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Here is some unverified rumor stuff about Animal Crossing for the Nintendo Wii. It looks like they are looking at more functionality with Nintendo’s connectivity. This is an interview with Katsuya Eguchi, who was the developer for Animal Crossing for the Gamecube and DS. He is excited to expand the capabilities of the game.

• Gamasutra – Interview – “Crossing into the Mainstream: Katsuya Eguchi on Animal Crossing”

If find it interesting that they talk about time traveling. If you change the date in your Nintendo DS, it will change the date in your town. You can go back in time and visit Nook’s store when he was selling something rare. You can travel forward in time and gather the interest on the money in the bank. There are consequences to time travel. The Animal Crossing forums are very split on time travel. Most people believe that it’s cheating, but it appears that the developers knew that time travel would be used:

“Well the first thing is that we knew people would be time traveling – and that’s ok! That’s one playstyle if people want to do it. But the thing to remember is that the game’s in a natural setting, so if you move forward in time, weeds are going to come, plants are going to die, and things like that. So what happened in this case is that when you turn your game on, the game saves where you are. So it saved his progress three weeks into the future, and the game considered that nothing had gotten water for three weeks. It’s not built in to punish people, it’s just by way of saying that time traveling is dangerous!”

Unless you count Daylight Savings, I have never time traveled with my Animal Crossing game. I avoid it mostly because I feel like my animal friends are real people and I imagine them sitting alone for months on end when I travel within an instant. I imagine them being alone and moving away thinking that I had abandoned them just because I wanted to buy a crown now that I finally have enough money to do it. It’s not worth it to me. The weeds and turnip prices aren’t as much of a deterrent as imagining my new animal friends alone and thinking I abandoned them.

Via: Animal Crossing (Wii) – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

It has been two weeks since I first laid my hands on Animal Crossing and I’ve done a lot of obsessing over it. You can read my intial review here:

• The Gadgets Page » Nintendo DS: Animal Crossing

Firstly, the fish and bugs are not limited resources. If you fish too much, you will end up catching more boots and tires than fish. It’s just the game’s way of telling you to put down the game for awhile. The reason my nephew didn’t have beautiful butterflies floating in the air everywhere is because I was playing at midnight. I should have looked on the ground for all those crickets I was hearing. They weren’t just sound effects, each cricket song represents a critter you can nab.

The reason why Las Habras looked so desolate and dry compared to my nephew’s abundantly green landscape is because my nephew had been playing with the date on the game. His game is in July (and about to celebrate the fireworks display), so the grass is a strange green and blue mixture. Additionally, because he had played with the date feature, he was overgrown with weeds. What I had mistaken for beautiful greenery is actually a sign that he had been “time traveling.”

If you pay off your house, you automatically get upgraded to a bigger house, even if you tell Tom Nook, the store manager, that you don’t want a bigger house. He thinks you’re just joking and builds you a new one anyway (complete with bigger mortgage). Strangely, I am able to enjoy the bigger house AND pay my “tithing” to the museum. The first of anything that I catch goes to the museum and all the rest goes to Tom Nook. I still leave the bugs alone, but that’s because they don’t bring in a lot of money and I really like to see the butterflies floating by.

It didn’t take me long until I was reeled into the materialism of the game. In fact, I like shopping in Animal Crossing far more than I do in real life. I found the group of furniture that appeals to my sense of utilitarianism the most and I have been madly collecting everything with the word “Ranch” in its name. I don’t have a house big enough to hold all of my furniture, so I’m storing it until I upgrade. My upgraded house will be done tomorrow. Tom Nook promised me.

You can design clothing for the game. I thought it was a silly feature and felt ripped off that I spent 350 Bells (money) for the privilege of designing without getting money for the designs that the villagers are wearing, but I tell ya, the second I saw one of my beloved animal friends wearing that design, I rushed to Able Sisters to fill their store. Now, all the animals are wearing shirts with big M’s on them. The M is for Merriton, the town name, by the way, NOT Moncur, like my nephew thought when he saw them.

Most importantly, I am strangely in love with all the characters in the game. They have a weird AI that is both repetitive and surprisingly random. They will ask you to give them new catchphrases. If they are cool enough, the catchphrases pass on like slang within communities does. I told Deena, my adorable duck friend, to say “AFLAC” after every sentence, now half my town is using that phrase. It’s really weird to hear a squirrel say “AFLAC.”

Saddest of all, I think I love this game because I’m so lonely. The game actually fools my brain into thinking I’ve socialized with people. Because I work at home, I no longer have any coworkers to commiserate with. I have been struggling with this loneliness for a few months now, but suddenly, I have a pocket full of friends that love me. All they need is a little bit of my time every day. Why aren’t real friends like that?

If you have been playing Animal Crossing and feel a little at a loss with all the things in the town to do, here are some excellent resources:

• The Official Animal Crossing for Nintendo DS Website

• IGN Guides: Animal Crossing: Wild World Guide (Nintendo DS)

• Gamespot FAQs – Animal Crossing: Wild World Walkthroughs and Guides

I found the FAQs on the Gamespot site to be the most helpful.

My nephew came over for a visit. I told him to bring all his DS and GBA games so I could try them out. I wanted to see if there was anything fun out there and his selection is completely different than mine. I played with about eight or nine games before I put his Animal Crossing into my DS Lite. I didn’t expect to like it anymore than the previous mind-numbing games. I was expecting Sims for kids. I hated the Sims, so I had zero hope for Animal Crossing.

How could I have been so wrong?!

My nephew hadn’t played in a long time and his town had fallen into disrepair with garbage all over the ground. Additionally, there were cool things to pick up (so many that my pockets were full very quickly). I played with his game Saturday evening for about four hours while he and Mike endlessly played the mini-games on Super Monkey Ball.

Sunday morning, I was on the phone with the local game store trying to find out how soon they opened. I had to wait until noon to buy my own copy of the game.

That’s when the really interesting thing happened…

I bought a used game at the store.

“Do you guys clear out these cards when you get them or am I going to have to delete the previous owner’s stuff?”

“We don’t do anything with them. If it doesn’t work, bring it back, but yes, you’ll probably have to delete the old stuff.”

“Does this come with the book?”

“Nope, just the card.”

I saved five dollars, but ended up not getting the book. Oh well, Mike assured me that if I get stuck, I can figure out things online.

When I put the used Animal Crossing game into my DS, I was confronted with a very different world than my nephew’s. It was a barren desert. “I guess you can choose the climate when you build your world, Mike. Look at this one it’s a desert.” There were few trees and lots of sand. It looked hot, barren and desolate; kind of like Northern Nevada.

I deleted the previous owner’s town, Las Habras, and waded through all the warnings about killing everyone in the town and never being able to get them back. I felt guilty for massacring the citizens of Las Habras, but I wanted to start a town of my own. One that wasn’t a desert and didn’t have litter and garbage all over.

When I set up my town, Merriton, I realized the truth. Las Habras wasn’t a desert because you get to choose the climate. Las Habras was a desert because the previous owner had killed all the insects, fish and plants. After playing with Las Habras and my nephew’s towns, I never even knew that there were insects that you could catch. I couldn’t find any because they had all been caught to extinction. Las Habras was a desert because some of the resources are limited. My nephew had garbage everywhere because his town was neglected. The only way to keep my town beautiful and garden-like was to limit how many fish and insects I caught. I would have to spend my money on plants and saplings instead of furniture, wall coverings, carpeting and clothing.

Saddest of all, when I visited my town’s museum, all I could find were empty exhibit halls. I walked past the empty aquariums and galleries with a sad sense of guilt. My job would be to fill the museum with all that my town had to offer.

I played for eight hours on Sunday just earning money to pay off my humble house (with no plans on upgrades) and catching fish and insects for the museum. When I catch a fish or insect that the museum already has, I release it. I haven’t figured out how to fill the museum with paintings yet and I haven’t bought a shovel yet, so I haven’t found any dinosaur fossils. My whole goal is to create a museum that makes me happy to visit and keep the town beautiful. I love to walk around and hear the crickets. I love to see the butterflies. I want them to stay in my town.

Most importantly, I don’t want Merriton to become a desert.

Whenever the other characters in the game tell me that my house is small or plain, I don’t care because I don’t want a cool house. In fact, when they give me things to put in my house, I either regift them or sell them. I’d rather sell wallpaper than fish. Once they are sold to Tom Nook, they are gone forever.

It seems like the fruit on the trees and the seashells are renewable resources, so that is how I have been paying off my house. I use the cherries and seashells to pay off my debt and the fish and insects go to the museum.

Why is it that I’m obsessed with Merriton, but I couldn’t have cared less about whether my Sims did their dishes or practiced for their acting career? Is it a world just different enough from my own world that I am completely lost? Is it the cute characters and how funny they are?

I don’t know. All I know is that I’m withholding Animal Crossing privileges until I get my real world chores done. It’s that motivating and enjoyable.

Update 10-16-06: After weeks of obsessing over this game, I have written a follow-up. You can read it here:

• The Gadgets Page » Nintendo DS: Animal Crossing Update