Nintendo deny removing same-sex marriage from Tomodachi Life

Nintendo were at risk of stirring controversy last year, when it appeared that they had removed the ability to form same-sex marriages in Tomodachi Collection: New Life.

With the game’s localisation now confirmed, the company have detailed precisely what happened. More notably revealing that the accusations had been made due to an incorrect translation, and the option had never been part of the game in the first place.

“Two developments occurred that led to some misunderstanding about this,” Nintendo explained to journalist Wesley Copeland.

“First, as a result of a mistake in comprehension of Japanese, some people misinterpreted Japanese reports and fan activity and thought same-sex relationships were possible.

“This occurred because they saw Japanese fans posting game screenshots of male and female Mii characters, where female Mii characters were designed and clothed in such a way that they looked male. Since these explanations were made in Japanese by the Japanese fans who posted the images, the Japanese people do not have such a misunderstanding.

“Second, a critical bug occurred in the original Japanese version of the game which made it impossible for the player to continue the game.

“When Mii characters were imported from a Wii console, or the previous game in the Tomodachi Collection series on Nintendo DS (which was only released in Japan), into the Nintendo 3DS version, it could lead to scrambled Mii data within the Nintendo 3DS version.

“This could result in different Miis being randomly assigned to existing in-game relationships, such as already married Mii, or as just one other example, giving the appearance of same-sex relations. Because this bug caused the inability for the player to save the game data and continue the game, we released a patch.”