Animal Crossing

"Once again, Nintedo flexes its creative muscles and gives us another masterpiece."

My friends are so dumb. Every single one of them judges a game based on what it looks like. As soon as I told each of them that I had bought Animal Crossing, they just stood there and stared at me like I had just committed a crime punishable by death. Each one of them had heard about it somewhere before and seen pictures of it, and they had it set in their mind like concrete that the game was for little kids. Oh how they were wrong. So..so...wrong.. Animal Crossing is one of the best games to come out in the past few years, and even rivals The Sims in life-simulation fun.

When I first heard about Animal Crossing it was coming out for the Nintendo 64 and it was called Animal Forest. After a little bit of thinking, Nintendo decided to bring it over to the states(Thank you!!!), change the name to Animal Crossing, and bring it over to the Gamecube, since the N64 has been dead for some time. One thing that they added that the Nintendo 64 version didn’t have is the in-game clock, which tells you what the time is, the date, and the month. The seasons change, the different bugs and fish come during different seasons, and a bunch of different holidays are celebrated. It’s really amazing, and it’s extremely fun.

The first person you’ll see in Animal Crossing as soon as you put it in is K.K. Slider, the local independent songwriter/singer. This is your first encounter with one of the things that makes Animal Crossing so damn cool: K.K. Slider is a dog. A talking dog. No, this isn’t a trip back in memory lane to one of your tea-parties with your various stuffed animals. Animals outnumber you greatly in Animal Crossing, and every one of them is at least as intelligent as any person. He’ll tell you a few things, and then you’ll find yourself on a train. A blue cat named Rover will come up to you and make some small-talk. He’ll as you a few questions. The way that you answer these questions will decide if you’re a boy or a girl and what you look like. After all this is said and done, you arrive in your town, ready to start your new life on your own.

Tom Nook, your towns store-owner and leading real-estate developer , immediately runs over to you, smelling fresh bells(the currency in Animal Crossing). After a slightly awkward introduction, he brings you to the 4 vacant houses, all of them small, dinky, one-room shacks! After inspecting which one you like the best, you give Mr. Nook the money you have on hand. Uh-oh! Turns out mom and dad should of sent you off with a little more dough. The amount of money you have isn’t anywhere near the $10,000 that the house costs! So, after a quick negotiation, Tom decides to cut you a break and let you pay off your mortgage at his local store, Nooks Cranny. Thus beings your never-ending quest at life on your own.

There are so many different things to do in Animal Crossing that you might feel a little over-whelmed when you first start. Of course, in a life-sim, you kind of expect there to be a lot of things to do. However, unlike in The Sims, you aren’t constricted to only being at home (not counting any of the expansions, of course). You can wander around town, visiting your fellow neighbors, and maybe visiting the museum or go shopping. You can also go fishing and hunting for bugs, which is more fun than it sounds. There are 40 different types of fish and 40 different types of insects, and it takes at least a whole year to catch all of them(not counting any of you time travelers, that is. Just so you know, ‘time traveling’ as its known, is changing the date and time on the Gamecube to visit a different time in game, instead of just leaving the time and date on what they really are whenever you play).

One of the different places to visit in your town is the Museum. Blathers, the lovable curator, will accept any donation that fits one of these 4 categories: Fish, Insects, Paintings, or dinosaur bones. Showing off some of Animal Crossings edu-tainment value, Blather’s will give you an in-depth description of any bug, fish, painting, or dinosaur, but only when you’ve donated that item to the museum.

Another place that will offer you some information is the wishing well. The wishing well will tell you what state your town is currently in. If you can manage to have a bunch of trees, no weeds, and an all-around beautiful town, your wishing well will tell you that you have a perfect town. You’ll get something for having a perfect town for so long, but I won’t spoil it for you.

Fishing and insect-catching are pretty basic. With fishing, you have to find the little black shadows that are swimming around in the river or the ocean. Of course, those are fish, and you have to cast your fishing rod right near said shadow. The fish in Animal Crossin’ ain’t too bright, and they’ll chomp down on your hook with no bait on it at all. However, they’ll put up a fight, and will test your reflexes by teasing you. There will be 5 instances when the fish will have a chance to take your hook under, and it ‘s random every time. Whenever it doesn't, it goes under just a little and comes back up, but when it finally decides to eat your hook, you’ll see your character struggle. If you can’t reel em in, you’ll lose the fish, and they’ll disappear into nothingness.

Catching insects is a little different. Certain insects, like dragonflies, can be caught by simply running up to them and swinging you net. Other insects however, like ladybugs, will fly away if you run up to them. You’ll need to go into ‘stealth mode’, as said by a few of your towns resident insect collectors. By holding down A, you can slowly sneak up upon the insect and catch it.

I should also mention that there is a tailoring shop, run by sisters Mable and Sable. You can make your own design, and use that pattern on either your clothes or your umbrella. You have a limited number of patterns that can be kept in your inventory, but there is an archive at the shop that you can store old patterns in.

One of Animal Crossing little goodies is coaxing Sable into liking you. At first, she kind of gives you the cold shoulder, telling you that she’s too busy to talk to you. If you keep at it, though, she eventually will tell you little tidbits about her and Mable’s childhood and various other things. After a while, she’ll finally be happy to see you and greet you warmly whenever you talk to her when you’re in the shop.

Quite possibly the only good reason to buy a Gameboy Advance Gamecube link cable is to visit the remote island far off shore of your town. All you have to do is visit Cap’n at the dock in the south of town and you’re off! Cap’n will sing you a little ballad about the sea.. or cucumbers.. whichever, and after a few seconds of song you’ll arrive. It’s always summer-time at the island, so feel free to try and collect bugs and fish that only come around during the summer. The island only has one townie, and that townie is unique to the island. They even have their own personality that differs from the landlubbers. Buying the cable is almost like buying an expansion pack, which is pretty damn cool.

Your neighbors are all different.. slightly. There are over 200 different neighbors that will move into your town at some point or another (however, there is a cap at 15 for the number of neighbors you can have in your town at a time), yet there are only a few different personalities that the ‘townies’ , as they are called, can have. There are 6 different personalities. They are very nice, nice, snobby, moody, mean, and athletic/nice. All of these personalities pretty much explain themselves. These personalities are distributed to whichever townies they look like they would fit. The smug looking Amelia has a snob personality, the angry looking Oxford has the bully personality, and so on. However, each different townie has their own, individual catch phrase, kind of a last-resort for true individuality. Many times your friends will ask you to give them new catch phrases, and if that catch-phrase is cool enough, it might spread to other people in your town! And, hey, if ANY of them piss you off, just pull out your trusty net or axe and give ‘em a few good whacks. They’ll chew your ear off with their r incredibly intelligent insults, but it’s still satisfying nonetheless. Don’t worry about cutting your friend in two, either. The axe will bounce off as if it just hit a big ball of rubber (and it sounds like it too). One more thing before I close this paragraph.. Every single one of the townies apparently suffers from narcolepsy, but only at night. They ALL fall asleep outside of their door, unless you’re there to see that they go inside. Depending on how much you know a certain townie, they’re response to you waking up will range from ,”Eew! Why did you touch me!” to, “Thanks so much, old buddy old pal!”. Also, if you wake them up and they don't immediatley go in their house before you leave, they'll be asleep again..

The graphics really.. how should I put this... violently scream in the utmost agony the fact that this was originally a Nintendo 64 game. The graphics are kind of blocky, and don’t show much detail. However, the four different seasons all look really good and realistic. The leaves on the trees will change in the fall and winter, and the ground will look different as well. There are a few different looks for both boys and girls, but but all of them aren’t too drastically different from one-another. You can change the paint color on your roof after paying Mr. Nook 980 bells, and can put one of the patterns in your inventory on the door. Each townie sports their own, individual look, and they can all change clothes whenever they want to. You can also change the furniture in your pad with hundreds of different pieces of furniture, with some pieces not purchasable.

The music is genuinely remarkable, both for its quality AND its quantity. There is a song that plays during every hour of the day, a song for when it’s raining, a song for Tom Nook’s store, the post office, the museum, the island and Cap’n has a few different songs that he sings. Also, many of the holidays have celebrations with their own songs as well (for example: Aud Lang Syne, most likely the ONLY song that wasn’t made specifically for this game, plays when you are away from the New Year’s celebration at the pond.). That alone is more than quite a few games, but there’s more. Much, much more. K.K. Slider shows up at the train stop every Saturday night, and you can hear him sing one of 50 different songs in concert. After the concert’s over, he’ll give you the tape/CD version of the song, which is sometimes completely different sounding than the version he sing(none of the tape versions are exactly the same)! So, lets recap.. 50 concert K.K. songs, 50 tape K.K. songs, 24 songs for each our, songs for almost every holiday, one song for the museum, one song for Nook’s shop.. well.. you get the picture. Animal Crossing has a lot of good music!

The sound effects are all great as well. The foot-steps are very convincing on each type of ground that you walk on, and Animalese (the way that the townies talk) is just too cool. Casting your fishing pole, catching insects, handing something to a townie, it all sounds real and convincing.

Controls are fluent and easy to use. Your character moves around very easily. You can also run by holding down one of the larger top buttons or the B button. All of the moves are easily memorizable and don’t take much effort. The only gripe i have with control is writing letters to the townies. There is a post office, and you can buy paper in Nooks store to write letters to your friends. This would be great, except typing with the controller is NOT cool. If there was keyboard support for this game, we’d all leave our homes and dance together united. Alas, there isn’t, and were left to feed the townies incessant hunger fore new fan-mail without a controller. Guess we’ll just have to keep those letters short for now..

Replayability? Uh.... Yeah! The game don’t end, homie. You could play the game until 2099 (that’s all the farther that the game’s year counter goes. After that, it goes back to 2000.). However, it takes a year to see almost everything, but chance are you’ll forget about something during that year and you might want to come back. You won’t be able to get EVERYTHING in one year, either. Gracie, the local fashion guru, has a ton of fashions to give you, and if your game is anything like mine, she doesn’t come too often. Plus, during some of the holidays, you won’t be able to get everything there is to get. Still, you may not want to play Animal Crossing for more than a year, but it’ll still be there.. waiting..

Animal Crossing is one of Nintendo’s more recent genius idea’s. If you haven’t picked it up yet like the rest of us, WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?! Go get it. Now. Go. Scram. You’re bugging us. We’re trying to play.

Foot-Notes:

-Despite having ‘kiddie’ graphics, this game is fairly complex and a heck of a lot of fun.

-Your town is pretty big, with many different people who can live there and many different places to visit.

-There are a lot of things to do, so you won’t be feeling bored for a while.

-Lots of goodies will keep you playing.

-Buying the GBA GCN link cable will open your game up to an almost expansion pack like amount of stuff.

-The music is amazing, both the quality and the quantity.

-Controls are fluent and responsive.

-Tons of replayability. It takes at least a year to see and get almost everything, and even after THAT, there’ll still be a few things you might not of gotten or forgot.

-Buy this game. Now.

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 07/03/03, Updated 07/03/03