A while ago, out of the blue, a friend presented me with the original Animal Crossing (ok, it’s not actually the original, as it’s the third of four versions of Animal Forest for the Japanese N64… long story). She’d found it in the course of her work at the op shop (that’s the thrift store for you Yanks) and set it aside for me, as a renowned game nerd. I was pleasantly surprised but actually had no interest in the game really.

Seems callous to say that, but it seemed a little pointless to me. I finally booted it up this year, for one reason: to unlock the playable NES games that you could buy for your house. This was partly to stick it to Nintendo’s overpriced and under-featured Virtual Console, as I had essentially got this game for free (my friend paid $5), scoring more than 10 NES games which would cost quite a lot if I lost my mind and bought them for my Wii.

But then, as I’ve mentioned before, a funny thing happened. I named my town and myself, I moved in. I took on a debt to Tom Nook and set about paying it off. I endeavoured to earn more money to upgrade my house, to make room for all the NES games (the basic house can’t contain them all), by doing jobs for villagers and finding things to sell. And somewhere along the way, I became hooked.

I found myself playing the game every day, and forgetting all about the NES games. Eventually I remembered them and, as I’ve chronicled, was disappointed. But for over a month, I played almost every day and got a lot out of it. I found the game charming and compelling. The simplicity of it made it very accessible to me, it was just easy to boot it up after work and mooch around the village for a bit.

For those who don’t know, Animal Crossing is a kind of “life simulation” game, where you directly control a single avatar and do various tasks in an environment with no specific goal. Like the Sims, but with cute cartoon animals and stuff. There’s a lot of calendar and time-based events too (it’s all real-time).

Getting to know each villager, discovering new ones moving in, witnessing some random events, fishing and digging up fossils. It was fun just living in this simple community, and I developed a routine for each day. The goals of upgrading my house and Tom Nook’s store kept me motivated.

After a while, I began to lose that motivation, especially after I learned that the store couldn’t be further upgraded without another player visiting. This kind of mechanic in games is very frustrating for a “Forever Alone” such as myself. I also got all the NES games (all the Universal Code ones, anyway), and fit them in my house, so that motivation was gone too. Collecting stuff was fun, but the general lack of Nintendo-related memoribilia compared to later games left me with little desire for continuing that (I fortunately got Kafei’s shirt very early and loved it, got the Master Sword too).

I also felt that I was reaching the limits of what the game had to offer me. Perpetual winter was getting me down, and the way the villagers seemed to not have any sort of continous relationship to me made the social interactions seem hollow. I’d found almost all the fossils, and bugs weren’t showing up for another few months. I unlocked the extra bridge, and experienced New Years. I felt like I wasn’t getting much further, so I stopped.

I feel that the game was too simplistic, a little barebones. I feel that the sequels may have the added features to keep it compelling longer, to get me to the next holidays, but there wasn’t much to this. However, those later games don’t have the killer feature of NES games (which I think is genuinely cool, aside from the emulation video output issues I had). Even the later Animal Forest e+ release Japan got had some extra features that sounded cool, and playing a game with e-Reader support always makes me feel like I’m getting a compromised experience. Not to mention the Island, reachable via GCN-GBA link cable (cursed peripherals I don’t have!). Oh and the whole not having friends thing (at least not ones who own this game).

Having said all that though, for that one month I had heaps of fun with this. Plus now I know about the series, it helps me get stuff other people say and references in Smash Bros or NIntendo Land. I hope to play games from every Nintendo series eventually, a very nebulous goal at this stage that I may act on more purposefully one day. Yeah so it was fun but a little simplistic. I’m not planning on getting New Leaf or whatever it’ll be called here (can’t count on NOE) but I think the evolutions developed between then and now could make it a much more compelling game (although I don’t like the less chibi body shapes).

I give this game 1 month out of 12. Oh yeah and it got annoying running around trying to find villagers for errands, sometimes I swear they were hiding from me. Thanks much for reading, chimp!

Wife’s comment: It was ok for a while but got very repetitive. Finding the balls, ah!