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{{main|List of characters in Animal Crossing series}}
{{main|List of characters in Animal Crossing series}}
There are 319 characters in the ''Animal Crossing'' series including the 17 original ''Animal Crossing'' characters.
There are 319 characters in the ''Animal Crossing'' series including the 17 original ''Animal Crossing'' characters.
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==Reception==
==Reception==

Revision as of 01:49, 23 November 2007

For other uses, see Animal Crossing (video game) (disambiguation).
Animal Crossing
File:Acbox.jpg
Developer(s)Nintendo Entertainment Analysis and Development
Publisher(s)Nintendo
Designer(s)Shigeru Miyamoto
Katsuya Eguchi
Hisashi Nogami
Takashi Tezuka
EngineAnimal Forest
Platform(s)Nintendo 64 (Japan only), Nintendo GameCube
ReleaseNintendo 64

April 14 2001 (Japan)

Nintendo GameCube

14 December 2001 (JP) (+)
15 September 2002 (NA)
27 June 2003 (JP) (e+)
17 October 2003 (AU)

24 September 2004 (EU)
Genre(s)Life simulation game
Role-playing game
Communication Adventure
Mode(s)Single player

Animal Crossing, known as Dōbutsu no Mori (どうぶつの森, lit. "Animal Forest") in Japan, is a life simulation video game developed by Nintendo EAD and published by Nintendo. It bears many similarities to the toy line Sylvanian Families, animals in a small village traveling around and living their day to day lives, and the RPG video games released by Epoch Co. It was first released in Japan for the Nintendo 64 on April 14th, 2001. Due to limited sales because of the drastically decreasing N64 market, the game went unreleased for the N64 outside of Japan and was ported to the Nintendo GameCube in Japan on December 14 2001; North America on September 15 2002; Australia on October 17 2003; and Europe on September 24 2004. The Japanese GameCube version lacks e-Reader support, a feature found in the North American and Australian versions. A version of Animal Crossing was released in Japan with e-Reader support on June 27 2003.

A Nintendo DS sequel, Animal Crossing: Wild World, was released in December 2005. Nintendo has planned a third Animal Crossing title for the Wii.

History

File:DnM N64 Front.jpg
Nintendo 64 box art.

Dōbutsu no Mori Plus, the Nintendo GameCube version of Dōbutsu no Mori, was released on December 14th, 2001, only eight months after the original game. This version contains extra features that had to be left out in the Nintendo 64 version, and also utilizes the GameCube's built-in clock to keep track of the date and time. The Nintendo 64 version had required the player to input the date and time each time they played. With the use of the GameCube's clock, time passes in the game even when the game isn't being played. This led to the games' slogan, "It's playing, even when you're not". Dōbutsu no Mori Plus (for the GameCube) cost 7,140 yen and sold 92,568 copies during its first week of sale in Japan.[1][2]

When Nintendo decided to port Dōbutsu no Mori to the Nintendo GameCube system, the American version, Animal Crossing had much more than the Japanese version Dōbutsu no Mori Plus, in part because of the immense translation that Nintendo undertook when translating Dōbutsu no Mori from Japanese to English. Not only did thousands of lines of text have to be translated, but the translators had to create new holidays and items. Nintendo Japan was so impressed with the results of the translation done by Nintendo of America's Treehouse division that they translated NOA's version back into Japanese and released it as Dōbutsu no Mori e-Plus. Dōbutsu no Mori e-Plus was released in Japan on June 27, 2003, and sold 91,658 copies during its first week of sale.[3][2]

Gameplay

Animal Crossing is a social simulator that has been dubbed a "communication game" by Nintendo. It is an open-ended game, where a player can live a separate life with little preset plot or mandatory tasks. Players assume the role of a new resident to the town. The gender of your character depends on the answers given to Rover on the train. It is rumored that this character will be a playable character in the upcoming game Super Smash Bros. Brawl. If so, players may be able to change the gender as a costume. There are, also, certain tasks which players can choose to complete, and goals they can choose to achieve. The game is played out in real-time - observing days, weeks, months, and even years - 29, according to Nintendo- using the GameCube's internal clock. There are many actual events and holidays spanning the year, including Independence Day, Halloween, and Thanksgiving, among others. Other regular activities such as early morning fitness classes and fishing tournaments are included in the game as well.

House improvements

The main goal of the game, given to the player during the game's opening cut scenes, is to increase the size of the player's house. This house serves as the repository for furniture and other items bought or acquired during the course of the game. It can be customized in a number of ways, including roof color, furniture, what music (if any) plays when a player enters the house, wallpaper and flooring. House expansions grant the player a larger house, and thus more space to store items or more decorative flexibility.

Tom Nook, a tanuki in the Japanese version and a raccoon in the American and European version, runs the local store. At the beginning of the game, he gives the player their first house with a mortgage of about 19,000 Bells (the kind of money used in the game). The house is comically small, furnished only with tasteless wallpaper, flooring, a box, a journal, and a radio. Upon paying off the entire debt, part of which is done through a part-time job to Tom Nook, the player is 'offered' to expand the house. In reality, the house is upgraded even if you say no. This cycle repeats itself 4 times with the mortgage significantly increasing each time except for the basement. The first player in an Animal Crossing village to completely pay off all mortgage loans will receive a golden statue that is erected in their honor in front of the train station. The second player to do so will receive a silver statue, the third a bronze, and the fourth one is made of jade.

Though Tom Nook is more than willing to sell furniture and other items to fill a house, there are many other ways to acquire furnishings. A trip to the town dump may yield items that were unwanted by someone else and are thus free. The police station has a lost and found department run by Officer Booker, who will allow anyone to claim any item that has ended up there. Other villagers that live nearby may need favors and will reward the player for their help. Players can even obtain new furniture items by shaking trees until a piece of furniture falls from one. The downside to tree shaking, however, is that bees may come out instead. If this happens, a player must run into the nearest house or building. Skilled players may spin the bees away with an umbrella or catch the swarm using a net. If you fail this you will be stung.

The Animal Crossing village initially contains six villagers, and more will move in or out depending on the player's actions. All of the villagers are animals, hence the game's name, and each has their own small home that the player can visit. There are many possible interactions between the player and the villagers. These include talking, trading furniture and other objects, completing tasks for rewards, and writing letters. Villagers will also interact with each other. There are roughly 200 villagers, but no more than fifteen can ever live in a town at once. Each villager also has a catch phrase that they use regularly, often relating to the type of animal they are. For example, a cow might say, "moo-la-la" or "how now". These phrases can be changed at times if the villager asks the player to do so. Villagers can also often pick up their neighbors' catch phrase. When characters go in their house and go to sleep, players cannot visit the villagers or go in their houses. Some villagers sleep early and wake early, and some villagers go to bed just as the sun is coming up. Each villager has a distinct personality and a villager's personality not only determines when they sleep, but it also determines most of their behavior, especially their interactive behavior with the user-created characters.

If the player does not interact with individual villagers on a regular basis, they are likely to leave the village. The village also has a level of attractiveness that depends on certain parameters that the game itself never explicitly describes to the player, but hints are given to the player by a spirit living in the village fountain, and players have discovered that the main factor is the density of trees.[4] A high level of attractiveness will draw new animals to live in the village.

Included NES games

Nearly two dozen NES games are available to collect in Animal Crossing. Animal Crossing is packaged with a memory card that gives the player two games. Others are acquired in various ways.

The games available are:

Several of the above games are not available through normal gameplay. However, four NES games are near impossible to obtain without using the e-Reader device or Action Replay (or similar cheat devices). These games are:

The Japanese versions of Animal Crossing lack Soccer and Excitebike, and instead feature the early Famicom versions of Gomoku Narabe and Mahjong.

The other games in the differing versions are exactly the same, totaling exactly 19 games in all GCN versions.

Clu Clu Land D, Soccer, Donkey Kong 3, Donkey Kong Jr. and Punch-out were initially unavailable in-game, however Nintendo of America and Nintendo of Europe later released codes that could be used in the game to unlock them.

Advance Play is when the player links his or her Game Boy Advance to his or her GameCube to download the NES game to the handheld temporarily. This is not available for games that were originally produced for the Famicom Disk System, such as Clu Clu Land D and The Legend of Zelda. It is also not available for games larger than 192 KiB, such as Punch-Out!! and Wario's Woods, which cannot fit into the GBA's RAM. All other games can be played on Advance Play, but they are slightly stretched on the Game Boy's display (as in PocketNES) and are limited to one player.

Multiplayer

There are several types of multiplayer game play in Animal Crossing.

In the first, up to four players can create their own houses in a single village. No two players can play at the same time, but by taking turns they can each affect the village in their own ways, communicate with each other via the town board and mail, and share in the experiences of the village.

In the second, two players can play NES games together. All that this requires is two controllers and a compatible NES game (keep in mind that not all of the NES games have the two-player option). Once the controllers are in the players are able to select the NES game they want to play. Once the game is started, players can select the two-player option and start playing multiplayer.

A third type of multiplayer play consists of trading items with another player using a system of codes. Tom Nook operates what is in effect a furniture hawala through which a player can "ship" an item to another player in another town. The player hands an item to Tom Nook and specifies the recipient's name and town, and Tom Nook gives the player a 28-character code. In the other town, the player tells the code to Tom Nook and receives the item. Another way to trade items is to simply travel to a friend's town and drop the item the player wants to give them. This prevents the loss of the item code which must be memorized or written down.

Traveling

Animal Crossing has a traveling system that allows one character to visit a friend's village. This system is quite simple, but does require an additional memory card with Animal Crossing game data, and at least 3 blocks of memory open in order to save "travel data".

Players go to the train station and tell porter that they'd like to take a trip. The train will arrive and they climb aboard. This saves "travel data" on the other memory card. Players then arrive at the other town.

No two towns are alike, so players will probably want to stop by the Police Station to get a map of the town they are visiting. Players can meet new villagers, shop at Nook's (which will have different stock), shop at the Able Sisters (which may have different patterns) and do almost anything else that they can do in their own town. There are only a few things visitors cannot do, and they all center around the idea that the character is visiting another town, which means that the character does not have the same privileges and does not receive the same services that they would in their own town. For example, another town's Nook will not travel to paint a roof, and so players cannot buy paint in another town.

There are many advantages to visiting another town and having players visit yours. A different town may have different fruit (each town has a "native fruit") and players can pick fruit and plant fruit trees in their town. Players may also be able to find items that are rare in their town very easily in another town. Also, having a visitor buy something at Nook's shop is the only way to get Tom Nook's final expansion, Nookington's.

After visiting another town, one of the villagers will move to the visited town. If the visited town has a full fifteen villagers, this will prompt someone from the visited town to move away.

Villagers can move even if none of the user-created characters travel to another town. If a memory card for another town is in the second slot in the Nintendo GameCube, when a villager leaves, they move to the other town instead of just moving out.

Only CPU-controlled villagers can move. Player characters cannot.

To trade items, it is simplest to just drop the item outdoors in one's friend's town. For items that cannot be dropped, it is possible to put them in your gyroid and offer them for sale, or give them away. When visitors come to town, they can stop by the gyroid and buy fish, bugs, balloons or other items that cannot be dropped outdoors.

Animal Crossing also has a popular Offline Item Send & Receive feature. Through the use of codes customized by Player and Town name, players can transfer certain items to each other.

Using the Game Boy Advance

Game Boy Advance connectivity can play a role in Animal Crossing for those who own one. To link the two, one needs a Nintendo GameCube Game Boy Advance Cable.

In Animal Crossing, each town has its own tropical island. It can be accessed by plugging in a Game Boy Advance with a GameCube Link Cable and going to the southeastern part of town where the dock is. Players will meet a friendly old Sea Turtle named Kapp'n (a pun on 'kappa', a turtle-shaped imp from Japanese mythology) there, waiting inside a small row boat. Kapp'n is as generous as the other residents of the town, and will ferry players across to the island for free, while singing bizarre sea-shanties and making his trademark ribald, inappropriate remarks. Arriving at the island one will see a new island exlusive animal roaming the tiny island and you can become friends with him/her. The island has a new type of fruit, coconuts, that can be knocked down and taken back to town to be planted there. Players can also decorate a small communal beach house and fish at the shores. By staying there for a long period of time, (only when it is sunny, not raining.) players will get a tan.

Upon leaving the player can download the island to their GBA. The player can then give fruit to the villager and the villager will drop bells, if the player then returns to the island they can pick up the money that has been dropped. Each possible islander has a different favorite fruit and they will give more money if they are given their favorite.

e-Reader compatibility

Animal Crossing is compatible with the e-Reader (US & JP Versions Only). One can use e-Reader cards to get new items, including NES games, a new town tune, or a shirt design. Totaka's song plays when scanning certain cards.[5]

Characters

Main article: List of characters in Animal Crossing series

There are 319 characters in the Animal Crossing series including the 17 original Animal Crossing characters.

Reception

Animal Crossing was named the 7th best game of all time on the GameCube by the television show X-Play on the television network G4TV. According to the Guinness World Records:Gamers Edition, Animal Crossing is also the world's longest lasting video game. The video game only lasts for over 30 years. [citation needed]

Reviews

Game Rankings currently scores it 87%.

Notes and references

  1. ^ Animal Forest + Development Summary, N-Sider Media
  2. ^ a b The Games, The Animal Forest
  3. ^ Animal Crossing N-Sider Media
  4. ^ ArchonBasic. Well Guide. Last modified on February 14 2003; retrieved on March 20 2007.
  5. ^ Totaka AC e-reader - Totaka's song in e-reader.
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