Over the years, my New Leaf Journal colleague Victor V. Gurbo and I have played through a number of games together in person. We spent hundreds of hours playing through Persona 3 and 4, Danganronpa 1 and 2, and other games (I will still never forgive Victor for making me play Life is Strange). Whenever Victor is presented with a choice – for example in Persona 3 FES and Persona 4 Golden, he names the player character NIXON – a homage to the 37th President of the United States. His naming system has shown up in other articles about Animal Crossing: New Horizons and Pokémon Sword and Shield. I made light of all of the NIXON characters in an article about a photograph of a “NIXON” truck.
Victor and I have now taken up Pokémon Colosseum when he comes over. For those not in the know – Pokémon Colosseum was released in North America for the Nintendo Gamecube on March 22, 2004. While its main attraction was allowing people to have Pokémon battles with their teams from Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire (for Game Boy Advance) in 3D, it also came with a separate 3D Pokémon RPG that was actually quite interesting. Victor never played Pokémon Colosseum or its RPG. I had last played and beaten the RPG about 18 years ago and felt due for a refresher.
One of the first choices that the player must make in Pokémon Colosseum is to name the protagonist. Because I had already beaten Colosseum – albeit a very long time ago – Victor is taking the controls for this run. What would he name the protagonist? Would he defy his established convention? Let us see…
No conventions were broken.
The protagonist is NIXON, as I expected.