Animal Crossing GC - Nintendo's answer to "The Sims"

Author's Rating:

Pros: NES roms!! basically fully customizable, total control of your town

Cons: the real time clocking and certain events on certain days for some people

The Bottom Line: 
I'm donating all proceeds from this review to firestations across the nation for their dedication to not only their lives, but ours.

Author's Review
Intro:
This game has had 2 or 3 different titles since it's been released in Japan, including Animal Forest, Animal Forest Plus, and finally the final name chosen for the US release, Animal Crossing. This title was released on the N64 before it was eventually re-done and released on the Gamecube, however it was one of those Japan only exclusives that caused gamers who don’t import to cry out in despair. I was one of those gamers, and this was the type of game where you want to play it so bad that you’d import it just to play. Now that it’s made its way over to the good ole’ US of A, how does it stack up to the anticipation and hype that this game received?

Gameplay:

Addiction-- noun - A compulsive need for and use of a habit-forming substance (as heroin, nicotine, or alcohol) characterized by tolerance and by well-defined physiological symptoms upon withdrawal.

If Animal Crossing were to be described by one word, that would be “Addiction.” On a first glance, the game may look kiddy, girly, dumb, etc., however once the speed limit hits 60, Animal Crossing turns into more of a strong addiction than it does anything else( and by addiction I mean that not ONLY was it addicting, but is also a very fun game). Anyway, when you start the game up, you’ll see your character with horns protruding out of his head hopping on a train, and finding a seat. Not long after you’re seated, a little fellow named Rover( who is obviously some type of a dog) will start to talk to you, and this is where you’ll get all your Animal Crossing data set-up, which includes what YOUR name is( which can be anything less than 8 letters), what your town’s going to be called( again, a maximum of 8 letters), what the current time is, and also what the current date is. After about a 5 minute basic little tutorial, you’ll get off the train and meet up with the owner of the Village general store, who will set you up with your crib. You have a choice between 4 different houses with different colored roofs, however aside from the different floor plans( one has wood, the other metal plates, etc.), they’re all the same and are all tiny in size. So when you choose your house you’ll be asked if you want that one, and so you’ll pay for it and... UH OH, you’re about 17,000 somethin’ dollars short for your house, so now you get to find out how to work your debt off on your house.

Animal Crossing takes place in REAL TIME, which is counted by your Gamecube’s internal clock, so if it’s Saturday August 2, 2003 and it’s 2:30 pm...then that’s what day/month/date/year/time it’s going to be in Animal Crossing. In a literal sense, Animal Crossing has no story and therefore pretty much never ends, so if you’ve ever played The Sims on the PC( coming soon on PS2), then you’ve got the foundation of what Animal Crossing consists of( only AC does it SO much better). Anyway, when you’re first starting out the game, you’ll be in debt from you house, so you’ll do different “jobs” for Tom Nook(the owner of the General Store) to make money, and eventually you’ll get enough money to pay off your debt and you can be happy with your little house.

Speaking of moving into a new house, you’re sure to have neighbors right? Of course, and this town/village is no different. The town is split up into a sort of grid style placement, where you’ve got Acre/Grid A-1, B-1, C-1, etc. and when you’re actually moving, the screen will move with you until you come to the next grid line, where the screen will pause so it can switch over to the next grid, which is sort of like how the old Zelda games on NES-SNES were like. Your town consists of the basics; a few villagers, police station, museum, general store, dump, train station, and of course a Post Office where you can send letters to other people like your neighbors. Neighbors are randomly generated when you create a game, so some people will have different neighbors placed in different areas of their town, and could also have as few as 4 or as many as 7 from the start. Your neighbors are, like the title of the game, short little stubby representations of different animals including cats, cows, rabbits, dogs, frogs, bears, and a variety of other animals. These will be your neighbors throughout the game, and they can either hate you, or they can love you, it all depends on how you treat them.

In order to befriend your neighbors( or de-friend if you wanna be a bully) you’ll have to run errands for them, which most of the time includes going over to so and so’s house to get this and that, and return it back to them. Other errands may have you get something to eat for them, or even catching a fish for one of your neighbor’s niece so your neighbor doesn’t get into deep trouble for not catching his niece a fish. Whenever you complete an errand, you’ll be rewarded in a variety of ways which includes the AC currency, Bells, and also different articles of clothing, stationary paper, and other little items. So in other words, in order to make friends with your neighbors you must respect them like you would someone in real life. But you if you want to be a bully and don’t like your neighbor, you can disrespect them and get them to not like you so they’ll hopefully move out or something. So basically, Animal Crossing is a life inside a life. You basically have total control over everything you do, including what kind of clothes you wear!

After you pay off your home, then it’s yours right? Well, yea...so how about modeling it the way you want. Your house will have a mail box, which you will actually receive mail like on your birthday, you’ll receive letters wishing you a happy birthday, and some may even have a gift with them; or if you mailed someone like your neighbor in grid B-4, they’ll most likely mail you back. Another way to befriend your neighbors is to write them letters, mail it to them, and even include some type of gift with it such as a little piece of fruit and they’ll probably reply back with an even better gift. Anyway, on the other side of your front door, you’ve got your own personal Gyroid, which looks like a small little brown cactus. Your Gyroid can be used to store items( up to four), set a message for anyone who comes to your door, save, and do other various “nifty” things. Whatever items you store in it, you can either set them to display so no one can take or buy them, however you can also make somewhat of a profit by setting a price on any of the items that you want to sell. Now IN your house, you’ll receive different items MANY different ways in the game, however getting some of them can be very tricky. You can adjust the inside of your house to any of your likings, including what kind of flooring you want to use, and even what kind of wallpaper you use. When you first start the game your room is going to be pretty bare, but once you start rollin’ and acquire more and more items, then you can fill your house up pretty fast with TVs, stereos, dressers, tables, and other little home decorations to add a little festivity to your house. Also if you think your house is too small, you can go to Tom Nook’s shop and have him widen out your house, or even add a basement, which is a really good place for storage.

You’ll only be able to carry a certain amount of items at one time though, and although you may not think you’ll use all those slots at the same time, however the main way that you’ll earn any money( Bells) is by collecting insects, fish, and shells that you catch and find on the beach, and each individual item takes up one item slot, so you’ll have to go and get rid of all the items that you filled you inventory with somehow, and then come back and continue what you were doing. So anyway, since Animal Crossing does take place in real time, that’s the major real downfall to the game because some people may not be able to play on certain days, therefore not being able to participate in an event that happened that day. Also there are certain days where different events will take place where you can receive rare items that you can’t find anywhere else. Of course a solution to this problem is to mess around with the internal clock to fast forward or rewind to the day or season where a certain even happens that you want to participate in or something like that. Speaking of seasons, again since AC is played in real time, as it changes seasons where you live, the season will be changing in the game also, and with each season comes different environments. In the summer, trees are green, people are outside doing things, and everything’s green and plentiful. Once it turns into fall or Autumn, trees will start to change color, and leaves will start to cover the ground. Spring means new plants, and fresh air, so Spring is going to basically look like Summer did, although since it’s literally Spring in real life, it’ll feel like it in the game also. Now for winter, which is my favorite, because the whole town is covered in snow, and there are actually Christmas lights up all over town. Nice touch Nintendo.

If you get bored of paying off house debts and playing caddy shack by running errands for the town, you can go kick back and do a little fishing, or even run around and catch different insects( depending on the time of day and season). Of course if you get as bored as I do, then you can go around and shake all the trees, and when a bee hive falls down, see if you can out run the bees without getting stung. I’m currently 0/13 on trying to outrun the bees, and one of your eye’s actually gets swollen, so when you talk to people they’ll be like “Whoa!” and stuff like that, and then they’ll say a whole bunch of stupid crap like “You know if you get chased by bees you should RUN!” or “You should go inside!” and common sense stuff like that. Animal Crossing involves a ton of interacting, whether it be with your neighbors, or going fishing, or going bug hunting, or donating items to the museum, and basically living a second virtual life apart from your real life.

Speaking of getting bored, Nintendo decided to go one step further when creating Animal Crossing by including an array of NES ROMS that you can receive in various ways, whether it be by finding one, receiving one in the mail as a present, or even by trading someone for a game(more on that later). There are about 19 or so total games to collect, which include old school Nintendo games like Golf, Tennis, Pinball, Punch Out!, the original Donkey Kong where the stout plumber made his first appearance, Excitebike, and many more. There are also 4 or 5 games that are promotional only and can only be acquired at Nintendo sponsored events or contests; and those include Ice Climbers, the original Mario Brothers, the original Legend of Zelda, Wario’s Woods, and one other game that I can’t remember the name of. If you don’t have all your old NES games like me, then the ability to play these old classics in Animal Crossing is a really rewarding experience, and I think that in a future version of Animal Crossing, more games should be included, and maybe more from the SNES.

Now for item trading, which aside from playing old NES games, is the most interesting part of this game. No Animal Crossing isn’t online, but you can trade with someone from Chicago if you like, however you have to have a little bit of information in order to do this. What you’ll do, is whatever item you’re going to trade to that person, you’ll go to Tom Nook in order to set up that item with it’s own specific password, and you’ll give that password to whoever you’re wanting to trade with, along with what your name is and what the name of your town is. The other person will do the same, and will give you the password to his/her item that you’re going to receive. Once you receive the password to the person’s item that you’re going to receive, you’ll go to Tom Nook and ask to receive an item, and you’ll put in the code that your buddy gave you, and if it’s right you’ll receive that item. Sounds cool eh? It is, but I’m sure there’s a few who are confused on trading with someone if the game’s not even online, so let me explain. I also thought this was ludicrous, but after hearing an explanation from a good gamer buddy of mine, it made a lot more sense. What happens is that when the password is made up for whatever item you’re going to receive, when you enter that password, the game will generate that item from the given password, and there you have it. So I’m guessing that so someone can’t just put in a password and receive someone’s item, there are millions or thousands of codes using a mixture of numbers, symbols, and lower case and uppercase letters.

Graphics:
The visuals in Animal Crossing definitely aren’t going to be any awards for “Best Graphics” or anything, but I do say the cartoony and kiddy graphics really suit the game well. The game consists of the simplest of simple character and environment models, so it allowed space for more game play features, such as the old NES games. Depending on what season it is, your town will contain of different type of environment models such as in the summer where lots of trees will be around with lots of green leaves, flowers are planted, grass is nice and green, and you’ll see lots of life in your town. Then once it turns into winter, the ground will be covered with this white powdery stuff(snow maybe?), and trees will be covered with snow, most plants will be dead, and when it gets closer to Christmas time, so will your town as you’ll see lights up everywhere and a kind of Christmas like background music playing.

Everything in Animal Crossing uses the simplest textures, so if you’re looking for a FFX‘ish type game, then you’re looking in the wrong place. Animal Crossing has basically been made with the idea to incorporate incredible gameplay rather than amaze you with awesome visuals. Of course the graphics aren’t BAD, you can distinguish items from other items, and you can also tell the difference between your neighbors, so it’s not like you’re playing a game that could work on the SNES or anything, it’s still taking advantage of next-generation hardware, just in different ways than you’d think. The game uses a multitude of colors to create a nice to look at environment, which will jump out from the screen at you and pull you into the game so you feel like you’re sort of in a cartoon because the colors can be so bright and they’re so vibrant that they cover the screen with beautiful combinations of colors.

Sound:
Among the multitude of customizable abilities you have in this game, another customizable aspect is what kind of music is playing. When you start the game, you’ll already have a stereo in your house, however there is no music in it yet so you can’t listen to some cool tunes quite yet. You’ll find tunes after doing a variety of different things, and it’s pretty much dumb luck that you’ll get a tune to put in your stereo. However when you do get a tune, when you go in your house, it’ll always be playing(unless you turn it off), and the tunes can range from a nice listen to a horrible experience. The voices that the animals make when they talk to you remind me of what was done in the Banjo-Kazooie games, in that they just did a whole bunch of mumbles and grunts while the text scrolled at the bottom of the screen. Each animal has different sounding mumbles and grunts, so most of them won’t get too boring( my favorite is Camofrog’s).

AC also isn’t going to win an award for best orchestrated soundtrack or anything either, because most of the game consists of a constant midi file that plays in the background, sort of like in the ole’ NES/SNES days where you had all those “beeps” and “bops” that got stuck in your head for weeks and weeks(probably the most popular being the Super Mario Bros theme). You’ll most likely enjoy the tune as you’re just starting the game, but once you play the game each day it’ll get annoying and eventually you’ll be doing so much other stuff and having fun that you won’t even notice that there’s music playing and so you’ll basically be ignoring the song.

Rock’s Thoughts:
Like I said in the title of this review, Animal Crossing is the answer to the PC’s hit simulation The Sims, however you’ve got kooky little animals instead of real life looking people, and it’s also a whole lot more fun. Most of the game can be customized to your liking, and since the game runs on the eternal clock and you’ve got Morning, Day, Night effects and also events that happen on certain days and even the special days like “Toy Day”(Christmas), your birthday, and other holidays where you’ll most likely receive letters and even better, presents. Eventually you’ll be able to remodel your house and make an add-on, plus even a basement can be built, which like I said is a great place for storage. There is so much to do in the game that if anyone gets bored with it, then it’s obviously not their type of game, however Animal Crossing is such a pick up and play game that anyone can jump right in and enjoy the game as it is, even by just doing little errands for your neighbors. The trading of items is also a nifty feature, and may be astounding to most people trying it for the first time, however I guarantee that the trading works, and also if you have another AC save file in a memory card that’s in another MC slot, then you can even “visit” that town to find more items, some native fruits, and other little goodies. Also the hook-up with the GC-GBA cable where you can find secret and rare items, and you can also “download” one of the NES games to your GBA and play them on the go. I’m not expecting Animal Crossing to reach AAA status in everyone’s eyes, but to me AC is definitely a top contestant for the biggest sleeper hit of 2002.

~ Happy Gaming ~