Culture

Nintendo: Same-sex marriage in video game was ‘unintentional, game-breaking bug’

Apr 12 2014
Written by Nick Duffy

Nintendo has said that the inclusion of same-sex marriage in a video game last yearwas a ‘critical bug’.

Last May, the Japanese release of Tomadachi Collection: New Life for 3DS generated controversy, as some players were able to marry two male characters.

Nintendo quickly worked to remove the feature and only allow marriages between opposite characters, in the patch notes listing a fix for a bug where “human relations become strange”.

A Nintendo spokesperson today told blogger Wesley Copeland: “Same-sex relationships were not possible in the original software.

“A critical bug occurred in the original Japanese version.

“When Mii characters were imported from a Wii console, or the previous game in the series (…) , it could lead to scrambled Mii data.

“This could result in different Miis being randomly assigned to existing in-game relationships, such as already married Mii, or as just one other example, giving the appearance of same-sex relations.”

Nintendo says it released a patch “because this bug caused the inability for the player to save the game data and continue the game.”

He said fans of the game had made problems worse by “posting game screenshots of male and female Mii characters, where female Mii characters were designed and clothed in such a way that they looked male.”