Nerd Mentality

Fans of Nintendo's offbeat GameCube hit Animal Crossing can look forward to another hundred hours or so of obsessive-compulsive excellence when the DS follow-up, Wild World, arrives next month. After sitting down with the game for the first time outside the manic confines of the E3 2005 show floor, it's clear that Wild World is likely to be an even more dangerous timesuck than the GC versions. At least the first game had to be hooked up to a TV; now that it's gone portable you can chip away at your debt to that jerk Tom Nook any and everywhere.

AC aficionados and addicts will feel right at home with this pseudo-sequel. Besides a few tweaks and an obvious graphical downgrade, the experience is remarkably similar to that offered by the original. Players create a small village and take control of the new boy (or girl) in town. Each cartridge can store the data for one town and four characters, who share a house together. (Inactive characters sleep while the other plays).

There's little in the way of concrete goals in AC, at least in the traditional video game sense; there are no monsters to defeat, no princesses to rescue, no evil empires to overthrow. Instead, the game is about the day-to-day routine of your new home: Interacting with other villagers, helping around the town, and acquiring material goods to display in your ever-growing house. Think Harvest Moon without the matrimonial ambition, or The Sims without the annoying bathroom break meter. You're free to roam around town at all hours of the day; thanks to the internal DS calendar, day shifts to night... and, as your obsession becomes a habit, seasons change as well.

The changes of clock and calendar are much more visible this time around courtesy of the DS's eponymous dual screens. Gameplay and interactivity are limited to the bottom screen, and your character only appears on the top screen when you pull up a menu. The upper screen simply shows the sky, which changes color and intensity as the sun and moon travel their diurnal paths. The entirety of the game can be controlled with the DS stylus, although traditionalists are free to use the old-fashioned D-pad-and-button combo.

The name of the game for Wild World is "refinement." Nearly every major flaw or shortcoming of the GameCube version appears to have been addressed in the DS remake. The tedium of typing out letters to your fellow townsfolk with the GC controller is handily negated here; penning a missive via stylus is quick and easy. And the general pointlessness of sharing heartfelt correspondence with inane, babbling computer-controlled animal people has been addressed by the system's multiplayer component. Now you can communicate with real people... admittedly, they might be babbling idiots, too.

Wild World supports both ad-hoc and online connectivity, which is much more robust than the incredibly limited item swapping offered in the last game. This time you can let your friends loose in your carefully manicured village and even chat with them while they're around. Fortunately, you don't have to worry about just any random fool running roughshod through the virtual home you've created for yourself -- as with all DS online games, only people who have your unique friend code can visit. Likewise, you can only trek to others' homes with their codes. In keeping with the traditional nature of AC, a day trip is no casual feat; it requires a fairly detailed process which involves canine policemen Copper and Booker, who stand guard at the city's gateway to the north. Once the police have opened the town gates, anyone on your friends list is free to enter your town.

There are quite a few other familiar faces in Wild World. Tom Nook returns as the mercenary shopkeeper who relentlessly locks you into a seemingly endless life of debt and acquisition; doddering turtle Tortimer serves again as the mayor. The Able Sisters still run a clothing boutique where you can create customized duds. And Blathers is still a ranty museum curator who will happily collect whatever fossils, fish, insects and artwork you can dig up.

Wild World offers new characters to meet as well -- most of whom go hand-in-hand with new functions in the game. A fellow named Brewster runs a coffee shop in the museum's basement. Meanwhile, the building's upper floor has been converted into an observatory run by Celeste, a female owl who will allow you to watch the sky and create new constellations by connecting stars. These are displayed on the DS's upper screen at night, and like most of AC's features, there's no real point to them. But the astronomy system is nevertheless incredibly detailed: The sky shifts as days pass, and Celeste will happily tell you when your stellar creations will reach zenith.

Most of your time in this Animal Crossing will be spent as before: Digging holes, pulling weeds, planting fruit and saplings, writing letters and running errands for your scandalously lazy neighbors. Unfortunately, there are no NES games to collect (though Nintendo will happily sell you downloads on Revolution!).

But don't despair. The best part of Animal Crossing has been preserved for Wild World -- there'll be Gyroids (those dancing, singing cactus statues) aplenty to collect. And needless to say, Wild World's flexibility and openness means enormous potential for entertaining abuse. We checked out some fellow Ziff homesteads and found that someone at EGM had taught the hapless animal citizens to call other players "ass pirates." And we shudder to imagine the constellations we'll see in others' towns.

Online play more than makes up for a lack of NES games. While collecting them was a great feat, I never ended up playing them all that much. Online play and the extremely new custimizable characters is just what this needs to come back.

November 4, 2005 - Animal Crossing. It's one of the Nintendo DS system's most anticipated games of the year, and one of the most difficult title to write about after only about a fifteen minutes hands-on.

The Nintendo DS version of the game was in final form at this week's press summit at Nintendo's Redmond Washington headquarters, and we had the opportunity to take the virtual world for a bit of a spin. The problem: there's so much to do and experience in the Animal Crossing design that it's impossible to see enough in such a short amount of time.

The final version at the press event did show us that the Nintendo DS game will indeed be just as expansive and extensive as the GameCube title that popularized the series in the US. The goal remains the same: there is no goal. Animal Crossing fits within Nintendo's strategy of offering unique videogame experiences that aren't the typical fare, and Animal Crossing: Wild World fits that slot nicely.

In case you missed out on the awesomeness that was the original Animal Crossing, the design throws you, a human, into a world of anthropomorphic animals, giving you the ability to live in peace and harmony with the ducks, horses, cows, kangaroos, sheep...just as long as you're just as nice a neighbor. Running errands, writing letters, helping out your fellow animal is integral in keeping a happy village, and the more responsible a citizen you are, the more popular you become, and the more liveable your village ends up.

The Nintendo DS game takes the design of the GameCube version and uses it as a foundation for a much more rewarding experience. The Nintendo DS system works unbelievably well for the game's design, as the touch screen makes all the difference in the world - it's now a piece of cake to manage inventory, paint custom patterns, and type up notes for your friends by using the accuracy of the Nintendo DS touch screen and stylus combination. The designers even make the game play exclusively with the stylus; sure, you can move around with the D-pad, but it becomes a hassle to constanty swap the stylus in and out of the hand for specific tasks. Using the stylus exclusively streamlines the whole process.

The Animal Crossing designers improved on the original GameCube design. Fossils, for example, no longer have to be dropped in the mail for the museum curator to identify...now you can simply hand it over and he'll tell you exactly what it is and file it away into your collection. Tom Nook's store is bigger and better with an incentive points program to keep you buying. Garbage is now taken away to a recycling bin instead of an outdoor dump. It's a lot of little things that makes this game a much more fulfilling experience.

Of course, the big deal is the Internet connectivity, where friends can visit your village and hang out to trade items and chat. It's a big deal that offers some haunting possibilities: just like in the GameCube game, when a friend visits your village, his appearance might sway one of your neighbors to move to his village instead. That ex-neighbor will take with him conversations you held with him, letters you mailed to him, or even the custom pattern you created for his shirt. The potential for that character to move on from system to system virally, ending up in villages of people you don't even know is almost creepily cool.

The connectivity support in Animal Crossing is as seamless as it can get, though it does slow down the already laid-back pace of the game. First, players must go to their village gate and open up their town for visitors. When someone pops in for a visit, the game halts to welcome him into your town. If he leaves, the game stops again to watch him disappear.

Animal Crossing: Wild World looks and sounds incredibly close to the GameCube version, minus a lower resolution visual appearance and a slightly slower framerate for the 3D engine. But the game's not about its visuals, it's about what you can do in this fantasy world.. And unfortunately, the few minutes we had with the game at Nintendo's summit isn't nearly enough to scratch the surface.

Mahatma Ghandi

I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.

Brawl- 2320-5856-7241

Fossils, for example, no longer have to be dropped in the mail for the museum curator to identify...now you can simply hand it over and he'll tell you exactly what it is and file it away into your collection.

Oh man, thank god. That was one of the most annoying things about the GCN game, I hated mailing those things off.

I might as well just surgically attach my DS to my body right now, save me some time later. Being able to play AC any time, any place is like being able to suck your own dick. No reason for anything else in the world....

Mahatma Ghandi

I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.

Brawl- 2320-5856-7241

Keazu

I don't remember, do you have to tell the gatekeepers to let someone in? I don't want to say my password on here and get random noobs.

Just PM your password
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MGM Bill and End RIC

TendoGamer

I've lost count of how many shirts you've ruined over the past six years with that tic of yours.

¿umop apisdn

^^ The PM password would only work up till Aipotu started selling our codes to the Primary School kids in exchange for lunches.....

I won't sell them to the little kiddies, PROMISE









... Unless they have lunchables or fruit by the foot.

Barry2NintendoDS

Online play more than makes up for a lack of NES games. While collecting them was a great feat, I never ended up playing them all that much. Online play and the extremely new custimizable characters is just what this needs to come back.

No NES games = uncertainty about purchase |:[

Balloon Fight was like, the only reason I turned the game on half the time.

Pokemorpher1

Just PM your password

I really don't want to do that for everyone, I just want my question answered.
___________________

Mahatma Ghandi

I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.

Brawl- 2320-5856-7241

Deacon

No NES games = uncertainty about purchase |:[

Balloon Fight was like, the only reason I turned the game on half the time.

yeah but dude, you can get a faux hawk in this game. faux hawks>balloon fight.
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That ex-neighbor will take with him conversations you held with him, letters you mailed to him, or even the custom pattern you created for his shirt. The potential for that character to move on from system to system virally, ending up in villages of people you don't even know is almost creepily cool.

It's wierd to think one of my in game neighbours could end up being anybodys. If I end up with a prick of a neighbour who came from someone elses town it would be interesting to trace him back to his original game and see where he originally came. Who knows some stuff we design might spread insanely through the network.
I could be the next Vivian Westwood

Deacon

No NES games = uncertainty about purchase |:[

Balloon Fight was like, the only reason I turned the game on half the time.

totally. i rocked the dk jr. math on ac more than anything else.

but i'm still in. I GUESS>

Cody

totally. i rocked the dk jr. math on ac more than anything else.

but i'm still in. I GUESS>

I was a Clu Clu Land man myself.

But yeah, there's no question that this game will be mine.
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'Cause every inch you see is bruised

matthew

Is a friend code thread such a good idea.

Has anybody heard anything about blocking people?

I know that you can lock certain friends in so that they cant be removed, and that you can remove other friends from the list whenever you feel like it. Like, say you want to keep a certain friend code no matter what. You lock it in the list, and it won't go anywhere, even if you exceed the list limit.
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