Trouble letting go of a town I never knew

[PufferfishAlmighty!]

This is a first post, and it's quite a long one. I can understand not wanting to read this whole thing so will put a TLDR at the bottom. Theres no real point to this post but I want to share some feelings I've been dealing with and it seemed like a good excuse to finally make an account.

So I recently bought a second-hand copy of AC:WW from a second-hand store. It was the first game in the series I owned and I lost my original copy years ago. Nostalgia became too much so I decided to get a new copy. When I did I launched the save that was on the cartridge out of curiosity. The plan was to be a little nosey, look at what the previous owner had managed to do and then reset to do my own fresh take.

When I launched I found a character named "Nee" in a town named "home". Her house was a few upgrades in, she had a decent amount of money on hand, her house was well-furnished, and her museum was decently filled. She had a number of the villagers pictures in her house, some had moved, some were still here. When I checked the message board outside town hall, the oldest post on there was from 2013. I spoke to the villagers and got the usual "Nee is that you?!" type messages, and all was normal. Obviously, over the ten years since she last played, her town had deteriorated so it was covered in weeds. I decided, as a fair tribute to the village that came before mine, I'd clean her town of weeds and restore the former glory. So I spent about 40 minutes wrestling with the controls (been playing a lot of new leaf recently so keep pressing Y to pick up and it just opens inventory in WW), and finally rid her town of the last weeds. It was pretty late at night so I went to sleep, ready to start anew the next day.

The next day rolls around and I feel guilty. Like I haven't done enough. So I go around the town doing odd-jobs for villagers, getting medicine for one, catching fish for another, just generally trying to make them happy. I feel I've done a good job and decide the next day is when I will start my own save.

I wake up and decide to write a final message on the bulletin board. A heartfelt farewell (in the limited characters I have) to the town I never knew;

Nee clearly cared for this
town. Sadly, life gets in
the way. I hope wherever
she is she's happy. Home
is where the heart is. ♡

I drew a crude heart in the constellations (with what limited space I had. Nee had made quite a few constellations already) and waited for night to roll around so I could see them. That was today. And I still can't reset.

I've always had a stupid sensitivity towards games. I basically never reset animal crossing games of my own because I feel mean towards the NPCs in my town. In other games I can't reset, or even do alternate "Evil" endings, because I feel too bad being mean to the characters. Honestly, It's so bad that I can't even pick "mean" dialogue options in most games. I know they're just 1s and 0s, I know every line of dialogue reappears 100 times, I know nothing about them is "real". But I just can't help but feel empathetic towards them. And not only that, I feel bad for Nee.

She probably grew up, gave away the game years later without any worries, lives a happy life somewhere, and maybe occasionally thinks about the silly little animal game where you fish and catch bugs. And there's no way I could ever in a million years find her, Nee is almost definitely a nickname she gave herself or something a friend called her. She likely gave in a box of games to a second-hand shop to get them out of her house and then moved on with her life.

But it's still hard erasing something someone once cared about, even if they don't anymore. It's hard wiping out all the little character quirks and things that this person had put in. All the dumb little catchphrase changes. The furniture, bugs and fish given to them and placed in their house. The letters they'd sent back and forth.

I just want to make my own save and relive a piece of my childhood again. But it's hard to do that when it means deleting someone elses.

TLDR I bought a second-hand copy of WW and am having trouble deleting the previous owners save for emotional reasons, despite it being over ten years since they last played and me not knowing them or their story.

 

[Seastar]

The last played date appears to be 2013, the year New Leaf came out here. I have a guess what happened.

Honestly, I would feel bad resetting a town like that too. There's so much effort in it. Sometimes I have gotten secondhand Pokemon games I couldn't convince myself to reset.

 

[RoseSilverpen]

I totally understand. Seeing that town name, though, rings alarm bells in my head. Simply because I borrowed a friend's copy back in the day, and her town was named "home"- a name I've used for basically every town I've had since, with the exception of NH islands. I know it's difficult to restart a town- even if it wasn't yours. But there are options you could use.
You could have another player character move in to this old town to be you.
You could emulate the game on your computer.
You could theoretically get the tools to dump the rom onto your computer, so that home will be preserved, then reset the physical copy- or vice versa.
In the older games they really guilt you for restarting, so I do not blame you. When I bought my sibling a second-hand copy of New Leaf, I had to reset it for them because they couldn't get themselves to do it.

 

[PufferfishAlmighty!]

The last played date appears to be 2013, the year New Leaf came out here. I have a guess what happened.

Honestly, I would feel bad resetting a town like that too. There's so much effort in it. Sometimes I have gotten secondhand Pokemon games I couldn't convince myself to reset.

I didn't make that new leaf connection but it makes so much sense.

I relate to the pokemon thing though. I bought a copy of fire red and the whole main team had been nicknamed and I struggled to delete it for that reason. It's crazy how personal touches like that give so much more of a connection and emotion behind the game.

Post automatically merged: Dec 8, 2024

I totally understand. Seeing that town name, though, rings alarm bells in my head. Simply because I borrowed a friend's copy back in the day, and her town was named "home"- a name I've used for basically every town I've had since, with the exception of NH islands. I know it's difficult to restart a town- even if it wasn't yours. But there are options you could use.
You could have another player character move in to this old town to be you.
You could emulate the game on your computer.
You could theoretically get the tools to dump the rom onto your computer, so that home will be preserved, then reset the physical copy- or vice versa.
In the older games they really guilt you for restarting, so I do not blame you. When I bought my sibling a second-hand copy of New Leaf, I had to reset it for them because they couldn't get themselves to do it.

I love that story. Home is such a sweet name for a town.

I appreciate the ideas for ways to solve the problem. Will look into ways of saving the world but most likely just going to have to bite the bullet and delete the save. I'd stay on the old world but that kind of feels disrespectful in a weird way. Like I'm jamming myself into someone elses story. I felt bad about using Nee's character originally tbh but yeah.

 

[Plainbluetees]

When I purchased my pre-owned copy of Wild World, the town name was fart, and the three residents were stinky, poop, and pee. Needless to say, it made me feel a little bit better about restarting, but I still felt a little bad that stinky, poop, and pee had clearly put at least a little effort into their island, however, not as much as Nee and home.

If I were you, I would consider making your own character to move into home with Nee. I'm sure whoever Nee is or was probably wouldn't mind and would actually be glad you're making use of their town.
How much was the game? You could always consider buying another copy and keeping home preserved (However you might encounter the same issue).

 

[jvgsjeff]

One option, although it might be considered a lot of work, would be to take screenshots of the town and/or villagers, and possibly post them online (either in this thread or elsewhere) to commemorate the town. That might make you feel better about deleting the town if you knew those pictures were out there, where Nee might possibly find them someday.

Of course, Wild World doesn't have a built-in screenshot feature, so you'd have to use a phone or camera, and perhaps crop the pictures. But it's an idea to consider if you think it might help.