Nintendo discusses all that went into localizing Tomodachi Life, how it's different from Animal Crossing
The following comments come from a CVG feature with Ryutaro Takahashi and Yoshio Sakamoto...
"Our biggest focus was how we could make the Tomodachi feel like real Western people. We knew the dialogue, animation and many features of these characters needed to change drastically.
"The dialogue of the characters for example is not just simple translation from Japanese; we have reviewed it so that it feels more natural. Regarding animation of characters - how they walk, nod, shake hands etc - we have adjusted those gestures in detail so that they match each territory.
"We also put lots of effort in the culture. One example is currency, which is adjusted in all versions to local currency. We've adjusted the actual pricing of items in each country as well so that it matches the real-life value.
"Finally, we've adjusted the facilities and locations that the Tomodachi can visit and also the seasonal events so that they will match the actual territories." - Ryutaro Takahashi
"Although the directions of the games are similar, we didn't receive any influence of input from Animal Crossing. Rather, we intentionally tried to remove their ideas from our heads when developing Tomodachi Life."
"We're not saying we do not want to become like Animal Crossing, but we wanted to create a very different sense from that game. If we couldn't do that, I think our original concept would have become vague or deluded. So I told Takahashi-san when developing the game that we should try not to think about or look at Animal Crossing." - Yoshio Sakamoto
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"Our biggest focus was how we could make the Tomodachi feel like real Western people. We knew the dialogue, animation and many features of these characters needed to change drastically.
"The dialogue of the characters for example is not just simple translation from Japanese; we have reviewed it so that it feels more natural. Regarding animation of characters - how they walk, nod, shake hands etc - we have adjusted those gestures in detail so that they match each territory.
"We also put lots of effort in the culture. One example is currency, which is adjusted in all versions to local currency. We've adjusted the actual pricing of items in each country as well so that it matches the real-life value.
"Finally, we've adjusted the facilities and locations that the Tomodachi can visit and also the seasonal events so that they will match the actual territories." - Ryutaro Takahashi
"Although the directions of the games are similar, we didn't receive any influence of input from Animal Crossing. Rather, we intentionally tried to remove their ideas from our heads when developing Tomodachi Life."
"We're not saying we do not want to become like Animal Crossing, but we wanted to create a very different sense from that game. If we couldn't do that, I think our original concept would have become vague or deluded. So I told Takahashi-san when developing the game that we should try not to think about or look at Animal Crossing." - Yoshio Sakamoto
Link
