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The Magic of Animal Crossing

When Animal Crossing was released for the GameCube, I was living in a gaming media blackout situation. All I knew about the game was what was shown in the reality show-style advertisements for it on a GameCube demo disc I got from a friend who worked at Toys R Us. In these humorous ads, people in foam fabric costumes talked about moving into town with their friends and the general presentation made it seem like a spoof of shows like The Real World.

These were simpler days for me, and the fact that I still lived with my parents meant I had a lot more disposable income. The first time I saw Animal Crossing in a store, I purchased it. The first time I played it, I found it to be overly cute and charming. The game set itself up nicely and everything it presented fit perfectly into place in its small world. Characters in the town had immediately recognizable personality types. Some I instantly loved while others instantly annoyed me. It was a lot like this thing called real life, only cuter.

It was Animal Crossing that eventually prompted me to purchase Nintendo’s poorly supported eReader accessory for the Game Boy Advance. By using it in conjunction with the GBA-to-GameCube connector cable, players could scan in special Animal Crossing cards and those in turn would unlock special items and features in the GameCube game. It was a gimmick that worked on me, as I traded in a few older (and bad) games I had reviewed in return for store credit and more cards. I have all these cards somewhere still.

And then there’s the NES game component of Animal Crossing. The idea that the game would occasionally reward players with NES games as gifts – games that the player could actually boot up and play while still in the world of Animal Crossing – was brilliant. Sadly it’s an element that’s missing from the DS and Wii versions of the game, though understandably because their inclusion would undermine Nintendo’s Virtual Console. I did, however, hypothesize before the Wii game’s release that it would have the means of accessing Virtual Console channels from within the game world. This hope fizzled out, but I still think it would have been a great inclusion.

In November of last year, Nintendo released Animal Crossing: City Folk for Wii. I ended up getting the game just a few months ago, but have never played it. Around the time it was sent, however, my wife Less Lee was obsessed with a Facebook game called Pet Society. From what I’ve gathered the game involves players taking care of a cute animal, unlocking furniture and accessories, and doing many more generally cute things. In essence, it’s a great feel-good kind of game. I was amazed at how much she kept going back to Pet Society. After all, my wife doesn’t play many videogames. The last one she played was Wii Sports, and before that it was the arcade version of Centipede.

I figured that rather than experience the world of Animal Crossing for the third time, I’d let her take a turn at it and watch how she picked up the controls and interacted with the game. Not surprisingly, she picked up the game without the need for any coaching, and soon enough she was planting flowers, picking weeds, buying furniture, and writing letters to the people of her town. It was then that I began to appreciate the series on a whole new level. I have become so used to formulating opinions on games based on my own experiences from them that I forget that another way of gauging a game’s appeal is to see how other people play it, and seeing what kinds of faces they might make along the journeys the game takes them on. With Animal Crossing City Folk, Less Lee’s looks of concentration punctuate otherwise calm and joyful expressions. The game also evokes a good amount of laughs thanks to the humorous characters about town and their cleverly-written dialogue.

I’d certainly enjoy City Folk if I were to start up my own game. However the fact that I have seen and played earlier games in the series gives me a certain disadvantage in that I know exactly what kinds of events to expect. The element of discovery would be missing for the most part, and with Animal Crossing discovery is a huge part of the fun. It’s easy for people who are familiar with the series to pass it by as being the same old stuff as previous titles with a few updates thrown in. But it seems to me that it’s best to experience Animal Crossing with a fresh perspective and not as someone who has let their previous towns succumb to neglect.

Posted in DS, Editorial, GameCube, Wii |