How a game about chores keeps coming back to amuse me.
I won’t tell you that I played the original when it came out for the GameCube or that I owned the game on N64 because I got the Japanese version, I didn't really find this game until about 2005, maybe 2007. It was the original but I can not be a hipster and say I found it first. I was at a friends house and they had GameCubes, they all did, their mom didn't understand sharing and so all 4 kids had a GameCube. We went through their games and found Animal Crossing. I scoffed like most do when seeing a game whose citizens are animals and you are the only human… BABY GAME.
They started playing despite my disinterest. I found the game to be a little charming and a bit funny. The goals and tasks were simple, water this, pay for that, go fish and collect bugs. The game had that odd Nintendo flair as well. In game you were sent after things, a gorilla loaned his game to a friend and the friend didn't want to give it back but eventually did, sometimes this made them all happy and sometimes this caused grief among the animals.
This led me to get a memory card and make my own game (one game per memory card), it big save data despite the game being small, actually so small that it fit on the RAM of the console and so you could play the game without the disk.
I got into this game at the right time, I found there was a Wii version coming out shortly after I played the GameCube version. Late 2008 is when Animal Crossing reached us in North America for Wii. I had played myself silly on the GameCube version and was ready for change, the Wii version had online play, more characters, and slightly updated graphics, all I could ask for in this game where I did chores to get further in life.
The Wii version actually didn't last me as long as I had hoped, maybe a year before things go dull, I still went back every 2 or so months to make sure that my town was fully weeded, I also checked to see which animals had moved to another town. My sister would also ask me to go online every now and then and I would jump on. Maybe 2 years in to the new Wii version I also met some friends who still played from time to time, this gave more reason to go online to their town and visit. Part of the issue was that Wii online mode was not very good and often I could not even visit someone’s town, it wouldn't let me. That is what caused some of the boredom. The city was not all it was cracked up to be either.
A little life was renewed when I found out there was a Nintendo DS version that also worked with my DSi. This version came before the Wii version and I had no idea it even existed until someone told me not to get the DS version because it was very similar to the Wii version which I already had. I didn't heed their warning as I just wanted more Animal Crossing! I wasn't disappointed, this version gave me another 6 months to a year of fun, however, DSi didn't allow for WEP WiFi mode, the game required it! This made it so online was pretty much not something I wanted. I moved on yet again, back to the Wii version for a small time.
Fast forward to 2013, 5 years after the Wii Version, 9 years after the DS version and over a decade after the original GameCube version we now have Animal Crossing New Leaf. It has a lot of cool items, it has better online and more Nintendo references built in than you can shake a stick at. I opened a fortune cookie which I bought with 3DS’s console wide monetary system, it cost 2 coins and I have 300 (which is the limit). The fortune read something about not reading to far into things, sometimes it is just a girl and a sword. This makes reference to the skyward sword art released at E3. Trading these fortune cookies in will get you masks, hats and clothing from Nintendo games.
The island is also something that is back, the GameCube had a feature that was activated when a GameBoy Advanced was plugged in you could go to a nice island and a turtle would take you via boat. That is back. This time you can go with friends.
I won’t go too far into this game, I will say that their charm and ease of play has made this game a mainstay in my collection and anytime a new version comes out, I am buying it!
