Animal Crossing: Coloured Folk

View blog entry: Animal Crossing: Coloured Folk – Twilight Lynk

The brown people must be represented!

I've never played an Animal Crossing game, so I don't know what they're all about, but in general skin tone should always be an option with the full spectrum represented, so it is disappointing when games choose not to make it so.

What I think is that its due to the ethnic influences of the developers. For example, the developers of The Sims series at EA (the Americans) has a community made of people of different ethnic groups around them, so it is reflected in their games. Animal Crossing and other games, like Harvest Moon, are developed by the Japanese, who don't really have that large an ethnic population.

Well, that's what I think at least.

Ah, but it's interesting to note that Pokemon Battle Revolution has the option of changing the skin tone of your customisable character. Also, the Mii's themselves have different skin tones... this is Nintendo we're talking about. Animal Crossing is a Nintendo franchise and they've already proven very much that they're aware of other ethnicities. Plus, even if the Japanese "forgot"... there is such thing as localisation in which other regions add things onto the game such as other language tracks and even sometimes change character models to suit the region. For example, Ratchet and Clank Tools of Destruction, the character models in that were changed in Japan to seem more "anime-ish" than the original versions.

Being able to choose my skin colour in Pokemon Battle Revolution but not in Animal Crossing City Folk confuses me quite a bit.

Yeah that is weird how Nintendo includes the option in one game (when it had previously not been an option in past Pokemon console games I believe) but not in Animal Crossing. And I know none of you are saying this, but on other sites people have been saying Lynk has been complaining about racism, it's more complaining about them being lazy as the game is no different from it's DS counterpart apparently.

Well, I haven't played Pokemon Battle Revolution yet (heard it gets repetitive), but I think the reason for the differences is in the art director. The art director for the Pokemon series (like diamond and such) is Ken Sugimoto, and he had an all Japanese team. Whereas the art director for Pokemon Battle Revolution had an art director by the name of Jamie Turner. Now, either I've gone bonkers or that's not a Japanese name. So yeah, I think they'll get that influence at the very least.

But yeah, haven't played it yet.

Actually, from what I hear, the Japanese version of PBR doesn't have the different skin toned characters, only the versions which were released outside of Japan do.

I think you've gone bonkers.

Then yes, I've gone bonkers.

And let us never again speak of the bonkering of the the wolf. *runs away*

I don't see why it would be a problem to put an option in to change the skin tone. I think it would make things more enjoyable for everyone if you could customize your character the way you wanted.

You guys should see the comments from the GoNintendo post that links to my article... GoNintendo - Archived Comments

When I read some of those posts, I can see it's a bunch of Nintendo fans all bent out of shape over the issue. I see nothing wrong with more options to customize with, as I believe more is better. If someone likes Animal Crossing enough to not care about the issue, that's fine, but some of those folks sure like to make it an issue beyond what you were talking about, which is more customization, because they're insecure about their game being debated upon.

At least that's my perspective on the whole thing.

Bigbrother ftw
Lol, those people assuming you were upset or angry about it XD

Hah, that's good stuff for a laugh. I lol'd when the guy said "there's too much immaturity" it's the frickin internet, what do you expect?

Either way it was interesting...

Some family have come over from where ever they usually are... and they've got this little kid, I don't care enough to know how he relates to me... either way...

He's bored so I decided to let him play some Wii games (which he all sucked at, I finally got him to play Sonic and the Secret Rings cause in the tutorial levels you can't die no matter how hard you try... anyway...

We were playing Wii Play... or about to, and I was choosing the Mii's... I chose two Mii's that had dark skin and then he goes "Wait! Why am I black?" to which I stopped, stared at him for a second and said "Because you have dark skin." ...he then says "but I want to be white because everyone else is!" ...I LOLed hard while trying to hold back my disgust and urge to shoot the next white skinned person I saw and went out laughing and told all the family members in the living room about what he just said...

*sighs*

I hate you all.

damn i'd have shot him ^-^