Animal Crossing: Wild World

Animal Crossing: Wild World is a life simulation game for the Nintendo DS, set in a town where you are a person who lives among animals. It is a follow-up to the 2001 (North America 2002) title Animal Crossing for the Nintendo GameCube and

Dōbutsu no Mori (Animal Forest) for Nintendo 64 (Japan only). During development, the working title was "Animal Crossing DS".

The important features of the first Animal Crossing game return in this one, but with improvements and a few changes. Activities in town include buying and selling items, fishing, and several others, especially becoming friends with the animals. The game occurs in real time, with the real calendar, and time progresses even when the game is turned off.

Animal Crossing: Wild World has been a favorite among many video game critics. IGN gave the game a 'great' 8.8/10.0 rating, and ranked 12 in the Top 25 Nintendo DS Games. However, some critics thought that Wild World would have been better if some events and features from the GameCube were kept and put into Wild World like Toy Day and Halloween.

Online play
Wild World is the second Nintendo title that uses the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection. (The first was Mario Kart DS.) This lets players use wireless access points to connect to the Internet and visit other players' towns.

Release
Wild World was released in Japan on November 23rd, 2005. It was released in North America on December 5th, 2005, in time for Christmas. Players in Europe had to wait until March 31st, 2006 for the European release.

Gameplay
Following the release of the popular Nintendo Gamecube original, you start out as a human in a town with no money, but you might be able to gain some by shaking trees or selling clothes and accessories to the Able Sisters. You mortgage a small house from the local shopkeeper, the tanuki (or raccoon in the English version) Tom Nook. It's a good idea to pay off your loan, because then you can then upgrade to a bigger house.

Most players will want a bigger house, because decorating your house in your way, with furniture and other items, is one of the main features of this game. You can collect fruit, fish, insects, paintings, fossils, furniture, and other items. There are over 550 different pieces of furniture in this game! Once you have some furniture, taking it to your house is easy; the furniture becomes a leaf that fits in your pocket. You can also customize yourself by buying clothes or drawing your own patterns.

Outside your house, you can befriend the animal neighbors. Those animals are much more interactive in this game than they were in the GameCube game. Imagine overhearing two animals talking to each other, or inviting an animal to your house; both are possible in this game! The animals can still ask you to do errands for them, but there is no longer an explicit menu item to request them, and they no longer require you to find a missing item from a long chain of animals.

You can customize your town by planting trees and growing flowers. At the museum, you can donate certain items to the collections. At the tailor's, you can buy clothes or draw your own patterns. This way, you can customize your town.

And if animals are not enough, you can invite up to four human friends to your town using the Nintendo Wi-Fi connection or DS to DS. Show them how you like to chill in your pad!

New additions

 * Using Nintendo's Wi-fi connection, visit friends online.
 * New tools (Slingshot, Golden Watering Can)
 * New holidays (Yay Day, La-Di day...)
 * More customizable than the original, with the ability to change hat, facial accessories and hair style.
 * Design your own patterns and use them in more places than you could in the GameCube version. Use them as wallpaper, carpets, clothes, hats, and even place designs on the floor.
 * New characters, like Celeste, the observatory owl, Brewster the barman, and Harriet the salon hair stylist.
 * You can see the sky. Draw constellations, and they will appear at night.
 * The museum holds larger collections, and now also has an observatory and a café.
 * Animal villagers sometimes give you their picture, so you can remember them even after they move out of town.
 * Animal villagers are much more interactive. They will chase you to talk to you, challenge you to fishing or bug-catching matches, come to your house for a chat, and even tend to their own gardens.
 * At 8pm each Saturday, go to the cafe to hear K.K. Slider play. Also some new songs were added, like Marine Song 2001.
 * The player can use either the control pad or the touch screen to control your character. The stylus and the touch screen make it much easier to move, manage items and type letters.
 * If the player puts a letter in a bottle, it might wash up on a random person's shore.

Changes

 * Blathers can now identify fossils himself.
 * Some characters from the GameCube version have been erased.
 * Some items and collectibles do not appear. (the collectible NES Games do not appear)
 * Some buildings are gone. The police station and post office building have been removed from each town, but the town gate and town hall replaces them. The wishing well is gone. The town dump is gone, but the recycle bin at the town hall replaces it.
 * Don Resetti does not appear.
 * The acre system is gone. The world now scrolls continuously, without sudden camera changes at acre boundaries. The world appears cylindrical; objects in the distance curve away so that you can see the sky instead of just having a top-down view.
 * The old password system for shipping items between towns is gone. You can now carry items through the Wi-Fi Connection.
 * Tom Nook sells only one house, not four houses, but up to four human players can live in the same house.
 * The journal feature, where you could write a public or private journal each month, is gone.
 * Container furniture such as wardrobes and dressers work differently. Each player has a storage area that holds 96 items, and they can use any dresser to access it. This feature replaces the basements of the GameCube game. (In the GameCube game, dressers each held 3 items.)
 * Certain holidays from the GameCube version have been taken out, such as Animal Crossing versions of Christmas and Halloween.
 * You can only go into other villagers' houses when they are inside them and awake.

Problems
On January 26, 2006, an accident occurred relating to the Wi-Fi features. A few weeks prior, Nintendo sent out a free Mario Coin item from Satoru Iwata to all who connected to Wi-Fi while it was available. On the same day, a failed attempt to send a second exclusive item sent a blank letter to all who connected to Nintendo Wi-Fi before 5:00 PM. This letter contained the "glitched red tulip" item. This item could be planted in cement as a tree or, if put into the player's house, would create an invisible, irremovable wall. The item could be disposed of by planting it in the ground or selling it. On February 13, 2006, Nintendo sent out a letter containing 1,000 Bells and an amusing town bulletin board notice to apologize for the mistake.

Trivia

 * On the game, Able Sisters is always beside of Tom Nook's Store, but on the cover, they are separated.