Nintendo has said that the inclusion of same-
sex marriage in a video game last year was a
‘critical bug’.
Last May, the Japanese release of Tomadachi
Collection: New Life for 3DS generated
controversy, as some players were able to
marry two male characters.
Nintendo quickly worked to remove the feature
and only allow marriages between opposite
characters, in the patch notes listing a fix for a
bug where “human relations become strange”.
A Nintendo spokesperson today told blogger
Wesley Copeland: “Same-sex relationships were
not possible in the original software.
“A critical bug occurred in the original Japanese
version.
He said fans of the game had made problems
worse by “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.”
Here’s the response he received from the publisher:
“Two developments occurred that led to some misunderstanding about this,
“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.”
So, basically, players were only pretending to be same-sex, in order to create the illusion that gay marriage was a possibility. But what of the patch?
“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.”
someone better get on that
