E308: Animal Crossing to support keyboards, save fruit-picking time

Posted Jul 17th 2008 2:45PM by Chris Greenhough
Filed under: News

All Animal Crossing games are wonderful, but that's not all they have in common: as it happens, each game in the series to date has featured an unwieldy, cumbersome user interface. Every tool and item can only be selected by opening a totally separate menu, you can't skip through any of the game's (oft-repeated) dialogue, and writing letters/entering text is a royal pain in the backside, thanks to the excruciatingly annoying on-screen keyboard.

This morning, JC's hands-on impressions of Animal Crossing: City Folk revealed that Nintendo had fixed the first problem, by allowing users to cycle through their inventory with the d-pad. And now the third issue has been resolved, for City Folk will let players hook a USB keyboard up to their Wiis -- superb news! Just give us the ability to skip instantly through Nook's natterings and Blathers' blather, and we'll be pleased as punch.

Gallery: Animal Crossing: City Folk

Tags: animal-crossing, animal-crossing-city..., e3-2008, e308, keyboard, sim, usb

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

7-17-2008 @ 2:54PM

Kenneth Caldwell said...

AC has long been hindered by a slow interface. This is big news! Trying to communicate with text in AC:WW was like sending a message into a time machine. By the time you finished typing it out, the message was no longer relevant. I found I could say much more by bashing my guests on the head with a bug-catching net.

7-17-2008 @ 4:36PM

acefondu said...

Yeah, but will the messages take like a week to upload on the Wii like the Wii messages do? I can't hate that more honestly.

7-17-2008 @ 2:54PM

adolson said...

Adults care about this game?

Well, I guess when Nintendo gives you lemons, you make lemonade. Too bad I'm watching my pH balance...

7-17-2008 @ 3:57PM

Prof_Chaos said...

Adults sure do enjoy the series. A game doesn't need guns and grit to be fun you elitist.

7-17-2008 @ 4:07PM

adolson said...

LittleBigPlanet has guns? Zack & Wiki has grit? I didn't know.. Thanks for the heads up!

7-17-2008 @ 11:57PM

Kenneth Caldwell said...

Seriously? Animal Crossing has a HUGE adult fanbase. I've seen twenty-somethings and middle-agers alike with full-blown addictions. I'm talking immaculate organization, towns dotted with money tress and patterned brick streets, houses teeming with Zelda items and rare gyroids.

And progress like that doesn't just happen by logging hundreds of hours. At some point, towns become a reflection of the player's personality with progress limited to creative capacity (and some software barriers).

7-17-2008 @ 3:27PM

Mduck said...

I've never played a Animal Crossing game :S

what would be the benefit of usb keyboard support?

7-17-2008 @ 3:36PM

TheOverlord#2 can has Animals Crossing? said...

You can message people(or animals in your town) via in game mail or if you don't have the $30 for WiiSpeak, ou can use an in-game keyboard to say stuff to online guests.

7-17-2008 @ 4:00PM

Prof_Chaos said...

Also entering passphrases periodically to gain entry to certain areas can be cumbersome. There've been times that I've forgotten what I was typing by the time I'd finished.

7-17-2008 @ 5:29PM

Brittany said...

I was pretty sure they would include this (it just makes since) so I'm glad to hear a confirmation :) and yay for being able to cycle through tools too, that will be really nice.

7-18-2008 @ 1:40AM

RupeeClock said...

Well I sure as HELL will be getting that Logitech Wireless Wii Keyboard for this now!

7-18-2008 @ 11:36AM

Sora57 said...

Love ACWW. can't wait for this

7-18-2008 @ 12:26PM

Tree said...

Back when AC and PSO were on the Gamecube, a third-party controller-keyboard hybrid was all the import-rage. It looked like a GC controller with an extreme widescreen-style center housing a keyboard. If that peripheral is Wii-compatible (I mean, it worked on the GC, it should be), why don't they pull those back into production?

7-18-2008 @ 1:47PM

genocidalrobot said...

if they allow us to skip text, i will buy this game. i was excited when i heard it was announced officially. then i watched the videos and became much less excited. then, the more i thought about it the more i realized how cumbersome and annoying the menus and chat were. i might be done with AC for the rest of my life, that kind of stuff gets really, really annoying!

7-21-2008 @ 12:52AM

Ben said...

I typed faster on AC's GC input layout than Joystiq on the Maximus.

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