it's ironic because a little over a week ago i turned on tomodachi life for 3ds for the first time since 2022, and now today it was announced that a new tomodachi life for switch will be releasing next year! i am so over the moon about it.
i remember first learning about tomodachi life through lin and ko, a youtube couple i started watching because of their coverage of animal crossing new leaf before it released in english, showing the game off. their perspective in the video was very "this probably won't be officially release in english since tomodachi collection didn't", so i was very surprised when it was announced it would be!
i bought it soon after release, and so in the summer of 2014, i had a character roster of me, my then two closest friends, and characters from shows i liked (i was taking a break from making my own characters at that time). i had a lot of silly fun, especially from my ""look-a-like"" and my then favorite character being married.
as is with most games, i eventually stopped playing regularly.
cut to 2018. at that point i'd been having a blast with own characters/stories for two years. but only just then occurred to me how fun it'd be to put them into tomodachi life.
this ended up being the most passionate/regularly i got into the game. i got my three main ocs levels well into the 80s (i'd like to get them to 99 before living the dream comes out), figured out all their most favorite and least favorite foods by giving them every food item i had access to, and sent them to space.
so anyways! after i accomplished all this i felt i'd run out of things to do. i turned on the game in 2022 to add my girls bolton and yorkie into my island, but i didn't get back into the rhythm of playing from that... unfortunately i was feeling the shortcomings of a title that at that point had turned 8 years old. which brings us to last week when i turned on the game again... and brings us to now!
i'm so excited for this new game! i love how the miis look (very cute! very promising!), and how open the island looks! i like that everyone seems to have their own home, as opposed to living in an apartment complex.
additionally, the full view of the island in the 3ds game feels like a menu, meanwhile now.. at least from what i gathered from the reveal(specifically the part from 0:34 - 0:47, but admittedly most of the shots back this up given they're outdoors moving freely, albeit at a closer angle). it seems to be a pretty default/advantageous view to scope out the going-ons of your little guys when they're not in their houses!
here's my biggest hopes for this game:
- gay relationships. which is likely given nintendo said they'd be in the next game after tomodachi life released in 2014. i'd also like to hope that miitopia is a good sign? but it feels less direct given the difference in genre.
- the miitopia switch port's mii customization options... or even more!
- a way to introduce mii's to each other
- the option to make miis related to each other, but not to you. (as it is, you're able to mark your own relatives as related to you, but two miis cannot be marked as related to each other unless it's through two married miis having a kid.)
- a way to more specifically manage how a mii acts (how their personality is & manifests)
i'm also curious what team is making the game! what i think is interesting is how previously the same team (SPD group 1) who did tomodachi life also did rhythm heaven, meanwhile both games got announcements in this direct... which means they can't be being done by the same team!
the producer of both tomodachi collection and life has more recently been working in EPD group 7. so perhaps it's them! very big change of pace for them to do metroid dread, famicom detective club, and then BOOM tomodachi life... but tbf. the producer's credit before those two game's was miitomo so it's happened before.
i'm also very curious how the person to person interaction will be in this game. obviously tomodachi life is a single player game, but there was spotpass/streetpass, and being able to send share miis. i wonder how that will go!
my only disappointment is one i can easily live with, and that's the release date being next year. it would have been great to have to wait less long, but deltarune chapters 3 & 4 are this year, and who KNOWS what next week's direct will have in it. it could be nothing but silence and i'd be happy given today's announcements. the funny part though is that it's been a minute since i've been excited for a video game like this (splatoon 3 is probably the closest comparison, because as pumped as i was for pikmin 4, i managed to be pretty chill about it) so i kinda forgot how to deal with that brand of anticipation.
lastly, it's surreal to age wise be the place where i'm at. i remember when pikmin 3 was shown off at e3 2012, and i was watching youtubers react to it. they were all talking about how long it's been since pikmin 2 released, and how they remembered it's release vividly and personally, so it was so amazing to now have a sequel before their eyes.
those feelings were very esoteric to me. i understood them in that i understood what those words meant, but when i thought of 2004 (when pikmin 2 released), i thought of being a very small child who didn't keep up with video game news, or releases.
now i'm here, remembering being a teenager in 2014 when the game had just released, and feeling that "wow it's so amazing to now have a sequel confirmed" those youtubers felt about a different game back then. it's surreal!