Animal Crossing is considered difficult to launch outside Japan, Nintendo's former boss Satoru Iwata

years ago ANIMAL CROSSING Nintendo has become a global success, warning its localization team how “difficulty” it will be to make the game work outside of its local Japan.

Speech Time extensionNintendo localization manager Leslie Swann said the boss warned that the launch of the English animal cross (at the time it was an animal forest) would be a huge job due to the huge amount of the game in the title, as well as its numerous Japanese-specific cultural references and items.

Indeed, Swan remembers that then-Nartedo President Satoru Iwata discovered that her team was working to bring infamous strange and text-heavy games outside of Japan, which made him incredible.

“We knew the animal forest, but we didn't really solve it – we usually get the Japanese version of the game and play it through them,” Swan recalls. “But we didn't really solve it. So, anyway, (Nintendo executive Takashi Tezuka) basically said to me, 'We want you to localize it,' and I said, 'Of course.”

“But then he said, 'No, Leslie, I'm not sure you understand, it's going to be difficult.” I've always had to assure him that we'll achieve that. ”

Animal Crossing’s earliest incarnation (called Animal Forest) was launched for the N64 in April 2001 and has never been made outside of Japan. It was only when the game was in the GameCube launch event that the decision decided to position the title elsewhere, and even then it took years to come around the world.

“A month or two later, I was meeting with Mr. Ivata and some other heads of the development group, and we were just walking around, 'It's something we were going to do, I just said, 'Okay, Mr. tezuka wanted us to work in the animal forest, and he was just laughing. Indeed, everything in that game was very specific to Japan.”

Swann's team had to rename each character, determine the slogan for each character, and position the game's in-game event calendar to make it meaningful to more global audiences. Other jobs involve filtering the game's item list to ensure it makes sense to players outside of Japan.

“I can't tell you how many hours we spent on that game,” Swan continued. “We were so lucky that we didn't have any other big projects because we almost devoted our entire staff to the game.

“Everyone will get together in a room and we'll say, 'OK, today we'll rename all the furniture in this set, or, today, we'll work on the names of these characters and their slogans.” Then, after that, we'll submit all this stuff to our legal department, and they have to clean up all the issues because from the beginning our idea was that if it was big, then we're going to do the merchandise. ”

Even the title of the game, the Animal Cross, has undergone various changes and has made some suggestions that it might include “Forest” in the title and then eventually removed.

“It's been at least six months or maybe six months since clearing the names of animal crossovers,” Swan concluded. “I remember we had a lot of other names that we fell in love with and then when they were rejected we were crushed. My favorite was 'animal acres' because the town's grid made itself known as the acre. But that's not clear.”

More information about Swann's career, including her work on Nintendo Power Magazine, and how she expresses Peach Princess for years Time extension The interview is very worth reading.

Tom Phillips is the news editor for IGN. You can reach Tom at [email protected] or find him on the Blues @tomphillipseg.bsky.social