 The lovable yet grumpy Mr. Rosetti has a new job in Animal Crossing New Horizons. He operates the rescue service, helping to move the player around via helicopter whenever they want to return home. Previously, Mr. Rosetti was in charge of the Reset Surveillance Centre and would show up to aggressively threaten the player if they ever reset the game without saving. According to New Horizons project lead Aya Kyogoku, poor Mr. Rosetti's career change happened because he got fired. Mr. Rosetti had a hard time, she said in an interview with Mashable. He was laid off from his position. If the idea of a fictional character getting fired sounds bizarre, bear in mind that this was a direct result of actions taken by the real world Japanese government. Mr. Rosetti initially got his job in the first Animal Crossing game because of hardware limitations. The game debuted in Japan on the Nintendo 64. Players could roam around a tiny world making friends with colourful animals and stealing their rubbish when their backs were turned. The problem was, with so many moving parts, it wasn't possible to make the game's autosave. The solution was to force the player to save the game manually by entering their home each time they wanted to turn the console off. But how could players be persuaded to remember to save before turning off? To give them ample… motivation, the character of Mr. Rosetti was introduced. This short grumpy mole would turn up and lecture the player every time they failed to save, often getting very aggressive. In the Japanese original, Mr. Rosetti was given a rough-around-the-edges Osaka dialect, and in localising the game to the west, this was changed to a thick New York brogue. To get it right, localiser Tim O'Leary would read Rosetti's dialogue aloud in the most ridiculous Bronx accent he could manage, and write down these sounds phonetically. The character worked in his intended role. If anything, he worked too well. Younger players, particularly young girls, were absolutely terrified of Mr. Rosetti. Satoru Iwata reported hearing of some children who even cried when they realised they'd reset the game without saving. Indeed, the manual for Animal Crossing city folk even came with a parental advisory content warning specifically about Mr. Rosetti. It read, Mr. Rosetti's purpose is to teach players the importance of saving. However, parents should be aware that his personality and tone of voice, while intentionally humorous, are authoritative, and may be disturbing to young children. Mr. Rosetti was a mainstay of the series, but as time went on, the developers wondered whether it was really necessary for him to be quite so mean. While developing Animal Crossing New Leaf, the team wondered how to give the player more control over their neighbourhood. Often it felt like the player was just a guest in a world that carried on without their involvement, and developers wanted the player to be able to have more of a say in the running of the town. So it was decided to make the player the mayor of their own community. They could then pick and choose how to spend their funds, developing new public works to improve their residents' quality of life. So where did this leave Mr. Rosetti? He was brash, obnoxious and very divisive. Many fans loved him, and many others hated him. The answer came as the real-world Japanese government conducted a spending review. This was big news in the country at the time. The government was making big changes to many public programmes, shutting some things down entirely. So the idea emerged. What if Mr. Rosetti was called up for a government review? And what if it went really badly for him? One developer, Isaiomoro, joked, I heard that the assembly member in charge of the review asked Mr. Rosetti, what's wrong with a little reset every now and then? We don't got the funds for this nonsense, and that, in the end, it was phased out. So Mr. Rosetti was unceremoniously fired, sort of. If they wanted Mr. Rosetti around, the player could choose to fund the Reset Surveillance Centre as a public work, in which case Mr. Rosetti and his brother Don would set up a base in the town. This way, players who loved Mr. Rosetti could find a place for him in their town, while those who were afraid of him could keep him unemployed. When it came time for Animal Crossing New Horizons, technology had advanced to the point that the game could properly autosave. There was no longer any need for a Reset Surveillance Centre, as there was no need to penalise resetting the game. The developers wanted to find some way to include Mr. Rosetti in the game, and as such, he was given a helicopter and a phone line. That seems perfectly safe for a mole who's barely keeping on top of his anger management issues. The moral of the story is that even those who can seem rough and abrasive can change with the right motivation. Mr. Rosetti was once so intimidating that he made children cry. But now he's trying his best to be a positive influence in the lives of others. Perhaps we should all try to be a little bit more like Mr. Rosetti, and learn to overcome our weaknesses, and give up our own petty bad habits so that we can better help other people.