Animal Crossing is a series about doing whatever you want, with a few loose goals put in place if you choose to pursue them. It’s one of the least punishing series ever made. One of the few times you might feel anything unpleasant in the series is if you try to cheat by hitting reset, presumably to undo an in-game “mistake” like failing to catch a cool fish or having a bad interaction with a talking penguin…
“But maybe it was too perfect, as according to the latest entry of Iwata Asks, Mr. Resetti’s chastising was enough to bring some players to tears, presumably out of guilt. That led the developers to make him an optional in Animal Crossing: New Leaf. They also changed the underlying goal of the game from paying off rent to Tom Nook to improving the town as its new mayor.”
Seriously…? UGH. The rent thing though, it was such a good motivator. And Resetti causing people to go into TEARS…out of GUILT? REALLY?!
I do have to say, that messing with Resetti was a BLAST when I was playing Animal Crossing on the GameCube. I didn’t even know he was there for the 90% of the time that I played the game, but that ONE time I accidentally quit without saving after five minutes of, “I wonder what the animals in my town are up to right now,” curiosity…man…that was FUN. I kept resetting on purpose over and over again right after that, and he said completely different things each time.
There was this one time that scared the crap outta me though, when he threatened to delete my save data because I was being an ass (not his exact words, of course, but that’s ultimately what it amounted to), and I was like, “Yeah, right, let’s see you try, buddy.” So I reset it again, and when I went back into the main menu and started from my save, the screen went blank and stayed that way for a bit, and I’m like, “No way…” and then a message popped up saying my save data was deleted, I was like, “no way…No way! NO WAY!! NOOO FREAAKIIINNG WAAAAYYY!!!”
Doods, I’m serious, my heart sank, I was like, “I did not just lose hundreds of hours worth of data…this can’t be happening…it can’t be…” I was totally freaking out. Then the screen goes to outside my house and Mr. Resetti pops up and laughs in my face like, “Scared ya, huh? Next time, it’ll be for real!”
Man…that is probably — literally — the most terrifying moment of my video gaming career. No game has EVER come close to that as far as scaring me, not even games whose sole PURPOSE was to scare the player. It’s hilarious to think that Nintendo would pull a wicked prank like that, but they did, and my gosh, I NEVER reset that game again after that. I know nothing would probably happen from it, but I was too afraid to try. :P
