This is pretty genius
It is me, after all
I learned my first english lessons, when I played ZELDA 1, when I was 8 years old.
I got myself an english-german dictionary from the local library and had to translate almost every single word.
...but yeah, ZELDA tought me english.
Impressive dedication.
I remember doing something similar with Rammstein songs back when that group was beginning to become a big name in America and there weren't English lyrics translations on the internet yet.
There's something oddly satisfying about spending so much time on getting a result you're actually interested in, even if it's a very small result.
btw...
The first Zelda game, which has also been released in a german version, was ALttP.
That's strange to hear.
See, I would think NES games were popular worldwide because of how popular they were in America, but this makes me realize I really had no idea what the international distribution was like for these old games. I only started connecting with the rest of world in early 2000's when the internet and forums were becoming a regular thing, so most 80's and 90's stuff is a mystery to me.
I think the other reason, though, is that the ZC community's largest non-English member group has always been German, and I also remember it used to have a fairly popular German website many years ago, so all this gave me the impression that Zelda 1 was a popular game in Germany.
But after saying "Guten tag" or something he actually started talking fluent German and we were astonished. After he realised we didn't understand him at all he angrily left us, it was really awkward... But I suppose the plan worked!
It had to happen at some point, I suppose.
And honestly, I was surprised that it never happened to me.
But I also said much longer sentences, and tended to be somewhat dismissive, so it's possible one of them actually did understand me and decided to leave it alone. Still, they usually just bowed out rather than responded in German, so I took that to mean they didn't understand, or else they might have at least said "too bad" or "ok, goodbye" or something to that extent.
It did occur to me that the only way for this to be 100% successful is to use an invented language, but... that's too much effort to get rid of salespeople, even for me.