Animal Crossing is an
experimental game by
Nintendo in their
Gamecube line that was slated to release on September 16th, 2002.
With the Gamecube's popularity, Nintendo has continued many of its favorite lines, but in addition there is more attempts at different types games. The first experimental game was Pikmin at the beginning of the Gamecube's life which met with acclaims but was faulted on the length of the game. For Animal Crossing, Nintendo attempted to do real time gaming. The theory behind real time gaming was that if the system was turned on September 7th, 2002 at 3:00 pm the time in the game is September 7th, 2002 at 3:00 pm.
Included in Animal Crossing is a chance for the player to acquire NES games and play them, some of the possible titles are Donkey Kong, Baseball, Punch-out!! and Ice Climber. Along with rumors of possible appearance of The Legend of Zelda. The question of which games are going to be included are still unknown.
The Animal Crossing game requires a full 59 blocks of the Nintendo memory card and the 251 card only will contain one save at a time. Rumors of a memory card coming with the game all seem to be true. The game will allow two friends to swap memory cards so they can explore another person's town and visit friends. There is also a password system for two long distance friends to trade items.
In addition the system can be linked to the Game Boy Advance and with the E-reader attachment, cards can be scanned in and new items can be added to the game, how this affects the game is yet unknown as all the cards have not come out yet nor have they disclosed all the uses of the game.
Also when the game is reset in the middle of the game a mysterious creature named Mr. Ressetti appears and warns you that you can't reset real life (good idea because with enough emulating real life seems to need save states). As you reset more and more he tends to get angrier.
The game while looks and seems childish appears to be a large expansive galaxy that people can explore. The game will play similar to the Sims with more exploration rather then simulation.
Most of this data is based on the Japanese version of the game so changes should be expected.
I have decided not to review the game as my review can't do the game justice. The above data was the speculation before the game was release.
Overall the idea was implement well, and the size of the game is large. There is about 1400 objects that can be acquired, and many items that are fun to find and play with.
If nothing else, this game deserves a mention in the large book of "innovative ideas".