Nintendo is known for its many IPs, and they’re all incredibly different from one another, even if they share similar genres. Then, there are the more “unique IPs,” like with Animal Crossing, a life simulator that can be downright addicting when you truly invest your time into it. The series was born during the GameCube era and had good sales, including having a massively successful title on the Nintendo 3DS. Then, when the global pandemic hit, it became one of the best-selling titles on the Nintendo Switch via New Horizons. Yet, one of the series’ biggest struggles…was just getting its name.
You see, in Japan, it was called “Animal Forest,” which worked for Nintendo of Japan, but not Nintendo of America. Enter Leslie Swan, who used to be a localization manager at Nintendo, and was tasked with getting this game localized in a way that Western audiences would appreciate. She told Time Extension that it took her and the others on the team a LONG time to come up with its new name:
“We really wanted to maintain “Animal” in the name,” Swan told us. “And we did try to keep “Forest” in the name too, but legal told us, ‘No, that’s not going to happen.’ Sometimes I would just go to them and say, ‘Okay, I want you to walk me through why this failed or why this failed, so we don’t waste any more time going this direction or that direction.’ And that was just so that I understood why something wasn’t working so we could move in a different direction. But yeah, the naming of products was a really challenging part of the job. Animal Crossing was probably the most difficult. It must have been at least six months or maybe a year for us to clear the name Animal Crossing.”
A bit surprising, right? Swan noted that they likely went through HUNDREDS of names before Animal Crossing was finally approved. It worked in the long run, but it was clearly an exhausting process to make things happen.
Source: Time Extension
