization of ''[[VideoGame/TouchDetective Mystery Detective 2]]'' (or ''Touch Detective 2½'', if you're American) feels like it was made during a lunch break: a few times the dialogue devolves into complete gibberish that was very clearly machine-translated from English, especially in the second half of the game. As a testament of just how little care was put into it, [[http://i.imgur.com/FFjEcoH.jpg they even kept the "back" command in one of the menus in Japanese]].

* "YOU'RE WINNER !" from ''VideoGame/BigRigsOverTheRoadRacing'' was the result of most of the "[[ObviousBeta game]]"'s development being outsourced to a Ukrainian company by Stellar Stone.

--> '''Mathiu''': Oh my god. All this killing... in front of a children!

** The names of Cooler's Armored Squadron [[SpellMyNameWithAnS get mangled a bit]]: Dore is "Doray", Neiz is "Neize", and Salza keeps Sauzer from the original Japanese (something shared with ''[[VideoGame/DragonBallZBudokai Budokai 3]]'', wherein one of Cooler's special moves is Sauzer Blade).

* The publisher company Natsume couldn't [[SpellMyNameWithAnS decide on a romanization]] for its own name at first: it used the Kunrei-shiki romanization "Natume" in ''VideoGame/HarvestMoon64''[='s=] title screen, not to mention the prominent message telling you to "Push the Start".

** Your best friend's name was constantly flip-flopping between Joey/Joei/Jowy/Jowi. [[SpellMyNameWithAnS Let's just call him Joe]].

* The English release of ''Zoids Saga 2'' (as ''VideoGame/ZoidsLegacy'') was about as blind idiot as it comes. Not just did it freely mix the names from the English dubs of the ''Franchise/{{Zoids}}'' anime with their Japanese originals (so you had the American "Leena" alongside the Japanese "Ballard") but it was full of pure nonsense translations. For example, the description of the Gator Zoid read "Deform for recon". More interestingly, the Merda Zoid (one of many in the game not released in the US, and it had [[SpellMyNameWithAnS about four or five possible Romanizations]]) was renamed "Hellrunner", the name it was released under in the UK... in the '80s. To make the whole thing even more confusing, one of the lead translators on the staff was an active member of the ''Zoids'' fan community.

* ''VideoGame/ChaosWars'' had an official translation that was... just awful. For one thing, the voice acting was performed by the friends and family of the translator, but it's most notable for the characters from ''VideoGame/ShadowHearts''. "Yuri" became "Uru" and Karin became [[SpellMyNameWithAnS Karen]], which is understandable since that's their names in Japanese... but "Nikolai", a Russian man, was given the name "Nicole".

* The Spanish translation of the first ''VideoGame/DigimonWorld'' game, being of a time where Spanish translations of videogames were few and far between, has errors ranging from using the wrong translation of a word (at one point, a Drimogemon says "Shoot!", as in the interjection, but it's translated as "¡Disparad!", as in the verb), to inconsistent translations of the same term (the Drill Tunnel is called "Taladrar Túnel", as in the verb, in the entrance, while it's correctly called "Túnel Taladro" while inside), to bizarre errors where the possessive case "'s" is translated as the contraction of the verb to be (so a phrase like "Palmon's Meat fell" gets mangled into something like "Palmon is fallen Meat").

* ''Franchise/YuGiOh: Dark Duel Stories'' for Game Boy Color had an... ''inconsistant'' English translation; several characters used their Japanese and English names inconsistently, some things using placeholder names (usually followed by "(?)" in the text), or in the case of the Millennium Items, using "Millennium" and "Thousand Years" interchangeably, sometimes in the same conversation. Some characters even had entirely different names than any other source, such as Yugi's grandfather being called "Trusdale" (an early working name, when the games were being localized before the show hit the US).

** ''VideoGame/SuperMarioLand'' had this, in that it was pretty much machine translated from the Japanese version. The real reason half of the enemies have strange names such as 'Pakkun Flower'? It's because those are the Japanese versions of the names of enemies such as 'Piranha Plant'. More obvious when you consider the bosses and such like, with names that are very obvious English direct translations of the Japanese like 'Dragonzamasu' and 'Hiyoihoi'. The name of the first world, Birabuto Kingdom, was ''completely misread'' from the original Japanese by virtue of the translator confusing a [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dakuten handakuten for a dakuten]]. The intended name is ''Piraputo'' kingdom, a portmanteau of "pyramid" (''piramido'') and "Egypt" (''Ejiputo''). "Piraputo" or even "Pyrypt" would have been acceptable translations, but "Birabuto" is completely wrong.

* In the Japanese localization of ''[[VideoGame/{{Stray}} Stray]]'', Doc's safe in the library is referred to as "安全" (anzen) in Jess's note. "安全" means "safe", as in "secure", and not a "safe", as in a "vault". The correct term, "金庫" (kinko), is used for the prompt to interact with the safe (金庫を使用).

** Kamek's[[note]]called "Magikoopa" in English as Japanese makes no distinction between the character and the enemy type[[/note]] Psychopath thought is supposed to be him recognizing Mario as the baby from ''VideoGame/SuperMarioWorld2YoshisIsland'', but is translated as "That's...my child?"

** The 3D games and the anime caused some disconnect between what the attack looked like and what the not-entirely-accurate English translation called it. Rain Dance is never going to be portrayed as a dance because its original name, Ama-goi, means "Rain Prayer" or more literally "praying for rain", and Aerial Ace was named after the famous sword strike ''Swallow Reversal / Tsubame Gaeshi'', and is a Flying move {{pun}}, but has nothing to do with flying and is widely available on non-winged Pokémon. Newer games have more closely translated attack names presumably for this reason.

* The original ''VideoGame/HarvestMoon'' for the SNES has the famous line "Confirm the origin of fire!" upon inspecting a fireplace.

---> '''Mathiu''': Oh my god. All this killing... in front of a children!