Late Nintendo president Satoru Iwata laughed at the prospect of localising the original Animal Crossing, as he believed the game was so specific to Japan it would be too difficult.
In an interview with Time Extension, former Nintendo localisation manager Leslie Swan discussed some of the challenges of the job, citing the original Animal Crossing – first released in Japan on N64 as Animal Forest, before a localised version was released in America on the GameCube – as a particularly tricky project.
Nintendo’s Takashi Tezuka, who worked as a producer on Animal Crossing, asked Swan to localise the game. She agreed, despite not playing the game herself in advance as she usually would. “But then he said, ‘No, Leslie, I’m not sure you understand, it’s going to be difficult’,” she said. “And I kept having to assure him that we would make it happen.”
She continued: “Then like a month or two later, I was in a meeting with Mr. Iwata and some other heads of the development group, and we were just kind of going around saying, ‘Here’s what we’re going to be working on’, and I just said, ‘Well, Mr. Tezuka is asking us to work on Animal Forest’ and he just burst out in laughter. He just laughed and said, ‘I don’t know how you’re going to do this.’ And it’s true, just everything in that game was so specific to Japan.”
The localisation team had to rename every character, every catchphrase, and all the events, Swan explained. “So we wanted whatever it was to be something that would be useful in as many areas as possible so we would do things like call it ‘Fireworks Day’ or something so other cultures, not just the US, would be able to use it without it being tied to Independence Day,” she said.
“Then there were also some items that didn’t make sense at all. They would have so much charm in the Japanese version, but they wouldn’t have provided the same kind of charm for Western audiences. I can’t tell you the number of hours we spent on that game, all hands on deck. We were so lucky at that point that we didn’t have other big projects, as we pretty much had the entire staff dedicated to that game.”
In addition, the legal department had to clear every name, as the team were sure merchandise would be an option if the game sold well.
“It must have been at least six months or maybe a year for us to clear the name Animal Crossing,” Swan continued. “I remember we had so many other names that we were in love with and then we would be crushed when they would be rejected. My favourite was ‘Animal Acres’, because the grids of the town lent themselves to being called acres. But again, that didn’t clear.”
Hundreds of names were considered, before finalising Animal Crossing. “We really wanted to maintain ‘Animal’ in the name,” said Swan. “And we did try to keep ‘Forest’ in the name too, but legal told us, ‘No, that’s not going to happen’.”
Swan was also the voice of Princess Peach in Super Mario 64, in addition to working in the localisation team and on Nintendo Power. Eventually, she left Nintendo and retired in 2016.
“I have to say, I was so lucky to be able to work at Nintendo,” she reflected. “It was a lot of work. It was a lot of stress. But one of the things that kept me there as long as I stayed was I just felt like I was learning something new with every single product we worked on. There was new technology and there was always something new to be learned, and the teams I worked with were just so energetic. The whole of the company was just oozing energy. It felt like such a family.”
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