Nintendo’s hard-on for region locking anything it can has just got a little more ridiculous, if one Australian gamer’s troubles are anything to go by. According to an Aussie NeoGAF user, imports from Animal Crossing: Wild World to Animal Crossing: City Folk/Let’s Go to the City are region specific, meaning a US DS card won’t import to a PAL copy of the game.
Even more stupidly, it seems that DS AC cards bought in Australia won’t actually work with the Australian version of the Wii game. A stupid sad cat merely whines at the unlucky Aussie: “Hrm? I don’t think you have the right game card.”
Basically, the “Australian” version of Animal Crossing: Wild World is the United States version. While perfectly acceptable on the DS, where cards are region-free, Nintendo’s utterly needless region-locking of this import feature has basically ruined a part of Let’s Go to the City for Australian gamers. According to a European gamer, this isn’t a problem elsewhere in the PAL territories, but we’ll see how widespread it gets.
Incredibly stupid and needless region locking like this is pathetic. I wish Nintendo would realize that it doesn’t need to be this anal about making sure only certain people can play certain games. Many Western developers get along fine without forcing territory locks, a company as big and influential as Nintendo should grow up about it.
