Republicans tried to compare Legend of Zelda to the American Tax Code and miserably screwed it up

US House Republicans attempted to tie in Nintendo's beloved long-running series, The Legend of Zelda, to the American Tax Code in a bizarre comparison that didn't seem to go down too well with fans.

In a blog post published on Wednesday (23 August) on the official GOP website titled, "What Do The Legend of Zelda and the American Tax Code Have In Common?", House Republicans wrote that the game was released the same year the last major US tax reform was signed into law.

"The Legend of Zelda series is Nintendo's best-selling video game franchise enjoyed by more than two generations of gamers," the original post read. "The action-adventure game was released in 1986, only one year after Nintendo's founding in 1985.

"And you know what else was released in 1986? Yeah, you do. The last major reform to the American tax code was signed into law in 1986".

"It's been 31 years, and our current code is far beyond repair. House Republicans have been working for years on bold ideas to overhaul our nation's broken tax code. Now, with the Trump administration, the House, and the Senate working together, we're on track to take up tax reform in the fall."

The article then went on to outline the GOP's goals for tax reform in the US and did not further mention the Zelda series.

However, the original blog post did include a few factual errors. Nintendo was actually founded much earlier back in 1889 as a card manufacturer in Japan, nearly 100 years before the post claimed. Nintendo of America was also founded earlier in 1980.

The GOP also erroneously claimed that the Legend of Zelda is Nintendo's best-selling franchise. However, Shigeru Miyamoto's well-known Italian plumber would beg to disagree.

The blog post has since been taken down and replaced with a factual correction that reads: "Our last version incorrectly claimed The Legend of Zelda as Nintendo's best selling video game franchise (it's one of the highest) and Nintendo to be almost 100 years younger than it actually is. Our tax code is old, but not nearly as old as Nintendo, founded in 1889 by Fusajiro Yamauchi."

Irked gamers, however, immediately took to social media to post screenshots of the erroneous post and slam Republicans over the "ridiculous analogy".