The late Robin Williams was so smitten with The Legend of Zelda he famously named his daughter after the title character. Shades of World of Warcraft, fans have banded together via Change.org petition to ask Nintendo to honour the actor and comedian in the next game in the series and Nintendo has responded.
The petition, now with more than 100,000 signatures, is a heartfelt plea from fans that the next entry in the series name a non-player character “Robin” in William’s memory.
So, in a day where there aren’t many words, what can we do? Well, there’s a new Zelda game on the horizon. A bold reinvention, a fresh new open world adventure for Wii U. I would like to suggest that when the game is localised to English, Nintendo of America and the Treehouse name one of the characters “Robin” in his memory.
He won’t get to play it, but he’ll live on forever in a universe he always loved.
In a statement to Polygon, a Nintendo representative expressed the company’s love for Williams, offering its condolences to his family, especially daughter Zelda Williams, who has worked with Nintendo on several occasions, including a commercial with her father for the 3DS remake of The Ocarina of Time and the celebrity tournament at the Super Smash Bros. Invitational at E3 earlier this year.
Nintendo acknowledged the petition’s request, but declined to discuss potential action at this time.
Comments
28 responses to “Fans Request Robin Williams Tribute In The Next Zelda, Nintendo Responds”
This is really cool. I hope Nintendo does something like this, will need to sign the petition to show my support.
Responded to the petition by not responding to the petition at all…
The reaponse is in this article: http://www.nintendolife.com/news/2014/08/nintendo_offers_condolences_to_robin_williams_family_and_addresses_petition
‘Robin Williams was loved at Nintendo. Our hearts go out to his entire family, and especially to Zelda Williams who we’ve worked with multiple times.
We appreciate the outpouring of support from the gaming community, and hear the request of fans to honor him in a future game. We will not be discussing what might be possible for future games during this difficult time, but we will hold our memories of Robin close.’
Business as usual at Nintendo, PR department can’t keep up with the internet.
They have to be careful, there could be legal ramifications to including something, and I’m sure they have the wish to speak to the family first, and the honor to know that now would perhaps not be the best time to do so.
I doubt there’s legal ramifications to including someone called “Robin”, but yes to the rest of the things you said.
Plus even if they did I seriously doubt his family would sue. Theyd contact his estate first anyhow.
How is it any different than Blizzard?
They too have acknowledged the petition and given no specifics.
Blizzard has a history of including tributes like this and heavily implied they’d do the same here in their statement. Nintendo’s comes off as very non committal.
Of course they are, and past evidence doesn’t make Blizzard any less ambiguous in their reply.
Now isn’t the time to be asking family members for permissions or making hasty promises. it’s about expressing condolences.
“We haven’t decided, but it will most likely be a character inspired by him or some of his favorite roles of the past,” Hazzikostas said at the event, held Thursday in downtown Los Angeles. “All of us are massive Robin Williams fans. We love and appreciate his work. We grew up watching his movies and stand-up. We knew he was an avid `WoW’ player, which was awesome. We have a number of pop culture references and things that reflect great figures of our time here and there. We’re just thinking about the appropriate and right way to do it.”
Totally ambiguous, that one.
A voidwalker with the genies personality that goes into a song and dance like Friend like me… call the voidwalker “Robin” simply. If you click it a few times it goes into a mini standup routine… something like that?
Love it!
If Nintendo say yes they will include a tribute to Robin, they will also be announcing that a new Zelda game is in development. They may not be ready to do that so this is the type of response you can expect. WoW is different because you can just throw it into a content patch.
I agree. They can’t just randomly announce a new game, especially if said game is nowhere near ready. WoW can just add an NPC and that’s it.
Pretty sure the new Zelda game was announced years ago.
Nintendo cannot guarantee anything until the latest possible date. But the responce was positive and all they said was that they can’t SAY anything RIGHT NOW. The man only just died afterall.
Nintendo: “Willie hears ya. Willie don’t care.”
Well I’m assuming Nintendo America were the ones that responded, and it’s not like they can do much on their end about including him.
Except they can, since they’re the ones that handle the English translations, including coming up with the names half the time.
Now now, they cannot really commit to an answer this far back, but I believe there is a very, very strong possibility that they will do it. This is just how corporate communication works, guys. It’s less about communication and more about covering your ass for past, present and future mishaps.
Zelda’s father should become Ret-Conned to be King Robin
I was thinking that myself 😉
Perfect response really. It’s far too soon to publicly start talking about “dedications to Robin” type stuff. The family itself has to first move on and accept reality. Not give in to fan desires for stuff.
This is business. The media shitstorm they’d brew for ‘glamourising’ sucide in this way wouldn’t look so good on the financial reports. I don’t even expect the vaguest of references. In any case, Williams was a big Zelda fan when he was alive and they didn’t do anything then so why should be hypocrites now and appease all these self-entitled fanboys?
Your on the money, legal teams would suggest the same thing. Fans follow hearts, business follows protocols.
Mostly agree. All this does is make those self-entitled fanboys feel warm and fuzzy in thinking that they are doing something good.
Robin Williams accomplished enough during his life, without the need to be ‘remembered’ though a zelda game.
I disagree that If they did do sometjing, the media would accuse them of glamorising suicide.
http://image-cdn.gamnesia.com/16984/tumblr_na7y59u7bz1tby887o1_1280__large.jpg
Just had a friend link this to me. Pretty rad.
Robin Nohansen Hyrule? That’d be a nice way to do it. Robin’s already the name of several Nintendo characters, and it fits in with the fact that the Heritage of the royal family comes from a school where everyone was named after a kind of bird. It’d be an absolutely subtle, kind-hearted, and fitting way to do it.
I think it would be nice if they named the princess after his daughter.
This petition was actually started by a good friend of mine, it was awesome to see it take off like this! Obviously it’s too soon for anything to happen, and Nintendo aren’t going to commit to anything at this point, but I feel like we’ll definitely see a tribute at some point in the future.
Why are so many people dissatisfied with this response? It’s respectful, reasonable, and doesn’t even outright rule out what the petitioners want, leaving options open.
I dunno, I was into the idea of doing it with World of Warcraft because I get the impression they were three steps ahead of the request, but this doesn’t really seem like Nintendo’s thing and if the people making the game are just doing it because fans have pressured them to it makes the whole gesture a little hollow.
you also have to consider that they probably don’t want a case where they accidentally make a mockery of his death by using it to sell games. WoW is different, WoW is a game that is already out right now and is an MMO. The odds of someone buying WoW because they added a tribute is low enough to be insignificant and seriously unlikely. The odds of somebody buying the next Zelda game because of a tribute is higher and something they likely want to avoid.
What about a big blue genie character called Robin?