House of the Dead 2 (Arcade, Sega Dreamcast)

“Only man himself can control his fate. You’re nothing!”

Games with scripts that are lost in translation can be forgiven for uttering the occasional eyebrow-raising line, but the House of the Dead games are chocked full of them. This undead shooter is full of lines that sound like a Google Translate version of one of Ed Wood’s screenplays. One of the unintentionally (or possibly intentionally) funniest comes from James when the Magician boss is defeated.

Ghostbusters (NES)

“Conglaturation!!! You have completed a great game. And prooved the justice of our culture. Now go and rest our heroes!”

You know a game must be bad when the most memorable part is a line of pixelated text. This unnecessarily hard and bewildering 8-bit remake of the classic horror-comedy movie requires an iron man level of patience to get to the ending. Once you get there, the congratulatory text reads like a hard lesson for children that disappointment is an inevitable fact of life.

Sewer Shark (Sega CD)

“And what’s my payback? A million pounds of tubesteak!”

The full-motion video (FMV) titles for the Sega CD console were among the earliest attempts to bring movie-style games to home consoles. The gimmick failed because scripts and dialogue seemed to take a backseat to the novelty of the illusion of controlling live-action footage. One of the console’s flagship titles was Sewer Shark, a rail shooter in which players shoot mutated creatures in a post-apocalyptic sewer, which is also where the game’s quality went as well. The “sewer jockeys” nickname for these creatures helped create one of the funniest lines in gaming history.

Destiny (PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One)

“I was not forged in light. But I believe where our paths cross, ground…could break.”

For once, there’s a game where the bad dialogue doesn’t mirror its bad gameplay. This sci-fi FPS is a full melding of MMOs and RPGs with the sadistic, hands-on violence every growing boy and girl wants from a game. The dialogue doesn’t match up with everything else it has to offer. Some of the lines feel like they fell out of the mouth of a Renaissance Fair society’s improv troupe. Here is easily the one that makes our neck cramp the hardest from cringing.

Castle Shikigami 2 (Arcade, PS2, Dreamcast, Xbox, GameCube)

“Hi, what a cute boy. Interested in my body, aren’t you?”

This survival horror title is another one of those not-so-bad games with oh-so-bad dialogue. It’s a fun and innovative inspirational nod to horror classics like Alien, The Thing, and Deep Rising but the dialogue feels like it was written by someone who wasn’t good enough to write dialogue for Aliens 3, The Thing reboot, or Deep Rising.

Extermination (PS2)

“When Andrew died right in front of you… you must’ve been devastated. And I… I’ve been terrible to you.”

This survival horror title is another one of those not-so-bad games with oh-so-bad dialogue. It’s a fun and innovative inspirational nod to horror classics like Alien, The Thing, and Deep Rising but the dialogue feels like it was written by someone who wasn’t good enough to write dialogue for Aliens 3, The Thing reboot, or Deep Rising.

WinBack: Covert Operations (PS2, N64)

“Tom left a message. He wrote it on the floor in his own blood.” “In his blood? Wait to go, kid!”

There’s nothing really remarkable about this third-person, sci-fi themed spy shooter except when you hear the lines they actually paid actors to recite with a straight face. It’s hard to see how they got through the recording session without shorting out the mics from the spittle flying out of their laughing mouths. The above line is supposed to be a clue to access an elevator in the game, but it’s more of a clue that the writers were saying “Heh, make him say this!” throughout the session.

Zero Wing (Genesis)

“All your base are belong to us.”

This Japanese import is more remembered for its dialogue than the actual game and for very good reason. The Japanese to English translation is one of the greatest cross-cultural failures since Yahoo Serious’s attempt at an American movie career. If it wasn’t for this meme-making line, no one would even remember the game that birthed it.

Michigan: Report from Hell (PS2)

“That explains it. That smell wasn’t this toilet. It was a dead body.”

This bizarre - but not in a good way - survival horror title often makes lists of the worst voice acting in video games but the blame starts with the script. The dialogue sounds like the characters have some kind of brain disorder that makes it impossible for them to have a thought without blurting it out loud. Then again, if this unremarkable game had writers of any redeeming quality, we wouldn’t have dialogue gems like this.

Zelda II: The Adventures of Link (NES)

“I am error.”

This three-word phrase from the follow-up to one of the NES’s flagship titles may seem small but it houses a universe of questions. It seems like a Japanese translation error but the original game has the same line in Japanese. That means the character is named “Error.” So does that mean his character is an actual error in the game or just a poorly chosen, ironic name picked to fit in a fantasy universe? It’s the “Inception” of video game lines.