I AM ERROR

About

ERROR is a town character featured in the 1987 NES videogame, Zelda II: The Adventure of Link. In the game, Link (the main character) is allowed into a huge house that appears smaller from outside and gets acquainted with the heavy-bearded host, who eternally introduces himself as “[I am] Error” when approached by the player.

Origin

The NES videogame was developed & released by Nintendo in 1987 as the second installment in The Legend of Zelda series. As seen with other Japanese videogame imports from that time period, Zelda II also suffered from poor Japanese-English translations, including this particular scene:

It is most likely that Nintendo developers intentionally picked the name “Error” to draw parallels to another town-dwelling character “Bagu” (Japanese romanization of “bug” as in malfunction) introduced later in the game as a close friend of “Error.”

Another thing to enforce the theory is that the actual text in the Famicom Japanese version was " オレノナハエラーダ", or “Ore no na wa Era- da”, Era- is the Japanese romanization of “Error”.

Another popular theory on Urban Dictionary says that “ERROR” accidentally came from a typo in translating “ERROL” into English, thus serving its destined fate as one of the most ironic glitches recorded in the history of videohgamez.

References

• Urban Dictionary definition of I am Error
• YTMND Tribute Site of I am Error
• Super Paper Mario’s first boss, Fracktail, quotes the phase
• There is a band who plays “nintendocore” music inspired on Nintendo’s games called “iamerror”

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