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Animal Crossing
- September 04, 2002 15:52 PM PST
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Two years ago, Nintendo developed one of the oddest games ever conceived. Now it's finally shuffling its way towards America, a good thing for off-kilter gamers everywhere.
When a preview begins with the words "The concept is simple enough: Guide your surrogate as he lives and works in a village filled with nutty animal inhabitants. But what will be different with Animal Crossing is the sheer quantity of stuff that there is to explore. Besides having amusing conversations with your neighbors, you?ll be able to fish, catch bugs, design your own clothing (and watch as it becomes the hit of the local animal fashion scene), decorate your house with odd furniture, heart-pattern carpeting, and other doodads, collect and play old NES games...the list goes on and on, and even your Game Boy Advance will be able to get in on the action with certain modes.
The best part will be that the virtual world progresses in real time. If you play Animal Crossing at 9 a.m., everyone will be out on their morning walks; play it in the middle of the night and they'll all be asleep, though you might run into a wandering ghost or two. Nintendo has put all sorts of time-dependent events into the game world: You'll get a gift from your parents on New Year's Day, and visitors and merchants come and go nearly every day of the week. Of course, to check out these special events, you?ll have to actually be around the moment they take place, which might be rough on your (real) life if you get too addicted to the game world.
Animal Crossing has been out in Japan for nearly half a year now, and it's still one of Nintendo's top GameCube sellers in the region. The graphics in the Japanese version were pretty blurry (which makes sense?the game was originally a Nintendo 64 title in Japan), but they made up for their plainness with a singular sort of art style that's reminiscent of the most avant-garde children's book you've ever read. Everything had this sort of nostalgic heartwarming feel to it, and the animals you talked with each had their own humorous stories to tell, making the game perfect for a half-hour's worth of stress relief every now and then. It will be interesting to see how the U.S. version turns out?if Nintendo can keep the witty conversations and laid-back gameplay intact, then Animal Crossing could do for the GameCube what The Sims did for the PC.
