Kotaku compiled interviews with developers from Nintendo’s “Ask the Developer” and mentioned that when the team was making “Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream (Friend Collection: Dream Life/Friend Collection: Dream Life)”, they had a heated discussion on “whether Mii can fart.” Some people think it’s super funny, some people think it’s a bit vulgar; in the end, it was compromised into a small quirk function. People who like it can add it to their Mii, and people who don’t like it can just pretend it doesn’t exist.
What a fart looks like, what it sounds like, everything needs to be polished
The article mentioned that the team was very dedicated to the sound of the fart, and it took many recordings before they felt it was right. They also tried a round of visual effects, and at one point they even made the fart look like an explosion, which sounded very un-Tomodachi. In the end, they found a presentation method that was comfortable and in line with the tone of the game. Moreover, the promotional video started with farts on the beach, which means the officials themselves knew: this joke is meant to make you laugh first.
Why did this work take so long to make? Because they are too greedy!
The developer also mentioned that the overall development period of “Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream” was close to ten years, of which it took six to seven years just to make Mii, pets, buildings and other content highly customizable. This also explains why many fans once thought that the series was abandoned, not because it was not done, but because it was done too carefully and for too long.
They had wanted to redesign the Mii to be more realistic
The team did consider changing the appearance of Mii to be more like a real person in the early days, but in the end they found that the realism would make it lose its original cuteness and comedy effect, so they decided to go back to a more charming direction and keep the absurd feeling of Mii that is between humanoid and toy.
The drag function is originally only for debugging?
Another interesting detail is: dragging and moving Mii was originally developed as a debugging function, but later the team became greedy as they played with it and were reluctant to delete it. Even if the player can drag two Mii together, they also deliberately emphasized that “the Mii will still act according to its own character” and will not suddenly become Moji just because you force them together: in other words, the player can intervene, but the character still has autonomy.