Leslie Swan’s journey from Nintendo Power to Nintendo legend.
By her own admission, Leslie Swan isn’t a very good self-promoter, but she needn’t worry as her credits do a great job of getting across her credentials for her.
Over her 28 years at Nintendo, she has been credited on dozens of games as a localization manager, working on pretty much all the mainline Zelda titles from Majora’s Mask to Majora’s Mask 3D, in addition to games like Animal Crossing, and WarioWare.
Joining Nintendo of America in 1988, at a time when the company was still mostly a marketing and distribution outpost for its Japanese owners, she started out doing odd editing jobs here and there, before eventually joining Nintendo Power in the role of a writer/editor.
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We recently reached out to Swan to hear more about her remarkable career at Nintendo, from how she joined the company initially to how Princess Peach ended up helping Animal Crossing make the difficult journey to the West. You can read our conversation below (slightly edited and condensed for clarity and length)
So when I went over and I was working on the localization, I would sit with Mr. Miyamoto and a translator and they would be going over the changes I had made and I would explain why I was making the changes, and one day, Mr. Miyamoto just said, ‘Is Peach a bad name?’ And I had to tell him, ‘No, but you know she is called Princess Toadstool in the US’. I remember he said, ‘Well, I really like Peach as her name’. So I came up with the idea to say, ‘Why don’t we call her Princess Peach Toadstool?’ Then we could refer to her informally as Peach.
I’ve never heard this. I always heard that “Toadstool” was offensive in Japan somehow so they used Peach over there (even though peach, especially the emoji, has a sexualised use in the US). I do know that it was with Mario 64 that they dropped “Toadstool” entirely, which annoyed a lot of western Mario fans, since she was princess of the mushroom kingdom, not princess of the fruit/peach kingdom.
We really wanted to maintain “Animal” in the name. And we did try to keep “Forest” in the name too, but legal told us, ‘No, that’s not going to happen.’
Shame, they never say why “Animal Forest” was accepted for use in Japan, but the same company rejected it for use in the west. That is what Animal Crossing’s Japanese name translates to. She also says in the interview that they also proposed “Animal Acres” and that was rejected as well.
Then again, I guess I wouldn’t be able to say “those animals aren’t going to cross themselves” or “it’s crossing time” when I go to play Animal Crossing.
There was a lot neat to read in there. I like the part where she says she fired herself. Thanks for posting, pic!
No problem! Yeah, I found it really interesting, so I shared it here. Your message threw me off a bit, since some friends in real life call me “pic” too 😄
