Animal Crossing

"The sims has nothing on AC"

Animal Crossing was originally released on the Nintendo 64 a few years back. Unfortunately, with the release of the next generation consoles, it was swept away. The next year, Nintendo decided to re-release it for the Nintendo Game Cube. Animal Crossing is also being released on the Nintendo Duel Screen in March 2005.

When you first turn this game on, you find yourself sitting on a train in first person mode. A blue cat sits across from you and starts asking you questions and eventually gets you a house to rent. As you get off the train, you get to see yourself. You talk to someone named Tom Nook who runs a small shop. Nook allows you to pick your house, and tells you how much it will cost. Unfortunately you are broke. So Nook decides to let you work at his store. As you begin doing his bidding, you meet other people who live in your neighborhood. You see a museum, a police office, a wishing well a train station, and ever a tailor. Finally, Nooks tasks will end, and your true life will begin

Animal Crossing is the longest game ever because it never ends. You could spend eternity walking and talking to friends and running errands and getting rewards. You can buy a fishing pole and try to catch all the fish. You could sell them, give them to friends, put them in a fish tank, or give them to the museum. The same goes for the bugs. Then there's the shovel that allows you to dig up things. Everything, that is. You can dig up Gyoroid dolls, you can dig up fossils, and you can dig up NES games that can be played. You can even dig up money!

Oh, yeah, the money. Money in Animal Crossing is called bells. Bells can get you anything. You can buy stuff from Tom Nook and Design your house. You can go down to the tailors and buy a design. Or, you could create your own design. This design can be used on clothes, umbrellas, walls, and floors. And if you put your stuff up for sale, than you can get your friends to buy them. Maybe you'd like to plant your money in a shining spot to grow a money tree. Oh, and lets not forget your debt. You owe mister nook a whole lot of money. Every time you pay off a certain amount of your debt, your house increases in size. It just gets bigger and bigger, until you have a giant 2 story house with a basement. The more you buy stuff and pay your debt, the bigger Tom Nooks store gets.

Then there's the wishing well. The wishing well is obsessed with the environment. The well will tell you what is wrong with the town in a certain area so you can go investigate. If he says that there is too much trees, you take an axe and a shovel and go chop down trees then dig up the stumps. If he says there is very little green, you can take fruit from the trees and bury them then create an orchard. Or you could always buy seeds and flowers from Tom Nooks store. There are also weeds that will grow around your town. You have to pluck them daily or they could get out of hand. Ignoring your town for a long time will cause weeds to grow everywhere. If your town is disgusting, people will move away. If your town is cool, people will move in.

There are other places that have special things. There's the dump, where things that are left around town are taken. There's the police station where random stuff is found and you can pick it up. There's the museum where you can see all the bugs and fish and fossils and paintings you've collected.

I haven't even gotten to the best part though. It might seem quite obvious that more than one person can live in the same town at once, because there are four houses in the town. But there's much more. If two people have this game on their memory cards, they can insert them both into the Gamecube and take the train to go to your friend's town! First, there's the train. On the train you will meet one of two people. You might meet that blue cat from the beginning, which also knows your friend, or you may meet a faceless cat named Blanca. Blanca lost her face, so you have to draw it. I always draw a ninja with a sword through its head of course. Once you reach your friends town, you can do… pretty much everything you can do in your town. Your friend's town also has different fruit than yours. If you sell this fruit in your town or make an orchard you can get big bucks. The most unique part of this has yet to come. If you have your memory cards linked, your animal friends will switch towns between memory cards. If you leave your cards I for to long, chances are everyone will be gone after a while, and all your friend's friends will be in your town.

So with all of this seemingly endless fun, is there a way to beat this game? Technically no, but I have a few ways to make you think so. The first is getting golden tools. Getting the golden shovel is done by burying a shovel in a shining spot for it to grow into a tree. The golden net comes from catching all of the bugs. If you capture all of the fish, you get the golden fishing rod. All of that doesn't even compare to the once in a lifetime achievement of the golden axe. If you can convince the well that your town is perfect and keep it that way for two entire weeks, a goat man will come and give you the golden axe. Another way to win is to fully pay of your debt, which will convince Tom Nook to build you a statue. The one way to truly win the game, though, is to fill your catalog with every item in the entire game. Doing this without codes will take at least five years or so. Just remember to play on every holiday! If you happen to have an action replay, though, it may be a good idea to cheat your way to victory.

There's also connectivity. Do you have a GBA? Do you have a GBA to Game Cube link? Then hook your GBA to your Game Cube and go to the dock. When you get there, you will see a frog in a boat. This frog will take you to Summer Island! Summer Island is a tropical island with a second house for you, and two new friends to talk to! There isn't really too much to do, but just the fact that you can go there is pretty dang cool. Also, with the GBA e-reader, you can get Animal Crossing cards to upload neighbors into your neighborhood.

Okay, I think that's all I can say about the game play, so what about the story? Okay, there is no real story, but there are little goals and stuff. Sometimes you get letters from your mom saying how things are going at home. Also, there's this one organization called the Happy Room Academy that adds challenge to the game. The Happy Room Academy will score your house and tell you how stylish it is. Getting I high score is no easy task. There are different styles of furniture you can put in your house to create sets. There are also different color sets that need to be placed according to Feng Shui. The leader of the HRA, Gracie the Giraffe, will sometimes visit in her stylish car. If you can wash her car correctly, she will give you a prize.

Gracie isn't the only one randomly visiting your town. Sometimes the pirate Pelican will wash up on your shore and give you a present. Sometimes a sneaky merchant named Redd will come into town in a hut. He sells you overpriced cool stuff. Sometimes a carpenter or radish salesman will come hiking through. You may have a gypsy tent up in your neighborhood. In the winter, your friends set up igloos. Every holiday, a symbolic character of that holiday will come and give presents and stuff. In the summer in the morning, there's a workout session. In the spring there's a fishing competition. At night you may run into a ghost policeman looking for renegade ghosts. All this and more can happen during Animal Crossing.

Now let me talk about the graphics. The graphics are not beautiful for the Gamecube, and yet they are extraordinary for the N64. There is plenty of detail, and an insane amount of extra stuff. I don't think the graphics matter, and its not as though they're bad.

The sound is brilliant. Sure, its mostly beeps and clicks and the occasional strum of the acoustic, but it all ties together beautifully. If you go to the train station at ten o clock on Saturday you get a musical present. A little dog with a guitar will be sitting at the bench. If you talk to him, he will play a song for you along with the credits. Each Saturday he plays a different tune. The best part is, he can turn his music into a CD that you can play on your radio back at home. Each different radio alters the tune a little.

Overall, I think Animal Crossing is a great game. If you're a fan of the Sims, you may have fun, and fans of Adventure games will find something to like as well. As for me? I give it a nine out of ten.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 01/03/05