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Now that work on Animal Crossing: New Horizons has wrapped up, many fans are looking to the future and the series' new games Nintendo might have in store - but others are focusing on the past, and boy, was the first-ever entry different before it was localized.
In a new excerpt on Polygon taken from Boss Fight Books' recent book on Animal Crossing, the gap between the original game's Japanese version and its localized release in the West is explored in depth. "It's standard for a game to tone down or change cultural references in the localization process," reads author Kelsey Lewin's text, "but the original Dōbutsu no Mori is painted especially thick with Japanese elements."
There were so many Japanese elements, in fact, "that even its own Japanese players might not catch all the references." Lewin highlights various examples, including clothes like the Static Shirt and Painter's Shirt which originally referenced traditional Japanese textiles and styles. "These are obscure references," continues Lewin, "so it makes sense that they were localized out completely." Localizing was a big task, however.
"I'll never forget [producer Takashi Tezuka] coming to us and saying, 'If we're going to [sell the game outside of Japan], you guys have to change everything,' because they had designed it so specifically for the Japanese market,'" said Leslie Swan, former localization department head at Nintendo, in an interview for Lewin's book. She then recounts an older 2014 Kotaku interview in which director Katusya Eguchi spoke.
"When we first started working on Animal Crossing for N64, we really [...] weren't even thinking about having it localized […] for an international market," stated Eguchi. As Lewin explains, "It wasn't just a matter of changing the names of clothing. Animal Crossing is so saturated with Japanese culture - everything from holidays to little jokes in the dialogue - that translating the text would hardly scratch the surface of the work to be done."
She describes it as "the most daunting localization project that Nintendo of America had ever taken on" - but it seems to have been well worth it. From the tedious translating to changing around details that Western fans might not get like the swap from Animal Crossing's shrine in Japan to the wishing well in the West, I'd say that Nintendo's work has paid off. New Horizons' sales alone prove as much, and as a longtime fan myself, I am incredibly grateful.
