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That wasn’t the era of global releases via the internet. You had to either buy it in person or, order by mail or get a copy from a BBS. It was an American game made for Americans.
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Well, the main hurdle was that we were 7-9 years old iirc and didn't know any English at all, beyond the memorized "knock knock" etc. So the topic of the questions wasn't on the table :-)
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I love this story. I remember seeing two pre-literate kindergarten kids playing on a gameboy or similar handheld, one of them teaching the other strings of button presses for things like “save game” - just navigating through all the menus by memory.
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I played through the entire Pokemon Yellow without understanding a lick of english. You just remembered what the commands did, and you learnt by experimenting.
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Even as an English speaker the Pokémon all sounded gibberish to me so it wouldn't have been much help
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I think everybody does this to some extent.

Like, I remember someone telling me at one point that the thing in Head over Heels was a Dalek with prince Charles head. I didn't know either of those.

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I don't think that the larry games where to be released to the whole world.
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Life is sweet, when you life in the cultural nexus that is a English speaking country and do not have to pay the translation tax.
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