The word that Nintendo REMOVED from Zelda games 

good tweets here twitter.com/thomasgdocs

So Toad,Luigi,and a few others can Scream “Yahoo” but not this poor old woman

I would have replaced it with "Yeehaw!" because it's just as weird.

So, in a way, Grandma Yahoo essentially saw the company rise and fall, during her lifetime.

"YOO-HOO!" would have been a good replacement too

This reminds me of when Mario says “Yahoo!”

Poor old lady. She was just having fun by sweeping the floor.

This video is kind of like a sequel to your banned peace sign one in Mario 64

Plot Twist: Yahoo take their name from grandma Yahoo.

I probably would have translated it as "ahoy-hoy!" It's an old-fashioned way to answer the phone that lost to "hello" in usage. It would emphasize her as being weird and old-timey to fit the tone of the game. It also ties into her husband's phone obsession and is sort of island-y. Being a Mr Burns reference wouldn't hurt either.

That’s kinda stupid… the game was made before YAHOO became a thing, that’s weird that they removed it imo

There is another weird thing about this whole situation. In the beginning of OoT, Saria says “Yahoo! Link”. And in the 3DS remake, she still says Yahoo to Link. So I don’t understand why anything had to be changed if one game didn’t change anything.

3:25 In Japanese, a vowel is sometimes added at the front of words, especially interjections, to express that the word is said loudly, strongly, passionately, etc. "イヤッホー / iyahhō" is just a derived word of "yahhō". Just like "やったー / yattā (=Yeah!; I did it!)" is sometimes written as "いやったー / iyattā". So for native Japanese, it sounds not so weird.

This whole idea that they banned the word “Yahoo!” From all of their Zelda games because they were scared of copyright infringement is nonsense. The word was never even banned. Go play Ocarina of Time, right at the start of the game when Link walks out of the front door of his house, Saria runs up to him and the first word out of her mouth is “Yahoo!” Not only that, but they kept the “Yahoo!” in the 2011 3DS remake.

but yahoo would be so fitting! I mean you call her husband for advice!

My youngest brother was always creeped out by her because of a trick we learned. In the original version of the game if you hit 'select' as you were crossing into the next square you would appear on the same side of the next square as the spot you were standing in on the previous one. A great way to bypass hazards. But it could cause glitches to happen. Once the glitch was Grandma Yahoo's sprite replacing the sword and shield moblin. Seeing that old lady coming at you with a sword and shield just really did something to him.

We did it, we found out what *the gamer word* was.

Wait, doesn't Saria say "Yahoo!" in Ocarina of Time?

Sony when they say something offensive: fine Nintendo when they accidentally say anything offensive: Lawsuit time

This is funny to me because in Phantom Hourglass Linebeck yells “YAHOOOOO!” At the top of his lungs after having female interaction, so this seems like a veeeery strange decision

5:24 - I really like reaction to "HELLO!" 😆 The zoom in to the 3DS screen as the speaker gets closer... The dramatic revelation of Grandma Yahoo's new name at 6:25 is great too! I've been listening to your newer uploads while I do chores (not sweeping) but I decided to actually watch this one--love the overall presentation & style!

The Japanese manual that you show calls her "Yahō-baasan", not "Iyahō-obaasan". The fact that in-game she often says "iyahō" (with an "i" at the beginning, even though her name is "Yahō") isn't some rare or unusual way of spelling it, it's more of a deliberate written convention to convey an odd accent or mannerism of speaking. It's like characters in English-language games who use a lot of the letter "z" at the beginnings of words to suggest a French accent.

Imagine the feeling of that. You were once intimidating enough to make Nintendo hide form having issues with you... But now are such nothing that now they don't care anymore.

Well, I think there's only one word that can help celebrate this changing back in the remake... GOOGLE!

That settles it. Grandma Yahoo is my favorite character in all of Zelda.

Nintendo could have easily argued that the English version of their game predates the existence of the Yahoo website and it would have been one and done.

Surprised they didn’t go for YOOHOO!

I'm surprised you didn't mention the "yahoo!" greeting in Ocarina of Time.

Man it's amazing the stuff that happens in creative work and decisions. Every little thing in the world has a story. So many stories you never even get to know, even if you wanted to.

I hear Links Awakening and immediately thought about the weird sexual jokes they had in the German version of the GB version. They changed it for the later versions saldy but as a German collector of older games I of course still have the original.

When used as a greeting, I'm more used to writing "Yoohoo!" I think they could have replaced it with that instead.

Mario characters sweating right now...

Links Awakening is my favorite in the series as well. So many fond memories of playing it on family road trips on the original GameBoy. I love it’s Twin Peaks inspired weirdness, references to other games, and sense of humor. Also being able to shoplift was always one of my favorite features in any game

Imagine if her catchphrase had been "Google"! LOL.

Fun fact: The translators had fun in the German version of Link‘s Awakening. There‘s an enemy which says things like „never without condom!“ and „give me your juice and I‘ll give you mine“ after you have sprinkled it with magic powder.

I love Link's awakening. It is my favourite Zelda title, simply because it is a relatively short story that is beautifully crafted. Almost nothing diverts from the "leave the island" quest which makes it feel much more urgent than the quests in other Zelda titles. the whole defeat Ganon and save the world questline seems way less urgent when there is an allergic woman needing her Cuckoos collected or there is a fishing pond You can spend hours in or there is a cannon game where You get shot into targets. That and i like the story itself, i like the bittersweet feel of it

Who knew how “offensive” the word “Yahoo” could have been

News just in: Mario arrested for saying Yahoo

link’s awakening has one of the best stories in the franchise imo. it’s the only story i’ve seen where the “it was all just a dream” trope is used effectively, and to such a tragic effect.

It’s strange because in ocarina of time the very first thing saria ever says to you is “yahoo! Hi there”, however this was never changed for the 3ds port, unlike links awakening which WAS changed to the 3ds port. And to make things even stranger, both games were ported In the same year.

Does the ocarina of time 3DS game keep saria's opening line "YAHOO!"

Love the obscure trivia! More please ;)

Ooo one of my favorite zelda games.

"The massive powerhouse Yahoo" Yahoo has literally only done two things and that's give us Yahoo answers and Tumblr

Dang I never thought I be so emotionally invested in the word yahoo before. I literally cheered at the end lol

That character was adorable. I love how tweaky and hyper she is! YAHOO!!!

Thomas. How do you notice this stuff? I was the Link's Awakening expert on the Zelda Dungeon Wiki around when the 3DS version came out, and I scoured that thing for info and made every single character's wiki page, including Grandma Yahoo (or, as we called her, Grandma Ulrira). I went in-depth on the Trading Sequence in particular and got direct game quotes for every single character in it. Despite this, somehow I did not once notice that Grandma Yahoo's text had been completely changed in this new version. I'm so shocked hahaha.

Never would have thought that saying yahoo would be such a major problem

Entertaining video 👍 A bit of trivia from my point of view, for me, others here and during my childhood before Yahoo company existed, we would say say ya-HOO and later for the company name we say YA-hoo, that is, there is a different emphasis. You seem you pronounce it ya-HOO for both. Anyway, I found it interesting.

These videos are so cool and interesting I wouldn't have known any of this about zelda or Mario or Nintendo

That reminds me of the fact that if you sprinkle Magic Powder over a Buzz Blob in the original German Version it says “Nie ohne Kondom“ which means “Never without a condom“ or it says “Gib mir deinen Saft, ich geb dir meinen“ which means “Give me your juice and I'll give you mine“'. Ehm.. so yeah it means exactly what you think it means and there are even more strange phrases in the German Version like „STOP THE WAR! GIVE PEACE A CHANCE!!“ All coming from the legendary translator Claude M. Moyse who has made a name of himself because of such brilliant localisations. Now when I think about it Claude M. Moyse's translations would be an interesting topic for a video.

Another great episode of Thomas game docs, you learn something new everyday

"Yahoo" existed as a word long before the website. It comes from the book Gulliver's Travels, where it's a term for animals that look like humans but act like wild beasts. My dad used to call us kids "a bunch of wild yahoos" with that meaning.

The topic was very interesting! It's definitely one of those fun facts that I never would've found out on my own, but am glad to know for a game I love so much. But... and sorry if this sounds a bit harsh, I don't mean for it to be, but the video felt pretty drawn out. In terms of the actual story, it's pretty short - Someone translated an uncommon phrase to a name of a big company, so they removed it, but then later brought it back because the company became much smaller. I don't know if this required 11 minutes, with sections like "so why did they remove the word Yahoo?" when the answer was pretty obvious. Also, at 9:58 you state "she says yahoo again, for the first time in 20 years". I thought the 3DS port where they removed the word was released in 2011 - wouldn't this be just 10 years ago? (at the time the video was made). Last thing - while it's technically true it's "the word that Nintendo removed from Zelda games", that's a pretty misleading title (I'm guessing intentionally, to drive up interest). She appeared in only one title in the Zelda franchise, albeit multiple times via different versions and ports of the same game. So... yes, it's technically true, but in reality it didn't affect any of the other 26 or so games in the franchise.

How on earth did you talk for 10 minutes about the word yahoo in LA but completely miss how it was in OoT, in both 1998 **and 2011**?

I didn’t even know that there was a search engine named YAHOO!

Link's Awakening is absolutely my all time favourite zelda game. I put SO so SO many hours into it, playing it over and over again....and the map warp glitch made the replayability endless once you figure out how to jump between dungeons and the like. Missing No has nothing on this haha

Words are sometimes scary

Imagine saying in real life "YAHOO!" And then company sues you for saying it

I think Yahoo is the wrong word since its not really a greeting it's an exclamation of joy, they probably wanted to use Yoohoo which is a way to greet or get someone's attention. But that is ALSO an existing brand haha. Can't win em all.

You can find even more differences in the earlier german version. You fish a bikini top from under the bridge insted of a necklace. And a few Dialog lines have been completely changed in later versions becaus the wehere quiet risky/lewd. Also a naked painting was removed after the first release.

Can we get a Ballad of the Wind Fish piano tutorial?? :o Sounds incredible!

The new Links Awakening has an art style perfect for a new EarthBound remake!

Another fun fact with Granny Yahoo - in the original version, there was a bug/exploit where you could kind of teleport around the map (something something stand by edge of screen, & hit start+select as you go forward). Exploit had some other, interesting side effects... one of which was you could access this scrambled dungeon from a certain spot. But another was if you used it just 2 screens over from dear old Granny, near the pits & bushes maze, it would transform one of the rhino-with-sword enemies into Granny with a sword instead.

There is a very similar incident with the Chain Chomp in Link's Awakening. In the first german translation it was called "Stuppi" (like the well-known dog from the "Tim & Struppi"(alias Adventures of Tintin)) but already in Link's Awakening DX the name of the Chain Chomp was altered to "Komet" to avoid a potential problem albeit the Comic's Publisher never showed any issue with the name called after "theirs".

I clicked faster than Thomas can say link

This game alone saw the rise and fall of a internet giant.

How come you don't have more subs? Just found your content and it's amazing!

Link's Awakening, Link to the Pasts weird little borther. My very first Zelda game. Got it when it came out. To this day the music from that game brings joy to my heart. I love how the Switch version was able to capture so much of the charm of the old game, while adding a whole charm of it's own.

Intriguing also love links awakening great game ❤️ keep up the amazing work

The german version have even more controversy’s with the translation lol

I think the reason it's back in the remake is that you can't trademark/copywrite common words. With "yahoo" being a common word to express excitement, as long as the logo isn't used, Yahoo! can't do anything legally about it. Japan is notorious about their super strict copywrite laws, so they probably changed it in the VC release just to be on the safe side.

very interesting video!! enjoyed it a lot! :) hope to see more great content! (loved the inclusion of detective conan too!)

I laughed out loud when he said OOT had a massive world!

Now tell me: Does Dan Owsen look like the type of guy who translated Link’s Awakening

Nintendo: We're remaking the game ! Thomas: *I won't be able to enjoy this game's full experience without Grandma Yahoo.*

The story of gradma Yahoo is very interesting! I like this content a lot! Keep making amazing videos! (Also I love the moment you put detective conan in the video 😆)

Hey Thomas!

Well, I guess Nintendo better change all of Mario's dialog from *Yahoo* to *Hello*

Something that i noticed as a kid, being a non english speaker, was that in Ocarina of Time, in the first 5 mins of the game Saria literally says: "Yahoo! Come here Link" or something like that. And i was like "Yahoo? Like that Internet thing?"

Man you make really good documentary videos for nintendo. keep the work up!

Well, it's not as big as a certain racial slur Kamek said in Mario Party....

Detective Conan ? i see you are a man of culture.

I love this video! This is one of my favorite videos from your channel!

Link's Awakening is one of my favorite games of all time, and I first had it as a kid with it on Virtual Console. Kinda cool to see someone else who shares that!

So someone named their website after a Nintendo character, and then Nintendo stopped using that name?

Two things that I think should have been mentioned. Firstly, when the woman says YAHOO! it also has the exclamation mark which is how it is expressed in the logo, pushing it closer to a trademark issue that is not just the word. Secondly, Yahoo is still huge in Japan as the most popular website for auctions, comparable to eBay in the US.

They also changed the german name of Bow-wow from Struppi to Komet, since Struppi (aside from being a common dog's name) is the german name of Tintin's dog. Tintin in general is called "Tim & Struppi" in german, so the name is even in the trademark. Still kind of stupid, if you ask me. No one should be able to trademark common pet names.

BLIND GUESS: Is it "Yahoo"?

Heyo I made that Phantom Hourglass Link image in your thumbnail. It's all good, just please consider crediting Zelda Wiki for our stuff.

Thomas, you're an amazing story teller!

0:08 I wouldn't call it 'little', but I'm glad to see someone else talk about Link's Awakening. It's such an under-appreciated game.

Love your vids, very interesting and wellmade!

the excitement in this video over grandma yahoo returning is quite infectious. i didn't know this character 10 minutes ago but i celebrated along with the video when she said yahoo

7:17 Isn't that the guy who made the amazing fan translation for Mother 3?

i remember playing that game a few times years ago and i loved it. I think it's kind of stupid for Nintendo to be worried about some company that named themselves after a commonly used word. Nobody can patent a word and if some company chooses a word for their company name, that doesn't remove the word from public use. Anyway, the word being used in the game had nothing to do with some company so that argument seems ungrounded to me.

well the original grandma "yahoo" was out before the company so not much can be sued about it 1. they didnt want to be free advertizement for yahoo 2. just used a different version port iteration for different medias (look at super mario 64 where there were i believe 4 different "versions" since some version types didnt have BLJs for example) and simply overlooked since they might of used a unreleased build they had in their vault that was before simple text polishes 3. translation teams probably just used their own discretion of it since yahoo is just an odd greeting/name (since luigi in mariokart games still says yahoo in i think every game) 4. who says their own name at the start of conversations the odd japanese spelling of is probably meant to be seen as a quirk/tick or accent

That DUN DUN DUN at 6:40 got me, lmao!

What about Ocarina of Time? Saria says "Yahoo!" at the very beginning of the game. And Oot3D, which kept the line, was only a year after LA on 3DS came out

1997: Googly eyes Today: Search eyes (on everything)