What would you want in the next Animal Crossing?

I was thinking about it, and all of the cool things you could have in the next Animal Crossing game. There’s lots of good ideas, and tons of additions that would be really cool, but I’m not going to answer, I’ll leave that up to you. Just comment on all of the things that you would like to see in the next game, whether that’s an item, event, person, whatever. This is meant to be fun, and I hope all of you like it.

Tom Nook… Tanuki?

Well, lots of people have wondered, what is Tom Nook. That is, what kind of animal he is. Some people think that he is just a Raccoon, but after some research, his name is derived from the Dog-Raccoon animal called a Tanuki. I read an article about it in Wikipedia that you can find here. It’s very interesting, and gives a little background info about the animal.

A life before the Gamecube and the DS…

Yes, there was an Animal Crossing game before the Gamecube and DS were even announced. This game, was called Dōbutsu no Mori or if translated into english Animal Forest. It was released on the Nintendo 64, and never brought to the US. It sold exceptionally good, but didn’t “rack” in the sales. This game cannot play on an English Nintendo 64, so if you want to play it, you’ll have to get yourself a Japanese 64, plus the game (which you can probabley find on eBay). Here’s an article that wikipedia had, you can find it here. Here’s the article:

Nintendo 64 box art.

Dōbutsu no Mori (どうぶつの森, Dōbutsu no Mori^?), known under the translated title Animal Forest^[1], is a life simulation video game developed by Nintendo EAD and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo 64. It was first released on April 14th, 2001 exclusively in Japan.

Dōbutsu no Mori was originally developed for the Nintendo 64DD, but due to extended delays, it was released on April 14th, 2001 for Nintendo 64 as a standalone cartridge. Data was stored on a controller pak. Dōbutsu no Mori was available either with or without a controller pak, priced at 6800 Yen and 5800 Yen respectively. Animal Forest sold 36,263 copies during its first week of sale in Japan. ^[2]

Dōbutsu no Mori Plus, the GameCube version of Dōbutsu no Mori, was released on December 14th, 2001, only eight months after the original game. This version contained extra features that had to be left out in the Nintendo 64 version, and also utilized the GameCube’s built-in clock to keep track of the date and time. The Nintendo 64 version had required the player to input the date and time each time they played. With the use of the GameCube’s clock, time passed in the game when the game wasn’t being played. This led to the games’ slogan, “It’s playing, even when you’re not”. Dōbutsu no Mori Plus (for the GameCube) cost 7,140 yen and sold 92,568 copies during its first week of sale in Japan. ^{[3] [4]}

When Nintendo decided to port Dōbutsu no Mori to the Nintendo GameCube system, the American version, Animal Crossing had much more than the Japanese version Dōbutsu no Mori Plus, in part because of the immense translation that Nintendo undertook when translating Dōbutsu no Mori from Japanese to English. Not only did thousands of lines of text have to be translated, but the translators had to create new holidays and items. Nintendo Japan was so impressed with the results of the translation done by Nintendo of America’s Treehouse division that they translated NOA’s version back into Japanese and released it as Dōbutsu no Mori e-Plus. Dōbutsu no Mori e-Plus was released in Japan on June, 27th 2003, and sold 91,658 copies during its first week of sale.