So, yesterday I made a rather rash vow that I was, at the
time, fully convinced that I could live up to.
For one month, I vowed that I would play the classic games that belong
to Nintendo while Mr. Hiroshi Yamauchi, deceased, selected while serving as
Nintendo’s president. He famously
selected just about every first party title, and set his R&D teams to
competing with one another for his favour.
It seemed, at the time, like a golden excuse to revisit the
classic games of my childhood, starting with the NES titles, and as I was going
to blog about my experiences, creating a record that would be easier to preserve,
heck, that would mark the occasion.
Nothing is truly easy though, and in the light of dawn, an
exclusion has occurred to me, one that I was not ready to swear off yet. Animal Crossing.
New Leaf is a new chapter is a remarkably safe franchise, so
having the excuse to play in my town is a stretch no matter how you pull
it. Animal Crossing, first localized in
English on the GameCube, might just squeak under the bar, as it was released September
15th, 2002. Mr. Yamauchi can
be thought of as involved in the game, even if not as closely as say, Super
Mario Bros. 3, as he retired
formally on May 31st, 2002; Animal Crossing had a long journey
to playability, and Mr. Yamauchi was famously still a presence in Mr. Iwata’s
(his successors) earliest term. He was
chairman of the Board of Directors until 2005, although such a post is a lot
less involved in day to day decisions.
I figured that I had a wide net of brilliant games to play
for the month, but leaving New Leaf on the other side of the line was not in
the original equation. For those
unfamiliar, Animal Crossing games are tied to the clock; even if you don’t
play, time passes. If I should return to
my town (MiiTopia) on October the 19th, having not seen it any time
before, not only will all of my villagers have moved away or the weeds have
taken over, but I won’t even be able to collect their goodbye letters because
my mailbox is already overflowing! It’s
quite tragic!
So as I’m sure many of guessed, I am already searching for
loopholes to back out of this commitment.
I don’t think Mr. Yamauchi’s ghost would be too much offended if I broke
to oath to play his games in order to play his company’s games; he kind of
applied everything to his company.
But doing so feels like it is empty Nintendo loyalty rather
than a genuine tribute to the man.
I wonder if I can boot up Animal Crossing, without “playing”
it… Is there any way to be my own secretary for a month, without accomplishing
anything…
No comments:
Post a Comment