Animal Crossing

Welcome to Animal Crossing, where something happens every day-whether you’re here or not.

Animal Crossing was a game born from the 64DD. The extra space to for saving games led to the idea of a game that grows now only grows with the player, but also grows on its own, which led to a clock being implemented into the 64DD. As development of the 64DD struggled, many features were cut for the initial Japan-only N64 release.

There are a few different versions of Animal Crossing. For the original Japanese release, many of the original plans were implemented into the game, such as the museum and design shop, with the North American release adding some extra features, such as e-Reader support. The Japanese then had another release with massively increased e-Reader support (and some other changes), before finally Australia (and a year later, Europe) finally got the game, based on the North American version. While the E+ version does have an English patch, I opted for the PAL version due to understanding the holidays more and a sensible date format.

Animal Crossing isn’t a game you play in a single setting, but designed more for short visits multiple times a week over a long period of time – which is how I’m playing the game to get a close to authentic experience – I’ll be refraining with messing with the clock, which the game can sometimes tell you off for doing.

Animal Island

If you have a Game Boy Advance connected, you can visit a little tropical island. Here you can find some unique fruit and a special villager. There’s not a massive amount of stuff to do while there, but when you leave, you can transfer the island to a Game Boy Advance. Here, you can get them to eat fruit and leave items behind for them to use – they like fishing, for example. Improving their mood will make them leave bells and other surprises.

One slight issue with the GBA was its lack of storage, which meant that all data is lost when you turn it off. It does have a sleep mode to help conserve battery, although that probably doesn’t help if you notice your GBA is low on battery and changing them turns it off. Still, it’s a nice little feature.

NES games.

[screenshot]

As you play the game, you’ll sometimes discover NES consoles that come with a game. Put these in your house and you’ll be able to play them – as in properly play the full, original games. You can even transfer the games to a Game Boy Advance to take with you (until you turn the power off). Sometimes these are in the shop, some had to be scanned via eReader, one can only be found on the island and one can only be obtained by cheating (or using an unreleased password in the Japanese version).

There was also a NES without a game which held an interesting secret that wasn’t uncovered until much later. This special NES can load any properly formatted NES ROM file from the memory card. People found references to this being done in the N64 version (with special Controller Paks with Ice Climber being in a competition), but it was never officially used for the GameCube version.

The NES game functionality unfortunately never returned in later games due to services like the Virtual Console.

Remake or remaster?

It would be nice for a version with the e+ content added into the main game, but I don’t think Nintendo will ever re-release an Animal Crossing game.

Official Ways to get the game

There’s no official way to play Animal Crossing.

GameCube Games by Date

2001: Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec

2002: Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May, Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec

2003: Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May, Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec

2004: Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May, Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec

2005: Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May, Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec

2006: Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May, Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec

2007: Mar, Jun, Aug

animal crossing life sim nintendo