The Billings Farm and Museum, a working dairy farm and agricultural museum in Woodstock, Vermont, has successfully challenged Nintendo to compete against them in some manner of cow-milking contest, Polygon reports. At issue was a cow-milking minigame in 1-2 Switch, a game for the Nintendo’s newest console, the Nintendo Switch. In an open letter posted on their Facebook page, the museum wrote that the game takes “all the challenge out of milking,” explaining to the video game manufacturer that “we have 30 prize-winning Jersey milking cows that we milk twice a day, and it is NEVER that easy.” The museum’s workers have apparently carefully studied the motivational techniques of Biff Tannen, because the goading is strong: “We also think that you guys look pretty slow,” they added, going on to ask Nintendo, “Is your team brave enough?”
Apparently Nintendo has more in common with Marty McFly than that crappy video game adaptation from the 1980s, because it accepted the Vermont farmers’ challenge from its official Facebook account six minutes after it was sent. The trash talk didn’t stop there; the irascible museum officials, who seem to know more about cows than Nintendo’s 19th-century origins as a playing card company, responded, “Good luck! We’ve been at this over a 100 years.” “So have we!” Nintendo retorted. According to Polygon, Nintendo has confirmed that it’s sending people to the Billings Farm and Museum this week—although it’s unclear whether they’re visiting to plan future cow-milking competitions or grabbing the bull by the horns, so to speak. Either way, best wishes to Nintendo and the Billings Farm and Museum in their upcoming milk-off. Incidentally, we here at Slate hear Nintendo is way too chicken to send our entire staff free Switches.
Here’s the complete open letter:
