Animal Crossing and Animal Crossing Wild World for the Nintendo Dual Screen (DS)
When I first got the Nintendo GameCube it was part of a trade with about eighty-dollars for an old tower that I was no longer using. The guy was broke and I figured well why not, I did enjoy the Nintendo 64 (henceforth known as the N64). There were a lot of great games on the N64 like Mario that took the platformer into the 3D realm first and forever, and of course the Zelda’s and Star Wars Episode I Racer that I now have on my Sega Dreamcast (yes it is way better, way faster but still the same awesome game it was on the N64). So I took the GameCube thinking it would be just as good, well I was half right as you will read.
I cannot recall any of the games that he had for it but I traded them all in for games that I thought would be really fun to play. I picked up Mario Sunshine, Zelda The Windwaker, and a few other games that I don’t remember right now. I did not like Mario at all, and Zelda took a little time to adjust to but it was ok for the time. Later that month I was at Bestbuy and they had a nice sale going on where the players choice games or whatever they are called were two for thirty-dollars. I looked at all the games they had and somehow picked Animal Crossing and Luigi’s Mansion as the two I wanted so I went with them.
I loved Luigi’s Mansion. It was just flat out fun to play just running around sucking up ghosts and calling out Mario over and over again. Now to the game of all games but before I get to it I need to mention that before Animal Crossing I used to call Harvest Moon digital crack, well that is now Animal Crossing’s title.
The game is set up in a small way like The Sims but it is really more like a cross between that and a little Harvest Moon. What happens in both games is essentially the same; you’re new to this totally random town and you pick your gender and go see this guy named Nook. He is a raccoon that owns the town store and he is also the town’s builder it seems. Well he offers you a house for some amount of the town’s currency which happens to be bells. After which he tells you that you need to work for him for a bit to earn some bells to pay him back. Now I have never tried to not pay him and I think this is because I am a real stringent bill payer in real life.
So after working for Nook doing menial tasks like planting plants and posting ads or delivering some goods to the other animals in the town it’s over and there is no more work to be had. This is when the game gets more proactive being I was the only human in the game and the rest of the town is full of animals. Now the way the animals talk is a take on simlish being it’s all gibberish sounding in the end but there is text to read so it’s not so awful.
Now I need to talk just about the GameCube (henceforth known as GC) version because there are a lot of differences and all the DS parts are better in all ways. The town in the GC is set up in sections like A1 through A5 and E1 to E5 so I am sure you get the idea. The thing is when you move from A1 to A2 it scrolls over with a smidge of lag well not lag more like a noticeable movement. There is a map that tells me where all the other critters in the town are and I have one of the four houses in the center of town. This means that I can have my house and then three other people can play in the same town as well.
Now I have to meet and talk to all the other critters and sometimes they will give me a task like deliver this or get that from this other critter. At times it got very frustrating because what I was seeking was given to anywhere from one to three or even four other critters so I would spend a lot of time just to get one thing delivered or picked up but when the task was over I would get something in return like clothes or furniture for my house.
Speaking of the house I also need to find ways to make bells to pay back my loan and there are a number of ways to accomplish this. One is to pick fruit and sell that to Nook (mind you he will buy just about anything you have), or shells on the shoreline, or things that have been dug up that are not fossils. The fossils have to be mailed to a museum so that means I have to write a letter to them and this was one of my hugest gripes about the game. Not only do I have to write these letters but the critters also like to get mail so I would have to use the controller to go from letter to letter to spell out words and for the most part the critters never understood what I wrote but they wrote back anyway. I really did find this one part of the game to be frustrating, annoying and rather pointless but hey nothing is perfect right?
So then after the mail is returned from the Museum I can either donate the fossil to the in town one or I can sell it to Nook for a good amount bells. I also have to catch fish and bugs for the in town one or to sell to Nook so there is a lot of little things to do all the time. There is also if I can visit another town on a separate save card get the fruit from there and plant them in my town. The game comes with a save card that has enough free blocks for one save so I was set for a bit. Now the fruit from my town sells for one-hundred bells, the fruit from another town sells for five-hundred so it’s easy to see the advantage of more of the other towns fruit planted. I of course also have to pull weeds and keep the town pretty and the last part here is that the game has a real time clock so the season change and the time of day is accurate. So in the summer it’s green and bright in the winter it’s snowing and cold. I would usually play the game at three in the morning so I was constantly messing with the GC clock so I was able to play the game; yeah I know pathetic. The best part of this game is it works on the Wii and all one needs is a GC controller since it still comes with a save card.
Now on to the DS version and a lot of the game is the same, but it has been enhanced and fixed. One of the areas where it has been fixed is the town is no longer split up in to sections it’s all just one big place with a rounded edge that can be ran around but dragging the stylus on the bottom screen. The clock is the same but Nook is open longer from 0800 to 2300. Both games when the loan is paid off there is a chance to upgrade to a larger hovel at a huge cost of bells, but there is a reason to keep going here. First it keeps the need for bells going and second there is a HRA that rates houses so the bigger the better but it seems like the debt never ends. The letter writing is way easier with the stylus and in the DS version all one needs to do is bring the dug up fossil to the owl in the museum and he will identify it for you for free so no more letters to write (that was a huge thank you Nintendo trust me.)
Both games also offer what is known as the Turnip Market, meaning I can buy them and try to sell them for more to Nook. They are bought on Sunday and sold any other day being Nook won’t buy or quote them on Sunday. Now the DS version is nice enough to have a foreign fruit wash up on the shores and I have about fifteen trees of coconuts to sell to Nook and the town’s regular fruit are peaches but all towns are different and all of them like the GC version are randomly generated. I have all the same things with the critters but the tasks are way less complicated now. I have to take a letter to someone in ten minutes or a thing to delivery. There is no more running from critter to critter to finish this task. The map is the same but now I can highlight the critter and their house lights up and is really easy to find. One thing that is very different is there is only one house to live in now, and I guess if there were more players we would all sleep upstairs being I cannot change that part of the house at all.
Now one of the bummers of the DS game was the fact that I thought would be able to once connected to a Wi-Fi be able to visit someone else’s town but I need to have what is called a friend-code. If you ask me that is a load of crap but Okay Nintendo that is how you like it so I never did get to Wi-Fi around and being this is the only way to visit others towns so I guess I can’t do that. One thing that is totally absent for practical reasons from the DS version is the ability to connect the GameBoy Advance (GBA) to the GC and take a ride to a little island that is playable on the GBA; this is also a way to generate bells and get more fruits to plant but this is a minor thing if you ask me.
The DS version also offers a few more things to do like create constellations that can be seen on a specific day and a coffee house to drink some good java at for a mere two-hundred bells. What I liked about the GC version is still intact and the parts that I found annoying are more or less removed in the DS version. Both let one change the town song and some other minor differences like no more junk yard now it’s a recycle bin, and the letters are way more organized and can be saved. The thing is Animal Crossing on the GC is a nice forty-minute a day game, and on the DS it is flat out perfect for a short bus ride to work or to relax to on lunch. I have a lot of really good DS games but this one was just from the ground up designed for it before the DS even came out if you ask me being it’s just so perfect for the portable system. The proof of this is that over two-years later and it has yet to drop in price but I feel that this game is worth every last penny of that thirty-five dollar price tag and it is still the most played game on my DS thus far.
I would recommend either game for children and adults alike for the fun, variety, and just sheer content involved. I also know that if I finish or just want to start over I can at anytime and get new critters to play around with. One thing though is if I ignore the critters they get mad or just move out of the town and at times they get needy wanting me to get them clothes or medicine but it’s all in good fun. I think the game also teaches children that paying off debt can be rewarded and to get in the habit of making bells to pay that off. Plus it shows that to keep a nice town one has to clean it and be social with the critters that live there. The bottom line is I love this game and I would never give it up for anything because it is a nice way to just relax and have a little fun in the zany world known as Animal Crossing.
