Forget life. Temporarily.
You’re in the back seat of a car with an animal at the wheel, steering through unforgiving rain traveling down an unknown road. You’re moving from your old life - no more large city, no more packed streets, no more long job times, no more long distances between destinations, no more humans. That’s ‘bleh’, not appealing, not interesting. No, you’d rather live in the relaxed town of… where? You decide. You name where you want to go. Spiral? Sizzler? Karbador? Gootown? Doesn’t matter. That’s where you’re going, where this unknown road leads to. That’s where you’ll arrive upon the halting of the vehicle.
Exit the car, and welcome to Spiral (as I named my town, and as I’ll refer to the town you get to name upon playing the game). Spiral has everything you had back in the city; a supermarket, a museum, a town hall, a clothing shop and even an observatory. However, rather than having to make long trips to get to any of them, everything in Spiral isn’t even a minute away in distance, as you’re now living in a small, comfy forest, rich with trees and life. The life to speak of isn’t wild life, either; the animals that live in this forest are civilized. They live in houses and speak a language. They’re your neighbors for the rest of your days here.
The first thing you’ll want to do in Spiral is find a place to stay. Thankfully, supermarket owner Tom Nook has a house he’s willing to sell to you, the problem being you don’t have a bell (the currency) to spare! Not a problem though, Tom Nook has an idea! You get to work off the pay in his store! Brilliant! And so begins your never-ending adventure in Spiral, a road that will most certainly ultimately lead to boredom.
At least you won’t be bored immediately; there’s plenty to do. You’re forced at first to do the dirty work for Tom Nook. Attract customers by planting flowers in front of his shop, a task that’ll allow you to get acquainted with the interface of Animal Crossing, including the introduction of your inventory and other such things (which are easy to sort through thanks to the touch screen). Mail a letter to one of Tom Nook’s loyal customers, a simple job thanks once again to the touch screen. Deliver ordered product to the animal that requested it. Advertise the supermarket by posting information on the billboard in front of the town hall. It sounds dull, but it allows you get a feel for the game. However, if you were fortunate enough to experience Animal Crossing on the Gamecube, you’ll have a serious case of deja-vu. You’ve done this already. You’ve probably done it plenty.
Upon completing several tasks Tom Nook gives you, you’ll find that good old Nook doesn’t need you (or possibly want you?) anymore! You’re free from his grasp to do as you please! But what’s this, you haven’t worked off enough cash to pay for your house? Not a problem; collecting cash elsewhere on your own time will make up the difference, and all you have to do with it is submit it at the town hall.
The normal gamer will do either one of two things, most likely: A) get right to work on paying off that house or B) explore. Gamers choosing the former will discover how to get the job done, and really it’s rather simple. You can collect things from the ground, such as shells, to sell to Tom Nook (who buys nearly anything you offer to him. What a guy!). You can do jobs for your neighbors; deliver a letter, return an object, etc. You can fish, and sell the fish you receive. You can go hunting for fossils and sell them for big coin.
The gamer that chooses the latter has an equal amount of opportunities. Do jobs for the villagers and hope to receive furniture to fill your home with. Write letters to the animals and have conversations with them. Fish, dig up fossils, catch bugs and buy paintings to submit to Spiral’s museum. Pick fruit from the trees and grab a bite to eat. Or sell it and buy a slingshot so you can shoot balloons that carry gifts out of the sky.
The appeal of Animal Crossing is that there are no ultimate goals; you can eventually pay for your house. You’ll find that after you pay for your house, you can upgrade it, then pay for that and so on. Eventually, when you have a mansion, you’ll be able to upgrade no longer. From then on, you can do anything. All the activities I mentioned above. Donating money to the poor. Collecting shirts you can keep in your drawer. Keeping Spiral looking nice by picking weeds that pop up and planting trees where there are too many empty spaces.
That’s also unfortunately Animal Crossing’s downfall; at times, there feels like there’s nothing to do. These periods can pop up at any time. Maybe you don’t want to pay off your house as you like it the way it is. The villagers don’t seem to have anything that needs to be delivered, and you’ve already dug up all the fossils for that day. Fishing’s gotten dull for now, and it isn’t bug season. What’s there to do? Drink coffee at the museums cafe; you get nothing out of it, though. Gaze into the stars at the observatory after you’ve already made out some constellations; you get nothing out of it, though. Sit down in your house and look around at all the furniture you’ve managed to collect; you get nothing out of it, though.
Some things don’t reap benefits and those things are the most common in Animal Crossing. That isn’t to say this will come very soon into your purchase of the game, heavens no. It’ll be a while before you find yourself in this slump, but don’t forget about it; it will happen. It can last weeks. Months. Possibly forever. However, there is one very clever thing that Wild World has that the original Animal Crossing doesn’t. The ability to travel to others’ towns across the globe via Nintendo’s Wi-Fi Internet thing that it’s hyping up so much.
Let’s talk about traveling to others’ towns. In the original Animal Crossing, in order to do this, you needed your friend’s memory card. This had to take place in one Gamecube on one screen. You would go to the train station in Spiral (absent in Wild World, mind you, and replaced with town gates) and talk to the porter. He would check to make sure there was a memory card in slot b of the Gamecube, and then (if there was) allow you to visit your friend’s town. Alternatively, you could save ‘traveling data’ onto a blank memory card and then from your friend’s memory card choose to arrive from that memory card. It’s rather complicated and I’m sure you get that idea. But the benefit for doing this was awesome. You could pick the fruit of your friend’s town; you hadn’t ever seen this kind of fruit before. Take it home and it sells for five times as much as your native fruit at the supermarket. Shop at your friend’s supermarket; there are different items for sale here. Visit your friend’s museum; see what it has to offer that’s different from your own. Make friends with the animals of your friend’s town, write letters to them and do jobs for them.
Suddenly, there’s something to do. This was the gateway to ultimate freedom; the thing that kept many coming back to Animal Crossing if they felt like there was no longer anything to do in their own town. This was another town to move around in, to dig things up in. It was fresh. But it lacked one thing. Your friend couldn’t be there with you. Because this had to take place in one Gamecube on one TV, your friend couldn’t have control over his character while you’re in his town. It was still a solo effort.
Your friends can control their characters when you visit their town in Wild World.
Suddenly, the amount of things you can do doubles. With a handy timer that can be bought from the supermarket you can hold tournaments against each other; see who can catch the most fish, or the most bugs, in the allotted time limit. Play ‘tag’ with one another on your own rules. Sell each other furniture and other such items. Go hunting for fossils together. Have some coffee and talk to each other, an ability made easy thanks once again to the touch screen. Exchange fruits. Have fun.
But have the complications of the Gamecube left? Sadly, no. You’ll still have a fair bit of work to do to make this work. You have a ‘friend list’ in-game, a list which keeps track of people you meet that you can trust to come into your town. To add a friend to your friend list, you have to get their ‘friend code’ and enter that into your game. They’ll be added, and all will be well, except for one catch - only those with friend codes are allowed into your town.
What that means is that no one can get into your town in the beginning. You’ll have to make friends over the Internet on your home computer and exchange friend codes there. Is it somewhat ridiculous? Not extremely, though it is a huge pain in the butt if you’re not one to use message boards and the like. But you can always just exchange codes with your friends in person; however you do the exchanging doesn’t matter. After all the dirty work is done, given you’re all set up with Nintendo’s Wi-Fi connection, you can move about from town to town, having that fun I mentioned previously.
But really, is that all you can do in Animal Crossing? Nope. There’s still quite a bit more you can squeeze out of the game. Are you an aspiring artist? The game offers the ability to design your own clothing, or paint/draw your own masterpieces. Plenty of colours are offered, but they’re divided into several pallets; you don't have the full colour spectrum to select from at any time, but rather are stuck with the colours of whichever pallet you choose. This means that your designs/paintings/drawings can’t be very detailed, but rather semi-detailed, in the same way that a sketch doesn’t convey the ultimate potential that an image could. The sketch can, however, be fantastic; the same applies with your designs.
You can also get music for your radio (which you can upgrade by buying new stereos and the like). A musical dog by the name of K.K. comes by every certain day and offers a tune. It’s just another thing to collect, and there are plenty of things to collect. Furniture, shirts, songs, paper, umbrellas, fossils, gyroids (weird, musical objects that have facial features) tools and individual sets among these selections to boot. You can try to complete your museum. You can donate so much to the poor that you’re awarded with a feather; a token of the town hall’s appreciation.
There’s more, too. Animal Crossing’s wide open with things to do, and that’s the appeal. It’ll take a while to actually do everything, and when you do actually do everything, you can do it again, and then some. You can do it in your friend’s towns. You can play with your friend, online. You’ll eventually want to close the gates to Spiral and end your adventure in the comfy forest, no doubt; it gets old in the same way that The Sims would if it didn’t have any expansions, and these two games work on nearly the exact same principle. And that right there is the glaring flaw of Animal Crossing - because it’s a Nintendo DS game, and not a PC game, you can’t expand it. Everything Animal Crossing has to offer is offered from the get go; from then on, that’s what you have to work with, and only that. Because of this, Animal Crossing will hit your shelf sooner than you might imagine a game like this would. Because of that, it’s natural to be weary about picking the title up. After all, you can get similar thrills with actual goals in mind that can last potentially as long and make you feel better. But nothing compares to the experience Animal Crossing offers because it’s just so strange, twisted, and fresh. It’ll be deja-vu if you played the Gamecube version already, meaning Animal Crossing can be recommended to two sets of people: newcomers to the world of Animal Crossing and the die-hards that still play the Gamecube iteration of Animal Crossing today. You know who you are.