Animal Crossing

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

JP release: 14th December 2001
NA release: 16th September 2002
AU release: 17th October 2003
EU release: 24th September 2004
Developer: Nintendo
Publisher: Nintendo
NGC Magazine Score: 90%
Mods Used: Widescreen Code

Animal Crossing was a game born from the 64DD. The extra space for saving games led to the idea of a game that not 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 played the game to get a close to authentic experience – No messing with the clock, which is something the game can sometimes tell you off for doing.

Interactions

As you spend time on your island, you’ll meet other residents that you can talk to. These are brief conversations, and you’ll sometimes be asked stuff. One surprising thing is how mean some of the villagers can be, although they’ll likely be nice again the following day. One problem I had was that you can often get the same conversations from multiple villagers on the same day – they’re often lumped into personality types, which will act in the same way.

You can also type out letters to send to the residents, where they’ll respond. No matter what, I couldn’t get a single response other than “I can’t understand you”, no matter how simple I made my letters. It just doesn’t seem to work at all.

Still, it’s nice talking to them all each day, and new residents will move into your village over time.

Events

Events are a large part of Animal Crossing. On certain days, like Halloween or Christmas, there will be an in-game event. It’s wonderful being able to attend these events, but if you’re busy in real life, you either have to miss it completely or mess with the clock on your system.

While this goes against the spirit of the game, it really is necessary to get the full enjoyment if you can only play it later on at night, as you’ll find many things closed and your residents asleep. The real time aspect of Animal Crossing is both a blessing and a curse, but I believe a middle ground could be found as the game could cater to the user more.

Collecting

There are lots of bugs, fish and fossils to find in your village, some of which only appear at certain times of the year. Your village has a museum that you can donate one of each animal or item to, and exploring the museum lets you read up more on each object. It’s something that’s great to work towards as the years go by.

There’s also a lot of furniture to collect. A few items will be available from Nook’s shop each day, while sometimes you’ll receive some as gifts from animals or events. Sometimes, you’ll talk to an animal and they’ll force you to give up or trade your new item, which can be frustrating.

Your furniture can be placed in your home, which you can pay to make bigger or add more rooms, but there’s only limited space for your furniture. Luckily, once you have an item once, you can then re-order it from the catalogue at Nok’s shop and be sent it in the post.

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

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.

Overall

Animal Crossing is a rather wonderful experience. It’s calm and relaxing and something nice to visit occasionally. There are some annoying aspects, as you need to decide if you’re going to miss events or mess with the game. Animal Crossing can also feel depressing to come back to if you leave the game for a while, as animals will leave and weeds will cover your village the next time you return.

But these aspects are what makes the game feel alive, so you make do for the good moments.

Great

It’s utterly charming and refreshingly gentle – the point is not to get to the next level or to open up unlockable content and claim high scores. It’s about making your own entertainment, literally playing the game how you want to play it, with pleasure derived from the situations you create. Under the right conditions (ie, with friends who’ll play it too) it’s hugely absorbing and laugh-out-loud fun; indeed, the reason we’ve enjoyed it so much is that it’s easy for anyone in the office to simply boot up the game and chop gown Geraint’s trees, for example, or leave threatening messages.
Jes Bickham, NGC Magazine #98

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.