Ahead of Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream’s release on Switch this week, it has come to light that Nintendo’s designers were “obsessed” with getting farts to sound right in the game.
Developer Ryutaro Takahashi said in a new Ask the Developer blog post that, “There was a big debate among the team about whether Mii should be able to … break wind. (Laughs).”
He went on to say that some developers at Nintendo found it to be hilarious, while others thought it was “a bit vulgar” to include fart sounds. Audible flatulence made it into the game in the end, and players can “bestow the trait,” as Takahashi put it, on their Mii character. People who don’t want to hear fart noises won’t have to, though, as this is completely optional.
Another developer, Toru Minegishi from the sound department at Nintendo, said the team “really obsessed over getting the sound just right” for the farts.
Developer Takaomi Ueno, meanwhile, said the team did “so many takes” to get the sound just right. Minegishi went on to say that the process led to the creation of some fart sounds that were deemed “too realistic” to be included in the game.
Another developer on Living the Dream, Daisuke Kageyamma, said Nintendo tinkered around with visual effects to accompany the fart sounds, too. “For a while, the fart effect looked like an explosion going off,” he said.
Nintendo hasn’t released footage of Living the Dream’s fart sounds or animations as of yet, at least not that we’ve found.
Living the Dream was in development for nearly a decade, and it finally launches on April 16 for Switch. There is no native Switch 2 edition, but it’s playable on the newer console via backwards compatibility. Living the Dream will also add same-sex relationships and non-binary Miis.
