Nintendo of America Executive Talks Animal Crossing Version 3.0 & Resetti’s Reputation
3 months ago
In a recent interview with Variety, Nintendo of America’s vice president Reiko Ninomiya took some time to discuss the recent Animal Crossing: New Horizons Version 3.0 update.
Ninomiya opened up on a number of topics in the interview, sharing that inspiration for Animal Crossing’s developers when working on updates “can really come from anywhere.” For the Version 3.0 additions, she says they were a mixture of fan feedback and the developers’ own priorities, noting that they do keep an eye on how fans are reacting or experiencing the game.
Of course, the Nintendo Switch 2 itself was obviously a major source of inspiration too with the returning Megaphone item powered by Switch 2’s microphone. Plus, the new Joy-Con 2 mouse controls Ninomiya calls a natural fit as she notes designing things is “so central to the Animal Crossing experience.”
What’s Next for Animal Crossing
Naturally, Variety had to take the opportunity to try asking about what could be coming next for Animal Crossing, whether that be a future update for Animal Crossing: New Horizons or an entire new Animal Crossing game. Predictably, all Ninomiya had to offer was to say “I totally appreciate that question, but we don’t have anything to announce.”
Yeah, it’s not exactly a surprise that Nintendo didn’t drop the next Animal Crossing announcement in a random interview — but it’s pretty rare we see Nintendo executives speak about Animal Crossing in public and we know many fans are waiting for any piece of news possible!
A More Helpful Resetti
Perhaps controversially, Ninomiya also touched on the topic of Resetti, given his reintroduction into Animal Crossing: New Horizons with the Version 3.0 update’s new Reset Service. She specifically notes that in previous entries of Animal Crossing, “people didn’t like him,” but that he’s now in a “very helpful role” with Version 3.0.
This takes us back a bit to an Iwata Asks interview back in 2012 where the developers of Animal Crossing: New Leaf discussed how they’d found that some players took issue with Resetti’s original mannerisms, to the point of some younger players finding him so scary that they would cry. In that game, Resetti generally retained some of his rash behavior, but only appears after you ‘opt-in’ by choosing to build the Reset Surveillance Center.
In some regions’ manuals for New Leaf, there was even a warning that Resetti could be disturbing to young children due to his ‘authoritative’ tone.
Then with Animal Crossing: New Horizons, Resetti essentially disappeared entirely outside of an anonymous appearance over the NookPhone — but in fairness, this was also related to the advent of auto-saving.
Now that he’s back in full form with Version 3.0, some fans have certainly noticed that this ‘new’ Resetti features an updated and much kinder personality, compared to past Animal Crossing games. So it’s interesting to see a Nintendo executive essentially acknowledge the change and plainly state that players didn’t like him in previous games.
Personally, I’d say that’s quite a broad statement to make. I certainly appreciated the older iterations of Resetti and I know I’m far from alone! But each to their own opinion of course — it’s just notable to see further confirmation from Nintendo another decade and a half later that the company continues to view the classic Resetti as unliked.
Finally, it should be noted that while Reiko Ninomiya is now an executive at the company, she has deep personal experience with the Animal Crossing series as a long-time Localization Producer on Animal Crossing: Wild World, City Folk, and New Leaf.
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Animal Crossing: New Horizons News Version 3.0 Update