Familiar statements in gaming are translation errors?

[chillv]

You know words like Game Over and 1-up. I have a theory that these are actually translation errors.

Game Over
If you think really hard about grammar in english and say this statement, it sounds like incorrect english (which technically it is). It should be "The game is over" or "Your game is over".

1-up
The same thing I said about game over applies to this too. It should be at least something like "1 life up" or "up 1 life" because it means you have went up one life. 1-up is not correct english because it doesn't say what exactly is going up a number.

Finish
This is usually seen in party games, mario party to be exact. This simply should be "finished" instead.

What do you think? Is there anything you want to add on to this theory?

 

[Blues]

I think an argument could be made for 'Game Over' being a full proper noun, such as in, "You got a Game Over."

 

[Midoriya]

It's gaming. Since when did we question grammar in gaming (Unless it's a game about grammar)?

 

[Blues]

Who knows.

 

[Bacon Boy]

They're not translation errors. There are some that are, but I can't think of them off the top of my head. Big things like that wouldn't be mistranslated.

The term "1-up" appeared in American pinball games in at least the 1970s, perhaps earlier. These games often gave players multiple chances. When a ball was lost in the gutter, the next ball was loaded and the game continued. If a player met certain conditions (such as a high score), they received an extra ball. Later, this concept was applied to arcade games. The inclusion of extra lives was very common in video games from the 1980s on, even in otherwise 'realistic' combat-themed games.
"1-up" was first seen in multi-player pinball and other arcade games. In these games, "1UP" meant that it was player one's turn. Likewise, "2UP" meant it was player two's turn, and so on. In some cases, arcade games also used this terminology to designate which score was whose. "1UP" followed by a score indicated it was player one's score, for example.

tl;dr: It was used in pinball machines to designate an extra ball or who was up during multiplayer games.

Before the advent of home consoles and personal computing, arcades were the predominant platform for playing games, which required users to deposit a token or coin (traditionally a quarter, in the U.S) into an arcade game machine in order to play. Players would usually be given a finite number of lives (or attempts) to progress through the game, the exhaustion of which would usually result in the display of the message "Game Over" indicating that the game had ended. The phrase might also be followed by the message "Continue?" and a prompt asking the player to insert additional tokens to prevent the game from terminating and instead allowing the player to continue their progress. The message can also be seen flashing on certain arcade games while in attract mode, until a player inserts a credit; at this point the message would change to the amount of credits inserted and "Press 1 or 2 player start", or some variation thereof.

As for "Finish", it would make sense to say Finish. They reached the "finish line", so to speak of the minigame and the announcer yells "Finish". I don't think it's a mistranslated phrase, otherwise they would have corrected it after Mario Party 1.

OKAY, It's time for me to go to sleep now. KBYE.