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My coworker, who is one of the two people who originally introduced me to the world of Animal Crossing, has said on a few occasions that the title was really crying out to be on a portable system. It encouraged so many people to play together, yet out of necessity restricted that play to one player at a time. Its calendar required you to play at a certain time to experience the in-game events, yet its existence on a console made that difficult, especially since, by design, the game's calendar conflicted with real-life.
But even that coworker — a huge fan of the game, along with his entire family — probably didn't imagine that when Nintendo did announce that Animal Crossing was going portable on the Nintendo DS, they'd one-up him and make it online as well.
Satoru Iwata, president of Nintendo, announced Animal Crossing: Wild World (then simply known as "Animal Crossing DS") would go online at the Game Developer's Conference in March of 2005. We saw a brief video in which familiar characters from the GameCube game we all knew and loved strolled around town in a new spherical perspective, tried out some all-new customization features like hats, walked to a structure we later found out was the town gate, and finished with a scene of two holding a live text chat. "Before, you could take Animal Crossing to a different village," Iwata said. "Now, with Wi-Fi, you can take it around the world."
Over at N-Sider's forums, longtime and new Animal Crossing fans alike immediately started talking about the possibilities. As it is with all fan speculation, we overshot quite a bit, envisioning huge cities of Animal Crossing people, complicated server-side setups enabling all kinds of offline interaction... you name it, we thought of it. In retrospect, it's probably a good thing we're not in charge, lest we would have ruined what made Animal Crossing the idyllic paradise it is today.
So, what do we know about the game, besides the fact that it's going to be portable, online, and released about a month from now? A fair bit, actually; some from Nintendo themselves, some from media interviews and previews, and some from intrepid fans trying the game out for themselves. The rest of this article is dedicated to telling you precisely what it is that we do know, so you can get a feel for the game and decide whether you want to be a part of Animal Crossing reborn.
Within Your Town
Of course, it wouldn't be Animal Crossing without a compelling reason to interact with the landscape and the residents of your own town, would it? Thankfully, Nintendo has promised that even with the dramatic changes that the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection will bring to the game, this aspect of the game will not be overlooked.
Your game will start off, much like the GameCube game, with a ride into town and your character being quizzed by one of the game's many animals. In this case, it's Kapp'n, the turtle who once piloted the boat to Animal Island, giving you a ride to your new home. The questions he asks determine not just your character's appearance, but also now your home's placement in town. When he asks you why you're moving into town, answer carefully; you're deciding what building you're going to be next-door to.
Once you get a look at your in-game persona for the first time, it's time to get used to the controls. Control is significantly improved over the original game, thanks in no small part to the DS' touch screen and stylus. While you can move your character around with the D-pad in a more traditional fashion, you won't want to. Touching gives you 360 degrees of movement and speed control as well as direct selection of on-screen items, and the touch screen enables all sorts of much more streamlined interfaces for previously tedious tasks such as selling multiple items at once and typing letters. The stylus is also used to give you a much more intuitive pattern-design facility.
Exploring around town a bit, you'll find quite a few changes. Tom Nook has apparently caught the massive marketing database bug; his shop now comes equipped with a computer that tracks your purchases and awards you points. Points lead to status, and status leads to discounts. The store will also contain a hair salon where you can expect to change up your character's hairstyle; I'm hoping for the bald look, myself. It looks like the salon may be a later upgrade to Nook's shop; to this date no hands-on impressions have reported the hair salon being accessible.
The museum is also significantly upgraded. Rather than just a single main room with a few branched-off exhibition halls and a far-too-chatty owl accepting your donations (he now accepts and identifies your fossils directly rather than making you mail them off, incidentally), you can also hit up the local coffee shop for a nice cup of joe and some jams from K.K., or even go upstairs and check out the new observatory, complete with telescope. The telescope lets you access one of the game's neater features. The second screen will normally show you a view of the sky in your town, and at night the sky is filled with stars; via the telescope, you can draw your own constellations.
The sky view does more than just show off your constellation handiwork, though. During the day, you can track the random floating presents via your sky view, or even shoot down Pete, the mail-delivering pelican, to make him drop his mail; the latter is presumably done with a slingshot, brand-new to Wild World.
One of the key game aspects of Animal Crossing that addicts remember is the collecting of items. Nintendo has said that Wild World will contain over 1,500 items to collect or buy (compared to roughly 1,300 known items in the GameCube game). Some are making a triumphant return from the GameCube title, while some are brand-new; but beyond those items, Nintendo will most likely not be offering more, saying they have no plans for downloadable content. Also notably missing from the items are the playable NES games that enticed several people into the Animal Crossing experience on the GameCube; Nintendo has no plans to bring any kind of emulated games to Wild World; producer Katsuya Eguchi explained this by noting that the NES games took players out of the Animal Crossing experience proper, and removing them helps focus the game on living in the virtual community.
Storage is also greatly improved. Whereas veterans of the previous game were often finding themselves running out of storage space, even when they got a basement; items like drawers and refrigerators will now be able to store massive amounts of items to cut down on clutter. The animal characters — again, many returning from the GameCube game (including my daughter's favorite, Joey the duck), many brand new — now have hobbies, including the collection of fish or bugs. No longer are you limited to simply running errands, making idle chitchat, or pushing the more annoying residents around until they start yelling at you; now you can help them find fulfillment in their virtual lives.
Speaking of your town's animal residents: Animal Crossing veterans will no doubt recall that their residents were not only affected by the game's human players, but could also be seen having conversations with each other, affecting each others' moods, sharing clothing, etc. Wild World has taken this a step further by allowing the animals to drag you into their arguments and discussions if you happen to be close enough.
Of course, even with the extensive interactions with your town's animal residents, you're gonna want to deal with real human beings from time to time. Wild World will definitely deliver on this.