Animal Crossing: Wild World

A Vision…
Wouldn’t it be something if you could have a home away from home where you could fish, collect items such as fruit, fossils, and many other things, and even form bonds with understanding neighbors? How great would it be if the beach, other towns, the river, and a museum were all seconds walk away in real life? How blissful would a late-night sea-side walk with a friend be, or how about stargazing with that special someone? How about the simple innocence of being together with someone, alone or with company, and enjoying each others’ company?

Is such an experience even possible in video games?

…an Accomplishment
Nintendo definitely got close to the target the last time around, with their sleeper hit Animal Crossing for the Nintendo GameCube. In this game, players rode a train to their new home, where friendly, and even comical, neighbors awaited their arrival. Memorable characters such as Tom Nook, K.K. Slider, Blabbers, and all of the animal neighbors captivated millions of gamers worldwide. There was no telling how such a game would be so big, but fans eagerly anticipated the next installment. And boy did Nintendo deliver.

Facts and Features:

• Animal Crossing returns, now on the DS.
• Utilizes the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection for Internet play.
• Up to four players can live in one house.
• Over 600 accessories to customize your life.
• Can be played entirely with the Touch-Screen

Here we have Animal Crossing: Wild World, a hotly anticipated and passionately adored life simulation game that has taken the Nintendo DS to high new levels. Everything that made the console version so enduring and appealing, as well as fun is also included in this handheld version, excluding the classic NES titles that were found in the GameCube version. But their presence is not at all missed, as the inclusion of Internet play as well as the easier access to multi-player gaming more than make up for the loss. Many fans complained that these classic games were part of what made Animal Crossing so great, but I disagree; it is what you do with your town and neighbors that is fun, not what you do inside your home like you do in real life, which is play games.

Back to the Basics
Similar to the GameCube version, upon starting a new game, you find yourself in a cab driven by Kapp’n heading to your new home. He will ask you the typical questions, where you are moving to, what your name is, and subliminally asking whether you are a boy or a girl. Boy-Girl stereotypes live! Answer that your name is “cute” and you are automatically a girl; answer otherwise and you are automatically a boy. Nice deductive reasoning! A nice difference from the original game is a question Kapp’n asks you while on-board. He asks why you are moving into your new town, to which you have a variety of responses that determine where your house will be located upon your arrival. Being the person I am, I chose the beach, which positioned my home within steps of the shoreline. I love fishing!

A home by the sea, a dream come true!

Once you arrive, you are suggested to go visit the local shopkeeper Tom Nook, who has built your nice new “comfy” home. Here you will be informed, like the last time, that you will need to pay back the money it took to build your house, and what better way to do so than to work part-time at Nook’s Cranny? The little tasks that Nook gives you are all disguised as jobs that will allow you to get acquainted with your new home. These include delivering orders to your neighbors so you can get used to doing it many times thereafter, planting flowers so you can learn how to beautify your town, and getting accustomed to your neighbors whom you will live with for some time. Upon completing these tasks, it is time for free exploration! You can go around familiarizing yourself with your town, purchase items from Nook’s store as well as visit the museum and Town Hall. What a great first day in the world of Animal Crossing!

So you lived one day in your new town, now what? It is time to think BIGGER, and expand, of course! From now on, it is now up to you to decide what to do in your new town. You can fish, you can pick up shells on the beach, you can visit the Able Sisters and purchase great designer clothes or make your own. You can even go to the Observatory and stargaze, or even create your own constellations! This is done using the stylus and a set plot of stars in the sky which you can link up to 16 lines to create. This is where your imagination is set free, where you can create constellations that look like things you are familiar with. Yes, for all those immature kids out there, a phallic symbol can be perfectly created and seen up in the sky. What a great way to entertain your guests.

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There is a wide variety of things to collect, from furniture to accessories, and from fruit to fossils and insects, the variety is just staggering. Quite surprisingly, this time around, the museum is significantly bigger, allowing for more displays and more collecting. To fill up your museum, you must donate the things you find around your town: fish, fossils, insects, and paintings. These can be acquired in a variety of ways.

Fossils must first be dug out of “cracks” in the ground, where quick work of the shovel will allow you to dig it up. Then, this unidentified fossil must be taken to Blathers, who will identify what kind of fossil it is. If it is something you do not yet have in display, Blathers will kindly ask you to donate it to the museum for display. You can deny his request, but donating it and making your museum better is part of your daily life in Animal Crossing, so do as you wish. If the fossil is a repeat, you get it back and can either display it at home or sell it to Tom Nook who will pay good money for it.

Insects can be found at various locations at various times of the day in different seasons. Some of them are hard to get, while others just simply hang around waiting to be captured. Then there is the fish to collect, all of which are available at different times and during different conditions of weather. These can be difficult to acquire, as precise timing as well as the correct condition must be met in order to even consider fishing out at sea. This time around, it is slightly harder to capture fish than in the last Animal Crossing. This is so because the wider river areas that exist in your town make it difficult to capture a fish that has moved to the other side of the bank. Also, fish tend to move around more and do not lure as easily, so it is definitely something to get used to.

One of the problems that plagued the original Animal Crossing was that typing letters and creating patterns was a royal pain to do. Due to the lack of a keyboard, or touch-control for that matter, moving the cursor around was just too mundane and it took too long to do. Thanks to the Nintendo DS’s great feature known as the touch-screen, however, these tasks can now be easily and seamlessly done. Creating patterns is now more enjoyable because you have full control of your design and everything else that you do. The same goes with typing letters, as it is now the same as typing on an actual keyboard, which is better and faster than a cursor.

Another problem that has been addressed and improved with this version is the multi-player aspect of the game. It is not only the inclusion of Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection support, but the pure simplicity of hooking up wirelessly with friends and hanging out in their town while they themselves are there too is a vast improvement over the limited multi-player portion of the GameCube version. Now, you can actually interact with one another, communicate, have competitions and just have the time of your lives. It is something I am truly grateful of Nintendo for doing, adding chat of some sort into the game. I could not believe it when I was playing Mario Kart DS and realized that there was no chance of communication between players whatsoever. Not only was it discouraging, but the chance to make new friends and arrange a re-match with someone was simply out of the question. While these little quibbles still remain in Wild World, they have been improved and show the progress that Nintendo’s service is making. I had to seek people in forums who would let me visit their villages, as Wild Word does not permit just anyone to enter your town.

You can consider this a good thing, yet there is also a downside to it. I understand that Nintendo is only trying to protect the identity and privacy of its consumers, but the lack of an “open-town” type of thing during Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection play is a real disappointment. Who ever heard of towns that were closed to foreigners, simply because no one in that town knew who was coming in? I guess you cannot expect realism in a game like this, but my disappointment still remains with Nintendo’s free online service.

Speaking of which, playing over the Internet is still fun regardless of its flaws. I have met up with incredibly nice people over Nintendo WFC, and am glad to have them on my friends list. People like Wes (AMN forum-goer A.K.A. Luis Sera), William (A.K.A. Gabriel-GAD), Melina from GameFAQs, Ming Ma from The Game Chair, and JinJin – another GameFAQs poster – all made my online play an awesome experience. There are others, too, too many to name actually, but they know the great times and funny moments we had like when I taught Ming Ma what a pitfall seed did; a classic moment right there, one that never seems to get old!

There are many things to do with your friends, online or locally.

I initially had some difficulties connecting to the server to play online. I do not understand what was wrong, but try as I might I would receive error messages saying I was not able to connect. I spent three days this way, unable to try out online play at all. I even tried connecting at McDonald’s to no avail. I thought that my DS had broken or something, from all the falls and such, and that that was the reason why I could not connect to the Nintendo WFC. It was soon after though that I tried just once more out of anger, and I was finally able to connect. I was so glad and surprised, as well as unprepared, because since I did not expect to connect, I had left everything back at home and could not sell or do much anything else. Unluckily, however, once I disconnected and retrieved all of my things back at home and tried to leave once again, I was unsuccessful and found myself depressed. Thankfully, however, since those long-gone days, I have been more successful with connecting.

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So what is there to do at another town? There were times when I just visited other towns because Nook’s store was closed for remodeling, and I needed to sell or purchase things from him. Then there was also the trips I took over to Jinville to get free fruit from her enormous fruit grove. Every tree was literally a fruit tree, and I was allowed to pick as much as I wanted. Thanks to this, I now have a coconut-lined sea shore full of coconut trees. My native fruit is peaches, and thanks to the Nintendo WFC I have been able to get every fruit from the game on my town. It is one of the great features of online gameplay.

Another thing you can do at another town is have a competition as to who can collect the most fish within a designated amount of time. If that’s not your cup of tea, then you can also visit the town’s Able Sisters locale to display your pieces of art – your patterns – and have them available for others that are far away. This is a great way to represent yourself, and your town, in someone else’s home. There is also the bulletin board to have fun with, where you can post messages for your hosts and others to see every time, even when you are gone. Here you can be as kind, as proud, and as “you” as you want to be. It can also be a place to advertise something that you want all of your host’s visitors to see.

Constellations are just one of the ways to show your creativity.

Certain options are limited during online gameplay, however, so it may be a bit disappointing for some. One of these limitations is that you cannot create constellations at the Observatory, donate anything to Blathers, or pick up items from inside your host’s home. Sure these things are minor details, but when you desire to represent yourself in a bigger way, you are completely left hanging, with no platform below.

Animal Crossing: Wild World looks very close to what the GameCube version of the game looked like. Even though it is running at half the frame rate, the smaller screen still displays every detail nicely and has a great graphical presentation for a DS game. The animal animations are all humorous and nicely done, which is something that makes the game memorable. I once barged into a conversation that my neighbors Cyrano and Coco were having and I could not help but laugh out loud, literally. Cyrano commented that Coco could never be a pole dancer, and Cyrano dug her deep into the ground with embarrassment. I was surprised that Nintendo had actually included text such as this! Talk about “kiddy!” Then there was the time Teddy was teaching Coco how to dance, and when she tried to emulate Teddy’s moves, she received a nice verbal insult for doing it wrong. Poor Coco gets bullied by everyone right in front of my eyes!

That is the charm of Wild World, the characters that are all memorable and very humorous. They say so many unbelievable things and give you the craziest of advices that you cannot help but be amazed. There was one day when Pudge asked if he could come over to my house, so we arranged a time. Upon his arrival, he kindly knocked before entering, and then began “inspecting” my home. After catching up with him later on, he insulted my home! I was then motivated to fix it up a bit and invite him over again once I had finished remodeling. During his second visit, he praised my home, which is something I thank him for.

In terms of the audio presentation, I was pleased at how well everything sounded in the game. From the Animalese speech of each animal, to the ambiance sounds of the town, all audio was nicely implemented into the game. Items such as the Triforce, Arwing, and Computer all make noises that are representative of their identity. It is only a disappointment that it is this way that I found out that I have dial-up Internet connection in my Animal Crossing home of Berkeley! What better representation of the game’s audio brilliance than a special song sung by a special guest? I am talking of course about the beloved K.K. Slider, who appears every Saturday night down at Brewster’s Café. From mellow to up-beat, Slider’s tunes will have you coming back every week just to listen and enjoy the waves being emitted from your DS speakers.

The use of the touch-screen and stylus in Wild World are entirely subjective. On one hand, you can control the entire game using only the stylus, yet certain thing are difficult to do this way. I think the implementation of this feature is great, but you truly only need to get out the stylus for certain events. These include typing letters, selecting items on your list, submenus, and for whenever you are feeling lazy and not holding your DS with both hands. Things like walking, talking, fishing, planting trees, and digging are all perfectly done with the D-Pad and face buttons. So, as far as touch-screen control, I would only really take out my stylus for certain things, and leave it inserted for things that are better off done with the buttons.

Wild? It’s Wonderful!
There were times when the game dragged on so slowly that I really considered time-traveling. Let it be known that I did do this in the GameCube version of the game, which is why I think the game lost its appeal so quickly, so I refrained myself from doing it this time around. So far, I have been extremely pleased with the results, as I live every day to its fullest potential knowing that there will be other days to look forward to. Every day is a new day in the world of Animal Crossing; you never know what you will get, or what you will do.

Some will argue that Wild World is too much of the same, but when everything is as great as it is, wouldn’t that be considered a compliment? I think it is, and I agree. Wild World is too much of the same, which is why it is an awesome game to have. You can take your home away from home, away from home, so to speak. You will never be home sick ever again! Being able to just power up your DS and enjoy daily life in your village anywhere you may find yourself is true testament that games are more than a hobby, and that they can entertain without the need of violence or blood.

The mysteries of the future in real life relate to the mysteries of what will happen tomorrow in Animal Crossing. There is never a dull day, and you can always find yourself returning just to see who is visiting, what Nook is selling, what fossils you can dig up, what fish are in season, and what fruits have grown. The sheer simplicity of the design, and the intuitive way that it is all presented make living in Animal Crossing a pleasure, not a hassle. The game goes beyond plot, beyond story, and beyond meaning. There is none, of anything. It is just you and your animal neighbors, in your own little town. And that is all you need.

— Agustin Olvera
Best game ever