Animal Crossing Localization Writer Reveals The Sea Bass Pun’s Creation In New Horizons

4 years ago Justin 1 Comment

We all know and love (or hate) the many puns found inside of Animal Crossing: New Horizons and other games in the series when catching creatures, but rarely do we get much insight in their creation.

Thanks to some interesting tweets yesterday from Rob Heiret, a Localization Producer over at Nintendo Treehouse who worked on New Horizons, we’ve learned a little something new about the creation of the Sea Bass pun.

Anyone who’s played their fair share of Animal Crossing: New Horizons is clearly well aware of this game’s version of the Sea Bass pun with the never ending reminders of “No, wait- it’s at least a C+!” when fishing.

According to Rob Heiret though, the original version of the joke was actually “I caught a sea bass! Well…maybe a C- bass…”, referring to the worthless fish as a C- with a lot less enthusiasm!

https://twitter.com/Rheiret/status/1259523662564036608

But while workshopping the game’s puns with the localization team, a member of the team suggested that it may be better to have a little more positive joke given how frequently it would seen accompanied by the disappointment of catching yet another Sea Bass.

That small suggestion led to the joke getting changed to the slightly nicer sounding C+ version we have today, acting as an example of Animal Crossing: New Horizons’ mission to provide us a comforting and positive space, especially during these rough times right now. Even if we still have to catch those pesky fish.

https://twitter.com/Rheiret/status/1259523664971591680

Plus, in a sweet act of justice, Heiret mentions that even he’s pretty sick and tired of seeing the Sea Bass joke repeatedly himself as the man who wrote it. Maybe you should have thought about that before you wrote it, eh Rob? Suffer with us!

If you’d like to read more thoughts about the game’s impact on our world right now from someone involved in its development, check out Rob Heiret’s full tweet thread yourself here.

Finally, for a fun and relevant retrospective, we thought we’d take a look at past Sea Bass puns featured in previous Animal Crossing games to show how they have evolved over the series. Check them all out below!

Animal Crossing for GameCube

See? Bass! (Why do I keep saying things like that?)

Animal Crossing: Wild World

Not again!

Animal Crossing: City Folk

Not you again!

Animal Crossing: New Leaf

See? A bass! or What?! You again?!

Interestingly, we can see that the Sea Bass pun featured in Animal Crossing: New Horizons is actually one of the most original by far, with most past games simply reusing slight variations of the games beforehand. Image Sources: Wild World, City Folk, New Leaf

Be sure to check out our Animal Crossing: New Horizons Guides page here for more information on the game.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons News