I am Error

In the original Japanese version of the game, the line is Ore no na wa Erā da… (オレノナハ エラー ダ…), which translates to "My name is Error…".

Early in the game, Link arrives in the town of Ruto, where he can enter a house inhabited by a bearded man in purple attire.

Many puzzled gamers believed the cryptic phrase to be a textual mistake or a glitch within the game, but it is actually neither.

When the player advances to the harbor town of Mido, a man there advises Link to "Ask Error of Ruto about the Palace".

If the player then goes back to Error, he provides Link with a clue about how to gain access to the Island Palace, the game's third dungeon.

While no official explanation from Nintendo exists regarding the origin of the Erā/Error character, his name is widely believed to have been an in-joke from the game's programmers.

It is therefore assumed that one of the developers named one character Error and another one Bug, resulting in a humorous thematic connection within the game's universe.

[8] The "All your base" joke is believed to have sprung up in 1998 and surged in popularity in 2000–2001, giving some indication of when the "I am Error" meme must have originated.

[9] Despite being a minor NPC, Error has become part of the wider NES folklore and has been mentioned in several pieces of media.

[11] GameSpot mentioned the phrase in an article discussing poor translation in video games, incorrectly calling it a 'translation oddity'.

[13] The Escapist's Brett Staebell called Error a "pioneer in game humorology", and used the quote as the subtitle for his article.

[19][20] Super Paper Mario (2007) features a boss battle against a character named Fracktail, a robotic dragon.