Animal Crossing (GameCube) Review

When this GameCube update was announced a widespread cheer arose among the gaming community; the potential for this exciting new concept on a next-generation console was enormous. When it was revealed that the game would still remain offline, few were surprised, as Nintendo has never exactly been openly enthusiastic about the entire 'online gaming' revolution. Animal Crossing (as it was renamed) was to remain unique, remain offline and, hopefully, remain compulsive. Japan got the game in Summer and America received it gratefully soon afterwards. And now, after years of waiting, complaining, swearing, crying and threatened mutiny, Nintendo are releasing it in Europe. Happy? You should be...

Miyamoto's idea has taken the shape of a virtual village in which your little protagonist lives, along with up to three other human players and a wide variety of slightly surreal animals. The idea is simply to live and enjoy life with as a new villager in town - get a house, pay off your debts, buy clothes, go fishing, and have fun!

There is a larger element of personalisation and interaction in Animal Crossing than there ever was in Doshin, however. Your village is designed for you alone and you are given endless opportunities to make it yours. The first and most obvious mark of your influence is your town's name, which you choose; you also choose the house you live in, how you decorate it, what furniture goes into it and what music you play on the stereo. You can even design your own clothes, which is one of the game's very best features; anyone with any degree of artistic talent can design their very own funky clobber at the local tailors to wear on clothes or umbrellas or to use in your house. Your designs are displayed for all to see in the shop, too, so you might see one of your fellow town-animals sporting an own-brand scarf or shirt. Fabulous indeed. As for the furniture, wallpaper and carpets, the sheer variety boggles the mind. There are literally hundreds and hundreds of items to be found somewhere in the game, through trading with friends, buying them at the shop or helping out your animaly mates. Even if you don't like any of it, which is highly unlikely, you can always design your own.

Pulling a Doolittle and talking to the animals tends to pay off very well indeed in the world of Animal Crossing. They often offer up furniture or other items for sale or trade, or even give it free on rare occasions. You can also collect things for them and deliver borrowed items back and forth between them to earn some new junk to clutter up your house with. Quite on top of the personal gain, you'll find that a lot of the animals are genuinely hilarious characters.

If you're thinking of creatively avoiding these inconveniences by messing with the time settings, you may as well forget about it. Changing your game's clock or resetting the game in order to cheat a bit will result in a meeting with Mr Resetti the Angry Mole, who shouts a lot and lectures upon how there's no reset button in life, etcetera, etcetera. He even makes persistent offenders (like me) repeat 'I am bad' over and over again in order to get the message through and threatens to erase your game data (which, I'll warn you now, he actually does if you're insolent enough). Quite apart from the nightmares that the mole could quite easily give you, cheating in this way defeats the point of playing in the first place. It IS possible to cheat at Animal Crossing, but it's clear that Nintendo does not want you to play that way. At all. Miyamoto intended for this to be more than just an item-collecting game; he wanted it to be an alternate existence.

That, however, is the problem with Animal Crossing. It relies on a certain Nintendo magic to make the whole thing work; at base, it's a simple and repetitive item-collecting money-earning game. Quite simply, that magic won't affect everyone. Some people will not be absorbed in the personality of their village and will be nagged persistently by the off-touch graphics or samey conversations or the simple nature of the tasks.