Selling just short of 24 million copies, Nintendogs was popular enough to make it into the top 50 best-selling games ever. It remains among that elite 17 years later having launched on the Nintendo DS in April 2005. Suffice to say, even though there are so many copies of the game out there, most of which will be gathering dust by now, finding one of them on a train floor in 2022 is pretty bizarre.
That's exactly what happened to Ben though, and the Nintendogs discoverer has since been sharing his journey on TikTok, spotted by Nintendo Life. It begins with Ben finding a pretty beaten-up copy of Nintendogs on a train floor and taking it home to clean it up. That comes after he dusts off his DS only to discover the game is in such bad shape, the console doesn't even acknowledge it exists. A little TLC and when tested for a second time, the DS registers that a game has been inserted and Ben is able to start it up.
Then comes what the 286,000 viewers and counting have come to Ben's TikTok to see. Whether this particular copy of Nintendogs includes any abandoned pups. Yes, it does. A black lab called Enzo, and a Shiba called Tyson. Ben gets to know the puppies, gives them food and water, and plays with them until they curl up together and fall back to sleep.
Ben also discovers the name of Tyson and Enzo's owner, and presumably the person who lost or discarded their copy of Nintendogs on a train in 2022, is Sean. Whoever Sean is, they clearly weren't the most avid Nintendogs player. They spent a little more than an hour with Enzo, and just four minutes with Tyson, presumably a new addition to Sean's Nintendogs family. Ben also highlights that the dogs didn't need to be walked when first starting up the game, which likely means that was one of the last things Sean did with them.
There are two videos about Ben's Nintendogs saga on his TikTok right now, with the promise of a third concluding the story. Ben has urged the thousands of people watching his videos to tag absolutely anyone they know named Sean with the hope that he can reunite them with Tyson and Enzo. For now, those virtual dogs belong to Ben. As for the other 24 million of you who likely haven't played Nintendogs for well over a decade, go find your cartridges. The virtual pets you forgot about years ago will appreciate it.