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Having gained a devoted following in Japan, Nintendo’s new Animal Crossing” is going to be debuted on 3DS in Western markets.
It’s quite hard to explain Tomodachi Life. In fact, you might be better off simply watching Nintendo’s totally leftfield debut video below.
Described by some as The Sims meets Animal Crossing, the gameis effectively a Nintendo 3DS social sim that sees players interacting with a new type of Mii sourced from their friends.
The two existing releases in the series have between them sold nearly 6m units in Japan.
Upon loading up a user uploads their Miis into the game and from that point there’s no set objective, with the emphasis as much on observing as interacting. There are various places to visit and players are encouraged to share easily captured in-game screenshots.
Take a look:
UPDATE: Last year it was revealed that Nintendo was to patch the game to remove what it described as a "bug" that allowed same sex marriage in the game. Nintendo said the error createdhuman relations that become strange”.
UPDATE 2:Nintendo has contacted MCV to say that the claims about the "gay patch" are not true. The patch was to correct a technical issue. However, same sex relationships are not – and have never been – possible in the game. There’s no indication of this changing.
The statement:
Same-sex relationships were not possible in the original software. Two developments occurred that led to some misunderstanding about this.
First, as a result of a mistake in comprehension of Japanese, some people misinterpreted Japanese reports and fan activity and thought same-sex relationships were possible. This occurred because they saw Japanese fans posting game screenshots of male and female Mii characters, where female Mii characters were designed and clothed in such a way that they looked male. Since these explanations were made in Japanese by the Japanese fans who posted the images, the Japanese people do not have such a misunderstanding.
Second, a critical bug occurred in the original Japanese version of the game which made it impossible for the player to continue the game. When Mii characters were imported from a Wii console, or the previous game in the Tomodachi Collection series on Nintendo DS (which was only released in Japan), into the Nintendo 3DS version, it could lead to scrambled Mii data within the Nintendo 3DS version. This could result in different Miis being randomly assigned to existing in-game relationships, such as already married Mii, or as just one other example, giving the appearanceof same-sex relations. Because this bug caused the inability for the player to save the game data and continue the game, we released a patch.
The notice on the Japanese Nintendo website about the patch read: "We have corrected the issues which may cause the following situations in case your Tomodachi Life game has the Mii(s) which is(are) transferred to your Tomodachi Life game via the Tomodachi Life Mii transfer software:
* You cannot activate the game
* Error takes place
* Human relationships are altered
* You cannot save the data.
Because the player could not save game data and continue the game anymore, we released the patch with the above notification.
As with the English language, a phonetically same expression can mean different things in Japanese. It is possible to apply the meaning of "becoming strange" to this Japanese expression of "okashiku-naru" but that it is only when this Japanese expression alone is translated out of context into English and in the (above) entire context, it clearly means being altered to the Japanese readers.
Someone who originally made this incorrect translation might have mistaken it with another similarly-sounding Japanese term, "Okashinakotoni-naru", the meaning of which can be closer to the English expression of "becoming strange or becoming odd".
As a matter of fact, Japanese readers have not made such a misunderstanding at all.
