An individual interested in the upcoming Nintendo 3DS title Tomodachi Life has begun a campaign to get Nintendo to include same-sex relationships in the game, reports Kotaku.
Tomodachi Life is a zany life simulation title that focuses on an island full of Miis, the Nintendo avatars that debuted on the Wii. Much of the game concerns the relationships between Miis — they can become friends, rivals and more — including husband and wife. However, it is impossible in Tomodachi Life for relationships to be formed between Miis of the same gender.
The game was released in Japan in April 2013 as Tomodachi Collection: New Life; it's a sequel to the Japan-exclusive 2009 3DS title Tomodachi Collection. Upon launch, New Life allowed for same-sex marriage between men, although only because of a strange bug. Nintendo patched out the bug within a month of release, and eliminated same-sex relationships along with it.
Tye Marini, a gay man, started a campaign to advocate for Nintendo to add same-sex relationships to Tomodachi Life. Last month, he posted the video above and encouraged like-minded people to spread the word with the hashtag #Miiquality.
"I want to be able to marry my real-life fiancé's Mii, but I can't do that [in the game]," said Marini in the video. "My only options are to marry some female Mii, to change the gender of either my Mii or my fiancé's Mii (and other male Miis) or to completely avoid marriage altogether and miss out on the exclusive content that comes with it. But none of these are a real solution."
Tomodachi Life launches June 6 on 3DS.
Update: Reports that the exploit allowing two men to have a baby was patched are incorrect, according to a statement Nintendo provided to IGN. According to product marketing manager Bill Trinen, there was a "misconception" about the issue.
"There were two things that were going on at the time that essentially were grouped together as one," Trinen said. "The first, that there was a patch. And what the patch was fixing was actually a data leak ... The other thing that was going on was that quite a few Japanese players were dressing up Mii characters. Essentially they would create a male version of a Mii character and assign their gender as female, and that was how the two males were able to have a baby."
According to Trinen, there was no confusion about the patch in Japan.
"As it was reported in Japanese, they had an understanding of what the [data corruption] issue was," Trinen said. "The other wasn't an issue. It was just a unique way that people were playing the game."
