Animal Crossing
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| Animal Crossing | |
 | |
| Developer(s) | Nintendo |
| Publisher(s) | Nintendo |
| Release date | September 15, 2002 (NA) September 24, 2004 (EU) |
| Genre | Open-ended simulation |
| Mode(s) | 1-4 players alternating |
| Age rating(s) | ESRB: E PEGI: 3+ |
| Platform(s) | Nintendo Gamecube |
| Media | Gamecube Optical Disk |
| Input | Gamecube Controller Game Boy Advance w/ Game Boy Advance - Gamecube Link Cable |
| System requirements | 58-61 Memory Card Blocks |
| Credits | Soundtrack | Codes | Walkthrough | |
Animal Crossing takes a calmer approach to gaming. You receive a house, which you can decorate with furniture and other personal possessions. You earn money by doing odd jobs such as delivering packages for people, catching and selling fish and insects, and playing the turnip market. Though there are ending credits (available every Saturday by listening to KK Slider) the game never actually ends. One can live in his little town, make friends and enemies with any of the villagers, and profit off of his fruit farms forever.
A sequel was created for the Nintendo DS called Animal Crossing: Wild World. In addition, another sequel, for Wii, has been released named Animal Crossing City Folk.
Contents |
[edit] Characters
Animal Crossing had over two hundred characters, but only a few of them lived in anybody's town at any given time. The characters were all built off the same amazing AI engine. They had the ability to (somewhat) interpret letters you wrote to them, and you could built relationships with each one. Each character had a house designed to their personality, and their own specific manner of speaking. Each character had his or her own buzzword or catchphrase that they'd say a lot. There was also a cool setting that let the characters 'speak' what they were saying as 'Animalese', which was sort of a language. It basically replaced the standard beep of text being printed on screen with the sound of that letter, and the sound was made high or low depending on the character. For the most part, this sounded like gibberish because it went really fast, but you'd often be able to make out distinct sounds, like the animals saying your name or their catchphrase.
[edit] Real time
Animal Crossing took much of its gameplay from the time and date set on the GameCube's internal clock. The town would change from hour to hour, day to day, season to season. It really takes at least a year to appreciate the game in its entirety. Every day something new happens in the town and there are always new things to see and do. Certain days of the week would provide unique opportunities, like the ability to buy and sell turnips, or acquire new songs from KK Slider. Certain days of the year, like holidays, had special events that would happen. For example, on Halloween you could buy candy and go trick-or-treating. There would often be scheduled events like competitions or races.
[edit] Community
Animal Crossing was literally all kinds of awesome. As if the real time endless game thing wasn't cool enough, you could trade items with people over the Internet. A password system let people trade and send gifts to each other. You could send a gift by typing in the name and town of the person you were sending it to (like an address) and then you'd get a password. If the person you were sending the gift to (or anyone who happened to have the same name and town name) used the password, they would receive the gift.
There was also a (less used) system that let you visit other people's towns by putting two memory cards in at the same time. This was great, because you could pick all the fruit in your friends town and take it home, where you could sell it for a much higher price. Each town had its own kind of fruit, and different towns had different fruits. Foreign fruits sold for more than native fruits. The community feature could let you plant exotic trees in your own personal orchard and harvest them daily to earn money. This money would then fuel your endless vanity and allow you to decorate your house with all kinds of awesome junk.
Arguably, the only flaw in this game was the strong community features but lack of real time online interaction. Luckily, this has been done away with in the sequel, Animal Crossing Wild World.
[edit] Cheating
One of the major downfalls of Animal Crossing, or rather, a player of Animal Crossing, was the ease and availability of cheating. Changing the GameCube clock is a snap, so it was simple to trick the game and experience upcoming events now instead of waiting for them. You could also do something with negative consequences, such as turning a cool item into a password, and then reset the game, so you still have the password and the object.
However, there were draw backs to doing this. If you accidentally set your clock for, say, yesterday, your town will have aged a year (minus one day) and there's nothing you can do about it.
Also, if you tried the reset trick, Mr. Resetti would give you a long, long, long lecture on cheating, ethics, your resetting matters, and how kids are so lazy now-a-days.
[edit] Trivia
Animal Crossing is a port of the Nintendo 64 version that was released in Japan (Animal Forest), and as such, the game file itself is very small. In fact, the entire game is loaded into memory from the very start of the game. One can open the disc cover and take out the Animal Crossing disc while playing the game without experiencing any gameplay issues. Because of this, there is no loading time other than at the beginning of the game.
However, a town save file is so massive that the game actually comes with a free memory card 59 at retail that has a special Animal Crossing Sticker depicting Rover and a special green background.
