But how do Tomodachi Life and Tomodachi Collection compare? Is Tomodachi Life essentially a better-looking remake of its predecessor, or is it bringing something new to the table? I've been playing the first game with the help of a fan patch in anticipation of the sequel's English release, so I'm in a pretty good position to answer those questions. Here are my thoughts on how the opening few minutes stack up:

Daan Koopman (a.k.a. NintenDaan) recently shared a video on his YouTube channel of the first 8 minutes of Tomodachi Life, the upcoming English release of Nintendo's popular Japanese artificial life simulation game. It gives a very good idea of the basics of the game, especially for those who never had a chance to play Tomodachi Collection , the first game in the series which was never released outside of Japan.

Both games start out quite similarly (and you can compare it to my own Tomodachi Collection gameplay videos if you want to see exactly how similar). You'll set the clock, name your island, create your first resident by importing a Mii or making one from scratch, tweaking their voice and personality and inputting various data points. The game walks you through basic gameplay elements like shopping and interaction, but that's where the first difference really leaps out.

In Tomodachi Collection and the Japanese version of Tomodachi Life, standard shopkeepers wear a black hood over their heads. This hood is used in bunraku puppetry to keep the puppeteers themselves from being too much of a distraction, making it a good fit for placeholder NPCs like the shopkeepers that will eventually be replaced with residents. Localizing a game isn't just about changing the language. Visual elements often need to be translated for different cultures, and an image that strongly represents one thing to one culture may be ompletely unrecognizable to another. Bunraku theatric tropes aren't recognizable to most North Americans, so those placeholder shopkeepers seem to have been turned into robots in the English adaptation of Tomodachi Life. It might seem like a small and superficial change, but I suspect it won't be the only one made. Again, this isn't a bad thing, but rather a necessary part of good localization to make sure that certain aspects of the game still evoke the same reactions for one group of players as they do for another.

The other immediate difference is that the island in Tomodachi Life seems to have twice as many building sites on it as the island in the original game has. In Tomodachi Collection you could expect to unlock just about everything after a few days of consistent play. I can't say whether or not that's the case in the sequel, but based on numbers alone it looks like there's be much more there to keep players busy in both a short-term and a long-term sense.

If you want to see more of Tomodachi Life's early game, be sure to follow NintenDaan on YouTube to check out his ongoing video coverage. Also, consider supporting Miiquality, a campaign to convince Nintendo to include same-sex relationships in Tomodachi Life.

Iris Ophelia (@bleatingheart, Janine Hawkins IRL) has been featured in the New York Times, and has spoken about SL-based design at the Fashion Institute of Technology in Manhattan and with pop culture/fashion maven Johanna Blakley.