Older gamers tend to look back on the old 8-, 16-, and 64-bit days through rose-colored glasses, remembering how much fun they had with those great retro titles and wishing modern gaming could be more like the glory days of Mario, Sonic, and the elf from Zelda . But the truth is that playing games has never been easier or smoother than it is right now, because the industry has had decades to iron out all the catastrophic bullshit. Back in the day, there were a hundred different things that could make a game you just bought virtually unplayable, with absolutely no way to fix it. In most cases, fans of retro gaming have repressed all the memories of what a pain in the ass retro gaming truly was. For instance ...

7 Bad Translation Was Common, And Could Royally Screw you Over

Nintendo

We've all been in that situation where you needed to ask directions in a foreign country and discovered how important prepositions are, because "turn right at the library" and "turn right in the library" can mean the difference between a great road trip and vehicular homicide. Communication can quickly fall apart if you don't have the right language -- and the same can happen in video games.

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As games became more and more global, game companies (which in the early days were predominantly Japanese) were forced to spend time and resources translating their local content for the international market. Especially in the early, cheapskate days of video games, this led to some pretty bad translations. And while "All Your Base Are Belong To Us" and "A Winner is You" may look like funny memes to us modern folks, those little mistakes could get your character killed.

Often, these translations were annoying yet harmless mistakes. Take Level 6 of The Legend Of Zelda, where you're given the hint to "Aim At the Eyes of Gohma." Since Gohma is a giant spider with only one eye, this might cause some initial confusion, but gamers are foremost a "when in doubt, stab" kind of folk, so that didn't cause many problems.