"A Fuzzy Game With Fuzzy Animals."

Let's face it. A lot of gamers are turned off by this game's cutesy appearance. That's the sad reality of today. By simply looking at this game, a gamer could tell you if it was terrible or not without touching the controller. The truth about this game is even with its cutesy appearance this game has a lot of innovative features in it. The game runs on the actual clock that you set into your Gamecube, so when it's daytime in the real world, it's daytime in the Animal Crossing world, unless of course you've changed the time in the internal clock of your Gamecube. With that said, the game also goes by dates so if it's ten minutes to New Year's Day and you're playing this game you must be one lonely fellow, but that's beside the point. The point is you will see your neighbors at your local town square standing there next to each other waiting for the countdown to happen. How cool is that? The same goes for any holiday that's celebrated on the calendar year.

Now that we've got set aside let's get on to the more important parts of this game. To start off, what IS this game about anyway? Well the whole point of this game is you, the character, just moved out of your parents' house and decided to live on your own. You get on a train and meet this really cool cat (yes a cat) named Roover. He offers you a nice house offer at the town you're moving at (you name it) and when you arrive there this ugly fat racoon named Tom Nook let's you decide to move in from four choices (choices may lower the more people play this game) of some pretty cramped houses. Once you've decided what you wanted he asks for payment, but apparently you're a bit short. So here's where the point of the game comes in. You're suppose to work your way into repaying your debt. What happens when you repay it all? Well you'll have to keep playing to find out, but believe me, there is plenty of things to do in this game.

The way this game is played is a bit weird. You basically live in a town full of other animals and interact with them with simple commands such as, ''Do you have a job for me?'' or ''What's going on?'' Depending on the animal's fixed attitude they will give you a set of responses and sometimes even give you random items. The items given can either be sold or placed into your house for decoration. There's a wide variety of animals such as bears, little bears, dogs, lions, squirrels, etc. You might think each character is unique, but their attitudes are nearly the same. What I mean is there's always going to be one personality trait with each set of animals. The only differences between the personalities is always going to be the computer skin of the animal, catch phrase, name, and voice. Otherwise it's the same thing over. Other than that they're all cute in their own way.

The reason for collecting items is for placing them in your house, as I stated before. The more you collect, the more items appear in your catalogue. You can always sell every item you get, but you have to be careful since some items are so rare that they're not available again. The customization of your house gives you a lot to work with. It's also one of the few games that exposes your home decorating skills and even rates you on how you place your furniture. That score can mean nothing to you if the house is made to your liking. What makes the real time clock system work in this game is that you can get certain types of furniture only during specific times. Take for example the Halloween set...Take a good guess when you can only get those items...That's right, only during Halloween. This game has so many items and 8-bit Nintendo games in it, it takes literally years to get them all. That alone makes the replay value of this game endless. There is no ending at all and so many things happen in this game throughout the year, but you probably would have to play it for more than a year just to see EVERYTHING in this game.

What I mean by seeing everything is that you're not just limited to collecting furniture. You can also fish, catch bugs, plant trees, dig for buried treasure, etc. What makes fishing and catching bugs very hard is that certain types of both living creatures appear only during specific seasons...and since this game goes by a real time clock...you can expect to be getting bored and waiting for a very long time for the next season to arrive. When you plant trees in your town it can either improve your town rating or make it worse by having too many trees. There's also fruit trees and every town has a different fruit (five different fruit one of which can be obtained secretly). What makes planting trees fun is that you're able to have every single fruit type in your town, making it a utopia of fruit trees. There are also a couple other trees you can get, but you'll just have to figure out which ones are they and how you get them.

I won't get much into the controls since there are really no gripes about them. The controls are very easy to learn. The only hard part is typing out letters. It's a major annoyance without any keyboard, but the developers made good use of the controller.

This game makes full use of every next-generation Nintendo accessory possible. For starters if you have a Gameboy Advance, you can connect it to your Gamecube, with the proper connection cables of course, you can transport yourself to a separate island and you can collect special items that are only obtainable from that island...plus you can name it. How cool is that? There's also the use memory cards. Nintendo was so nice to give you a free memory card for this game since it took up the entire space of the memory card. This game allows your character to travel to your friend's town and let's you explore his town and talk to his town animals and he can do the same as well. By just visiting towns there is a sure chance that an animal from your town will go straight to his as well as you getting one of his animals to go to yours. You can also leave items for your friend and take items from him, as well as manipulate his town by trampling all the flowers and chopping down all the trees. The e-reader cards also play a role in this game, although not as large as the other two, but still popular. The e-reader cards (which you have to pay for) give you specific items that you can't obtain through the game and also include a lot of 8-bit Nintendo games, which is a great addition, but then again who really wants to spend that much money just to have a couple games IN a game? The game itself has a built-in trading system that allows you to trade with other NTSC players. How you ask? Well you have to go to your local Nook's and from there you can find out. What makes that so great is that you're able to transport and receive items which would other wise be unobtainable. It's so popular that Gamefaqs users on the Animal Crossing Trading Board do it constantly. It's also a great way to break yourself into the game. Think of it as...the more people play this game...the better it gets for you.

As the game progresses things start to change, say for example seasons. When it's summer it's clear and sunny everyday and it never rains and then when winter hits you can expect a long couple of months with lots of snow everywhere you go. It's a great season effect which changes the mood of the game all the time. There's also the chance of having your friends and neighbors moving in and out of your town by the choices you make, and you can even change the town music to customize it to your favorite tunes, just don't expect no more than a few seconds of it in there though.

The graphics might seem a little primitive, but that's because it was expecting a release on the Nintendo64, but it never came, so instead Nintendo decided to push up to the Gamecube, which was a great decision. The game uses very bright colors and very simple shapes to create the game. There's also no slow down time, but why would there be some in a game with little to no action? Regardless of that fact this game runs very smooth with little to no glitches is what makes it so great. It's simplicity ensured the buyers that you won't be expecting any glitches unless you enter the secret code that enables the glitch to happen.

My most favorite aspect of this game is the ability to change what you wear. Sure you can buy clothes from Nook's store or your neighbors can give you one or you can get one from Gracie, but if you don't like anything they've provided you then what else can you do? That's right! You can design your own clothes! You can put anything you want on them from just simply keeping them a plain white, or creating something nice like a tribute shirt to Mario. Believe me it takes several hours to design one shirt if you aren't a pro at drawing, but the interface and tools used is very simple and easy to learn and is quite efficient. There are also pre made designs for you to work with and hey, if your designs look really good your neighbors will start to wear it also. Isn't it great you've started your own fashion design in your own town?

This game has lots of things to keep you busy and with the atmosphere of the game you never turn off your console without a smile on your face. This game is a great escape from the real world if life is really getting you down. Despite it's cute and bright colored appearance that would usually turn off most gamers, this game is just filled with things to do. It's a refreshing detour from all the usual killing everything in sight sort of games. If you need a break from the typical gun game or from life itself, then this is the perfect game for you. Even though a ton of cute animals are on the cover of this game it's still definitely worth checking out. Be warned though. You could be play this game for years.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 04/07/04