We're fans of the slightly bizarre Mii-sim Tomodachi Life here at Nintendo Life, and it's been enjoying a solid — if unspectacular — run in the UK charts, as one example. Nintendo of America. The Tomodachi Wiki is a collaborative encyclopedia for everything related to Tomodachi Life.The wiki format allows anyone to create or edit any article, so we can all work together to create a comprehensive database for the Tomodachi Life series.
As a grown-up, it’s hard to commit to a game like Tomodachi Life. Nintendo’s latest life-sim game for the 3DS is a hands-off, no-action experience that asks players to pop in and out of the game briefly and frequently. It hinges on weird skits and childish writing, and it wrests a lot of control away from players who might expect to sink time into exploration and tinkering with a slew of virtual characters.
Games like this can do quite well, of course. But Tomodachi Life's best qualities—quick-burst play, cutesy situations, touchscreen controls, camera integration, social-media tie-ins—are the stuff you’d be more likely to find in a cheap smartphone game, one that you can pull out of your pocket randomly to enjoy for a few minutes before getting on with your day.
Nintendo spent a ton of effort translating this odd game for an international audience—and thereby bucking our collective annoyance at the company’s case of sequelitis—which makes this title a welcome breath of fresh 3DS air (and an easy recommendation for tweens). But in spite of a slew of scripted content and an evident helping of Nintendo quality control, this game is not worth both the price and the requirement of lugging a 3DS around.
Window dressing
Tomodachi Life drops players onto a sunny, tropical island (if you’re keeping score, Nintendo historians, this isn’t Wuhu Island from various Wii and 3DS games) that, for whatever reason, contains only one apartment complex, and an empty one at that. You’re asked to fill the first unit with your personal virtual likeness, either taken from your 3DS’ primary “Mii” character or created on the spot.
After fake-you moves into a small room, you can add up to 99 more occupants, and you’ll want to add at least ten Miis to unlock many of the island’s attractions. Once you’ve filled enough vacancies, the dollhouse comes to life, and your denizens will begin nagging you for food, clothes, entertainment, and more. You’ll accumulate cash and rare items by catering to their every whim, forming the game’s basic feedback loop: Resident wants something; you buy said item at a shop on the island (if you don’t have it already); resident responds by gaining “happiness” points (which unlock certain items) and giving you in-game cash.
That means you’ll spend most of the game glancing at the apartment’s windows, which give hints about which residents are in need of something, then tapping and assisting. Pretty quickly, their needs go beyond material items. Sometimes, they’ll invite you to play dinky mini-games: you can play a matching card game, tap the screen like mad to knock an opponent’s toy over, play a simplified JRPG, or guess what a super-zoomed photo is displaying. Other times, residents will seek your advice and start prodding you about becoming friends—or more than friends.
The rest of the island is made up of quirky moments that your Miis are inserted into, as if Nintendo wrote up a kid-friendly sketch comedy show while dropping acid. Instead of jokes and punchlines, your characters get into awkward situations, like PG-rated rap battles, Twin Peaks-style dream sequences, or standing around a barbecue and commenting frequently about the meat (all while speaking with synthesized voices that actually handle a giant range of English words quite well).
There’s a certain age range that this content seems written for, and we at Ars feel squarely aged out of it. More importantly, these zany activities rarely dole out cash or points; if you go to the beach or the lookout point and hang out with a Mii there, he or she won’t react giddily like a virtual pet. You’re just hanging out with Nintendo’s so-so writing at that point.
Exploiting your friends
Comparisons to Nintendo’s Animal Crossing series—another cutesy, written-for-kids life-sim with little in the way of endgame—crumble pretty quickly upon closer examination. Tomodachi relies almost entirely on the touchscreen for control, and you don’t control characters directly. In fact, you rarely get to customize or rearrange anything in the apartments or on the island, and there’s nothing in the way of Animal Crossing-esque discovery or exploration. Tap to warp to different spots on the island, then talk, shop, watch, and repeat.
You might expect to export your 3DS online friend list or Miiverse roster to fill out the apartment building, but for whatever reason, Tomodachi doesn’t support such automation. If you want to export characters online, you’ll have to create a QR code within the game, then send that code to your friends. Otherwise, you’ll have to meet your friends in person to wirelessly transfer your Miis, so unless you already have Miis loaded in your 3DS’ Mii Maker, you’ll have to build island residents from scratch.
The way the game plays, you’ll want to go to the trouble of making personalized residents. I used that QR code functionality to import a random person online, and I had a lot less patience for his neediness and requests than I did for people who resembled celebrities or my friends. In real life, I’d hang out with friends while tapping away in a brief session and mention whatever weird activities “they” had been up to, and we’d laugh while I held the 3DS up.
Oh, and we used the Y and X buttons to capture screenshots. That’s probably the coolest part of Tomodachi, by the way: the ability to take screenshots at any time and then upload them through Nintendo’s admittedly clunky social media sharing service. One friend rode another friend as a horse in a dream sequence—saved and sent. Same when actress Kristen Bell turned my good friend down for a date, or when my friends were backup dancers for my singing performance at a giant music hall.
Tomodachi Life Emulator
Ars has recently reported on Nintendo’s choice not to support same-sex romance in the game, along with the company’s official response—namely, that such a thing would be too difficult to patch into the game at this point. While such a change does seem pretty steep to pull off with final, retail code, after playing the game for a while, I’m shocked that Nintendo never considered the issue during the design process.
The game wants so badly for players to empathize with the apartment’s residents, particularly in crafting their personalities (quirky, reserved, polite, etc.) during character creation, and it also makes sure to accelerate the romance process when a new character is marked as a “spouse” in relation to the game’s “primary” Mii. Tomodachi Life also awards happiness points for relationships, marriages, and having children, and it smothers characters in unhappy rain clouds when their strides fail.
In short, this isn’t optional, easy-to-ignore content. If you’re gay, Tomodachi will reinforce feelings of exclusion regularly. And if you find that criticism irrelevant, consider how much of the game hinges on you investing personally into its content. When bizarre dreams happen, or Miis gather for a Frisbee match, or residents rip into karaoke songs, you don’t accrue money or points or any other “useful” stuff. Instead, you attach those moments to the real people the Miis have been modeled on.
Tomodachi is most successful, most amusing, and most striking when it exploits your friendships and relationships—when you feel compelled to capture and share a screenshot of your brother and your childhood friend throwing trash at each other while fighting over a teddy bear. It would be a brilliant social smartphone game to pull up in incredibly brief, few-times-a-day sessions, a feeling reinforced by the fact that the game uses no traditional buttons.
It would also be an easy port, at least on a technical level, but Nintendo will need to overcome its aversion to smartphones before Tomodachi Life reaches its ideal platform.
The good
- Goofy situations tend to be hilarious when real-life friends are involved
- Screenshot tool works wonderfully with social media sharing options
The bad
- Tween-targeted writing makes many of the skits and situations not stand up on their own
- Wimpy mini-game selection
- No opportunities for exploration on tiny island
The ugly
- Neither of the 3DS' friend-list options work for importing friends
Verdict: Try it if you're a tween (or a tween-at-heart). Otherwise, avoid it.
| Tomodachi Life | |
|---|---|
| Developer(s) | Nintendo SPD |
| Publisher(s) | Nintendo |
| Director(s) | Noriyuki Sato Ryutaro Takahashi Eisaku Nakae |
| Producer(s) | Yoshio Sakamoto |
| Composer(s) | Daisuke Matsuoka Asuka Ito |
| Platform(s) | Nintendo 3DS |
| Release |
|
| Genre(s) | Life simulation |
| Mode(s) | Single-player |
Tomodachi Life Cheap
Tomodachi Life[a] is a life simulationvideo game developed by Nintendo SPD and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo 3DS. The game, which is a direct sequel to the Japan-exclusive Nintendo DS title Tomodachi Collection, was released in Japan in April 2013, June 2014 worldwide and July 2014 in South Korea. The game received positive reviews and good sales records. Many reviewers praised the gameplay but criticised the minigames. Its name means Friend Life.
Gameplay[edit]
The game begins with the player naming their island and creating or importing their personal Mii, who is referred to as the player's 'look-alike' and lives in an apartment building. The building holds up to 100 Miis. (or more depending on the date of the release of your copy)
The player can import Miis from the system's Mii Maker, other devices or QR codes or create them from scratch using the 3DS's camera or the in-game Mii Maker. The Miis are voiced by a text-to-speech software and have unique personalities. Miis can then perform various actions, such as eating, trying on different outfits, falling in love with each other, and engaging in many leisure activities. As more Miis are added to the island, many strange and curious interactions can occur between them, such as friendship, romance, rivalry, romantic relationships and families. As the game goes by, the player unlocks more stores, clothes, food, and places for the Miis to play. They can even unlock a port, where they can give and 'trade' goods with other islands.
Development[edit]
In May 2014, a playable demo of the game was distributed to Platinum members of Club Nintendo in North America, the data of which could be transferred to the final version to unlock a bonus in-game item.[1] The game is bundled with two Nintendo eShop download codes for a 'Welcome version' demo, which can be given to friends.[2] A slightly different demo version was later publicly released for download via the Nintendo eShop. This version does not unlock any features in the full game.
Following the announcement of a worldwide release, controversy arose concerning the impossibility of same-sex relationships. Nintendo stated, 'The ability for same-sex relationships to occur in the game was not part of the original game that launched in Japan, and that game is made up of the same code that was used to localise it for other regions outside Japan.' [3] In May 2013, it was widely reported that a bug in the original Japanese version of the game, which enabled same-sex relationships, was patched by Nintendo.[4] This was refuted by Nintendo in a statement made April 2014, explaining that same-sex relationships were never possible, and that the patch in fact fixed a different issue.[5] Despite various campaigns from users, Nintendo stated that it would not be possible to add same-sex relationships to the game, as they 'never intended to make any form of social commentary with the launch of the game',[6] and because it would require significant development alterations which would not be able to be released as a post-game patch. The company later apologised and stated that if they were to create a third game in the series they would 'strive to design a gameplay experience from the ground up that is more inclusive, and better represents all players.'[7]
Reception[edit]
Tomodachi Life has received positive reviews. It holds an average of 72% and 71/100 on review aggregate sites GameRankings and Metacritic, respectively.[8][9][10]IGN gave the game a score of 8.4, calling it 'a surprisingly funny and rewarding experience.'[11]Polygon gave Tomodachi Life a 7.5 out of 10, praising its likeability despite certain aspects being repetitive.[12]GamesRadar gave the game 4 out of 5 stars, praising its weird humor and relaxing gameplay, whilst criticising the minigames for being too simple.[13]GameTrailers gave the game a score of 6.0, stating 'the pervasive sense of quirkiness in Tomodachi Life works, but can’t sustain the entire game.'[14] The game has received criticism for not enabling relationships between Mii characters of the same sex; Nintendo of America later apologized for failing to include same-sex relationships in Tomodachi Life, stating that it wasn't possible for NoA to change the game's design, or for Nintendo to change this aspect in a post-ship patch. It also noted that 'if we create a next installment in the Tomodachi series, we will strive to design a game-play experience from the ground up that is more inclusive, and better represents all players.'[15][16]
Tomodachi Life was the best seller in the Japanese video game market during the week of its release, selling about 404,858 units.[17] By September 2014, its global sales reached 3.12 million units.[18] As of December 31, 2019, Nintendo has sold 6.55 million units of the game worldwide,[19] making it one of the top 10 best selling games on the 3DS.
Legacy[edit]
A stage based on Tomodachi Life appears in Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.[20]Miitomo, a social networkingmobile app for iOS and Android devices, was released in March 2016. The app was created by the same core team who developed Tomodachi Life, and features very similar ideas. In 2016, a similar game involving Miis, Miitopia, was released in Japan.[21] It was released worldwide the following year.
Notes[edit]
Tomodachi Life Cheat
- ^Known in Japan as Tomodachi Collection: New Life (Japanese: トモダチコレクション 新生活, Hepburn: Tomodachi Korekushon: Shin Seikatsu)
References[edit]
- ^'Club Nintendo Distributing Tomodachi Life Demo Codes to Select Platinum Members - 3DS News @ Nintendo Life'. Nintendolife.com. Retrieved May 21, 2014.
- ^MacDonald, Keza (May 21, 2014). 'Tomodachi Life Comes With 2 Free Demos to Give to Friends'. Kotaku UK. Retrieved May 21, 2014.
- ^'Nintendo resists #Miiquality campaign to let Tomodachi Life gamers play gayk=Guardian News'. Associated Press. May 7, 2014.
- ^Ashcraft, Brian (May 8, 2013). 'Rumor: Bug Makes Gay Marriage Possible in Nintendo Game [Update]'. Kotaku.com. Retrieved June 12, 2014.
- ^Parfitt, Ben (April 10, 2014). 'VIDEO: Nintendo to give Tomodachi Life a shot in the West | Games industry news | MCV'. MCV. Retrieved June 7, 2018.
- ^lang, Derrik (May 7, 2014). 'Nintendo Says No to Virtual Equality in Life Game'. Associated Press. Abcnews.go.com. Archived from the original on May 12, 2014. Retrieved May 21, 2014.
- ^'We are committed to fun and entertainment for everyone - Nintendo Official Site'. Nintendo.com. May 9, 2014. Retrieved May 10, 2014.
- ^'Tomodachi Life for 3DS'. GameRankings. CBS Interactive. Retrieved February 8, 2017.
- ^'Tomodachi Life for 3DS Reviews'. Metacritic. CBS Interactive. Retrieved June 8, 2014.
- ^'Nintendo Apologizes For Not Putting Gay Marriage In Tomodachi Life'. Kotaku. Kotaku. Retrieved June 8, 2014.
- ^Otero, Jose (June 6, 2014). 'Tomodachi Life Review'. IGN. Retrieved June 8, 2014.
- ^McElroy, Griffin (June 6, 2014). 'Tomodachi Life review: semi charmed'. Polygon. Retrieved June 6, 2014.
- ^Gilbert, Herbert (June 6, 2014). 'Tomodachi Life review'. GamesRadar. Retrieved June 8, 2014.
- ^Moore, ben (June 6, 2014). 'Tomodachi Life - Review'. GameTrailers. Retrieved June 8, 2014.
- ^'Nintendo Apologizes For Omitting Gay Marriage From 'Tomodachi Life''. NBC News.
- ^Jason Schreier. 'Nintendo Apologizes For Not Putting Gay Marriage In Tomodachi Life'. Kotaku. Gawker Media.
- ^'This Week in Sales: Tomodachi Collection Sees Big Launch Sales'. Siliconera. April 24, 2013. Retrieved February 2, 2014.
- ^'Supplementary Information about Earnings Release'(PDF). Nintendo. October 30, 2014. Retrieved November 29, 2014.
- ^'Top Selling Title Sales Units - Nintendo 3DS Software'. Nintendo. December 31, 2019. Retrieved January 30, 2020.
- ^'Tomodachi Collection: New Life stage'. IGN. March 14, 2014. Retrieved March 30, 2014.
- ^Otero, Jose. '5 Things We Learned About Miitomo and Nintendo's Digital Future'. IGN. Retrieved 1 April 2016.