I pull the metallic, gold Triforce edition 3DS off of the shelf. I hold it delicately and look at it with nostalgic eyes. Once shiny and used, it now sits with dust layered upon it’s exterior. With one sharp blow, the particles spread into the air, swimming through the warm, golden glow of the morning sunrise beaming through the window. After a quick charge, I boot it up and load up, “Animal Crossing: New Leaf” and there before me sits weeds. Weeds coming up through every crack in the ground, weeds surrounding every tree, weeds replace my once flourishing garden. I feel a tear forming within my eyes. Alfonso walks on over and notices me looking at the plethora of weeds. Rushing over he calls out to me, questioning where I’ve been. I break down and close my 3DS. I let them down. I left them. I left their beautiful town to rot. What monster am I?
With the recent news of the upcoming, “Animal Crossing: Amiibo Festival” out on 13th November 2016, and also “Animal Crossing: New Leaf – Welcome Amiibo” due to hit shelves on the 2nd December 2016, not only that, but also the recent updates adding more items to “Animal Crossing: New Leaf”, such as a Wii U console, and more fortune cookies; this got me feeling very nostalgic. I haven’t picked up my 3DS in many, many months. Possibly in over a year and a half. I’ve been too busy to find it and actually sit down and play it. Most of my time is spent doing things with, or for the family, or working on Big Boss Battle, that I never actually get to find time to just play a game.
The 3DS was a great console. I loved it. I still do, and I was more than happy to upgrade my little black 3DS for the XL, Special Edition: Legend of Zelda console. It’s metallic feel is glorious, and the design is minimalist perfection. The screen is lovely and huge…but anyway. I’m heading off onto a tangent.
Animal Crossing: Wild World was my first ever AC game I owned. I lost hours of my life to the game. Planting trees, increasing my bug collection, developing my house, paying of my debt, and occasionally being screamed at by that terrible, Resetti character. Although as much as we hate him; we must remember, he’s just misunderstood. He hates his job. He hates that no one listens. I even got asked once by one of the townsfolk to invent a new slang word, I remember this…I spent about 15 minutes typing various random words that were actually just gobbledeedook. Words like, “Yeowlch”, or “Amazzin”. I finally managed to construct a word that seemed fairly easy and rolled of the tongue. “Swank”. I had no idea, that within a year, I would come across that word used in reality. I started seeing it used in magazines, and Online forums. My town folk in the game had been saying it a lot, it had spread. Did I actually start a trend? I like to believe this.
AC ended up not being touched for many years, and when I returned it was a mess. Weeds everywhere, my old best friend had moved towns…everything was too different, so I just left it. When New Leaf came out I purchased it without haste. The new features were amazing. Swimming, a new island, a better multiplayer experience. But sadly, eventually, after many, many hours of play time, the game fell flat. I just didn’t feel like playing it anymore. The news of a new system update back in 2015 led me to check it out by charging up the system and booting it to update. While there I gave AC:NL a try. And there it was again. A town of weeds, new townsfolk, and old friends that have left. I can’t cope with this sense of failure.
I do enjoy the game though. I’ve enjoyed having my friends or family visit my town and look at my mansion, and I’ve enjoyed visiting their town and surrounding their house with holes so they struggling to leave. I enjoyed the feeling of running the town to a degree, and I enjoyed the eventual, real time development of shops and landmarks. It was a fantastic game, and I should probably get back into it and lose myself in the world once more.
What were your thoughts on the Animal Crossing series? Did you have it on the Gamecube? I never did, let me know what it was like!
New Leaf was the first one I played and I become completely obsessed with it….I made spreadsheets and everything! #nerd
Sounds like a right nerd fest! You nerd! Nerd.
I imported Animal Crossing from North America, remember I had to buy a ‘freeloader’ disk to get it running. The game came with a memory card because it took up an entire normal sized card.
Unlike the Harvest Moon series Animal Crossing has never mis-stepped for me, although I do wish more of them had followed in the footsteps of the first with the collectable retro games
There’s definitely a big issue in how when you stop playing AC the town goes to pot and people up and leave, it destroys almost all motivation that I have to get the game up and running again, although by far-and-large I doubt I’m the target audience for the games now. Sometimes it’s just nice to have nonsense responsibilities in a calm and casual setting — you don’t get a call from Koby saying he’s been sacked from the dockyards,evicted by Tom Nook, and his wife has left him for Cesar, saying that he needs a place to stay. And, that’s just fine by me.
The whole idea of making a town decay just for a few weeks of not playing it made me want to never return. I knew it would be decaying. I knew I would get shouted out. Especially when the first DS game had Resetti constantly shouting if you ran out of battery, or didn’t save. For a younger audience, it felt a bit too full on.