rice75's Full Review: Animal Crossing for GameCube
It’s ironic that I'm reviewing a game I haven’t played since my copy of Wind Waker arrived, but I needed a break, and since I haven’t posted a review for over a month, I needed to get something written before I forgot how fun it is.
Animal Crossing has been called The Sims for the Gamecube (which, coincidentally, has been released for the GC). I have never played The Sims, so I can’t qualify that comparison, but if you can chop down trees, fish in the ocean and celebrate New Year’s Eve with a few close animal friends in The Sims, then yes, that is a fair comparison. Animal Crossing is a “real life” simulation. It goes so far to even follow the current date. Since the Gamecube has an internal clock, when it’s April 9, 2003 in real life, it’s April 9, 2003 in Animal Crossing. That means in December it snows and there are lights in the trees and in June it’s green everywhere and bugs are aplenty.
Gameplay: 9/10
So what is Animal Crossing? Well, the story goes like this: You are tired of the doldrums of living at home and you want to venture out on your own. But, as most kids, you are reckless and you get on a train without any idea where your going or how you’ll support yourself. On the way to your town, (which you will name as you travel there) you meet someone who has connections in your town. Since you don’t have money or a place to stay, he pulls some strings and helps you out. He hooks you up with a raccoon named Tom Nook who gives you a little shack in the center of town to live in. When he finds out you don’t have any money, you promptly become his indentured servant. He’ll send you on some tasks, such as planting flowers and delivering furniture to the locals in your town. Once you get some money paid off, he lets you loose on the town. But before you go, he reminds you that he still needs to get paid for the house, and you get a mortgage, that can be paid off at your leisure. And in Animal Crossing, it is at your leisure. Heck, don’t pay it off. Tom Nook can’t do anything about it.
Now that you’ve got some free time, it’s time to do something. You can earn Bells (the currency of Animal Crossing) in many ways. In each town there is an indigenous fruit species. You can earn some cash by shaking the fruit trees in town, gather up the fruit and selling them to Tom. He doesn’t pay much (50 bells per fruit) but it does give you a starting point. Since Tom also runs the corner store, you can buy things from him. The first thing you should buy is a shovel and a fishing pole. These, along with a bug net and axe, are you tools of choice. With a shovel you can dig up fossils, send them through the mail to have them identified, and either sell them to Tom (for a pretty penny) or be philanthropic and donate them to the town museum. The town museum accepts fossils, fish, bugs and artwork as donations. All of these things can be obtained by various obvious (and not so obvious) methods.
Another method of obtaining stuff this is interacting with the animals in your town. You’ll start off with a handful of animals in your town and more will move in as time goes on. You can chat with these animals or you can do errands for them. This mostly consists of taking something to another animal or picking up something for someone else. You’ll be rewarded for your efforts with one of four things: clothing, furniture, stationary, or bells. While the novelty of getting new clothes wears off, getting new furniture is always fun. Eventually your house begins to run out of room and you’ll have to expand. If you’ve paid off your mortgage, Tom Nook will arrange for expansion. You’ll be able to expand you first floor twice, build a basement and even build a second story. Each time you remodel you’ll be charged by Nook. By the time you do your last expansion, you’ll be in debt to Nook for 792,000 bells. That’s a lot of fish and fruit to sell!
In the end, the object of Animal Crossing is to acquire “stuff”. Furniture, to be exact. You have a house and it needs to be furnished! After a while, you’ll be contacted by the Happy Room Association, which will rate you room based on how “hip” your style is. While this can be fun to see how they rate your pad, you’re not given much guidance as to how to style everything. It becomes a personal thing. I have cabana motif on my main floor, a kids room upstairs and some exercise equipment downstairs. My wife is going for an Asian theme, with tiki statues and musical instruments. It’s all about what you like.
As far as multiplayer goes, Animal Crossing is a great family game. There is no violence, no competition, and basically no winners or losers. Up to four people can live in your town, and everyone takes turns playing. You can also visit your friend’s town by putting his memory card in Slot B and taking the train. If animals in his town take a liking to you, they’ll move from his town to yours. And vice versa! So be nice!
My personal favorite aspect of gameplay is collecting NES games. There is a built in emulator that actually plays old-school NES games. This is by far the coolest feature. There are various ways to get NES games, from running errands to shaking trees. I've found that I fire up Animal Crossing just to play my NES games. When I got Excitebike I almost screamed. It was on of my favorite NES games, and it is back, in its 8-bit glory. There are a lot of games (not sure how many) but I've found Excitebike, Baloon Fight, Tennis, and another game I don’t remember the name. Needless to say, this adds tremendous replay value.
Control: 8/10
Not much to talk about here in the controls department. Everything is pretty straightforward. Moving around with the control stick and interacting with the A and B buttons. Most of the buttons are used for other aspects of the game but they are done in a logical and easy-to-learn manner. With a game with that moves at such a slow pace, control isn’t that important.
Graphics: 6/10
This is really were Animal Crossing suffers. This game was originally planned for the N64 and the graphics show it. Everything is made up of big polygons and doesn’t look that great. The Gamecube can do much better, so shame on Nintendo for not updating the graphics, at least a little bit. But everything isn’t all that bad. Everything is colorful and easy to interact with. There are some nice little details, like on New Year’s Eve, you can actually meet with some fellow town members and ring in the New Year with a nice graphical fireworks display. Unfortunately, overall, Animal Crossing’s graphics just aren’t anything special.
Sound: 7.5/10
The music of Animal Crossing is original, as with most other Nintendo games. It does change from day to day, and some of the tunes are actually enjoyable to listen to, but some of them get repetitive and annoying. You can also meet a musician on Saturday nights, and he’ll play some funky music for ya!
The ambient sounds are nothing special. A door opening sounds just like a real door, creaking on its hinges. A shovel full of sand sounds just as it should. It would be nice to hear some variation with the sound but that doesn’t happen.
Overall: 7.6/10
Overall, Animal Crossing is a great game, dated graphics and sound notwithstanding. The replayability is undeniable. This isn’t a game you’ll play for hours at a time, but you’ll definitely waste hours playing it. Some people have knocked this game because everything is repetitive. They get tired of running errands or collecting fruit. I think that’s the beauty of this game. It doesn’t have to be repetitive. You don’t like running errands? Don’t! Go fishing. Build a snowman. I think this game has more to offer than people are giving it credit for. Give it a try, you’ll be hooked.
Hint: Each day there is a rock that you can bang on (with your shovel) and get money from. You can hit it seven times and get 13,300 bells. The problem is, you only have a certain amount of time. You’ll notice that when you hit the rock you bounce a little back, making it hard to get all seven hits in. So what you can do is dig two holes next to the rock (leaving yourself space to hit the rock) and then you’ll be wedged in between the rock and your holes. Knock away and collect your cash!
Animal Crossing w/Memory Card Gamecube/Wii NEW FASTSHIP YOU'LL LOVE HTMAXPOWER FAST SAME-DAY SHIPPING!* Mammoth selection of excellent products Person...More at eBay
This game has a 24-hour clock where something new happens in real-world time -- as day turns to night in the real world, it also happens in Animal Cro...More at Amazon Marketplace
Epinions.com periodically updates pricing and product information from third-party sources, so some information may be slightly out-of-date. You should confirm all information before relying on it.
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.