Nintendo Wii Fanboy

Nintendo of Australia took a shortcut with their release of Animal Crossing: Wild World on the DS: it's a direct copy of the US version -- "ESRB rating and all," as Vooks says. That shortcut has come back to haunt them with the release of Let's Go to the City.

Vooks' Daniel Vuckovic attempted to use the DS Suitcase to transfer his Wild World catalog and character to the new game. Instead of a catalog loaded with playroom furniture and Mario accessories, he was presented with this error message, as well as a similar one on the DS.

This is significant for two reasons that we can think of: first, it's definitive proof that the DS Suitcase is region-locked. If your copy of Wild World is imported, the gates to your Wii town are firmly closed. Second, it means that Animal Crossing: Let's Go to the City is basically missing a feature in Australia. Nintendo is just having terrible luck with this DS Suitcase thing!

Enterbrain reports that the Wii system has, as of November 23, sold 7,000,000 units in Japan. To compare, the GameCube has sold 4 million in its home country (according to Wikipedia), and the DS has sold -- oh wait, that one doesn't make the Wii sales sound as good.

Helping to drive the Wii sales last week was Animal Crossing: City Folk, of which an astonishing 303,204 copies flew off of Japanese store shelves in its debut week. If we were feeling snarky about Animal Crossing, we'd say that between that and Chrono Trigger, it was a good week for ports. But that's mean.

Gallery: Animal Crossing: City Folk

We know we've kind of been focused on Animal Crossing a bit in the last week or so, but with the game having been available to you all, we're wondering how you're finding it so far. Have you been going crazy in the game, buying up tons of stuff for your house and running errands for Tom Nook? Have you paid off your house yet? Have you and some friends gotten together and fished or enjoyed some other communal activity? How has your time with Animal Crossing: City Folk been?

The WiiSpeak microphone is ten bucks cheaper when purchased with Animal Crossing: City Folk. Obviously, it works with Animal Crossing, but it will also work with The Conduit, with the new version of the Opera browser, and on its own via the Wii Speak Channel. Of course, more compatible games will follow. We hope.

It occurs to us that even people who like Animal Crossing, but don't necessarily care about catching up with their friends while fishing or shaking trees may have interest in the WiiSpeak mic for other stuff. Are you in that group? Did you pick up the Animal Crossing WiiSpeak bundle with no intention of using the two items together?

"Iwata Asks" articles are almost as old as the Wii itself, coinciding as they do with any notable first-party release, and the latest round of questioning stars four of the Animal Crossing: City Folk team: Aya Kyougoku (who forgot to wear her regulation beige Nintendo jacket for this), Ryuji Kobayashi, Isao Moro and Kou Nogami (not pictured here).

Most of the discussion focuses on fairly obscure minutiae. So Nogami discusses how WiiConnect24 allows for the exchange of village data without you knowing it, which means people can visit a friend's village while their Wii is off, as can NPCs from other villages, who may then spread rumors from their hometown. The team estimates the game's appeal becomes "two or three times" as great when played online, a statement we look forward to testing.

We're also told that City Folk will let players create "trails" on the landscape. Apparently, the ground in your village consists of a top layer of grass which slowly wears thin the more you walk on it. A little grass grows back at the end of each day, but if you walk over a certain area enough (say, from your house to Tom Nook's), a trail will begin to form. Kobayashi says that it takes about a fortnight before a faint path becomes visible, and Moro adds that a clear trail will have appeared after two months, but that grass grows back more speedily if surrounded by grass and trees. Nifty!

[Via andriasang.com]

For those of us who missed celebrating our favorite fall holiday with fake anthropomorphic jerks, Halloween is back in Animal Crossing: City Folk. We just have to ... wait almost the whole year for it, thanks to the November release of the game.

Your animal neighbors, dressed in identical pumpkinhead costumes, will accost you and demand candy. If you fail to comply, or try to pass off some junk out of your pockets as candy, as the IGN demo player has done here, you get a trick! For being stingy, the residents slapped a pumpkin head on him and changed his clothes.

In the little IGN player doodad, there's another video featuring a player picking fruit in the winter. Animal Crossing winters are so lovely!

Special events form a crucial part of any Animal Crossing game, giving players dates to look forward to and a chance to gloat about owning the full set of Pascal's ship-themed furniture. Like I just did there.

Last month, Nintendo Power revealed Pavé (a peacock who runs the Samba Carnival-esque Festivale), Labelle (the third Able sister), Zipper (a bunny who appears on Easter -- SORRY -- "Bunny Day"), and Phineas (a beaver who turns up randomly to give out pinwheels and balloons), and now Famitsu has shed light on a few old and returning events and their respective characters.

The fishing (October to April) and bug-hunting tournaments (June to September) are back, as is the aforementioned hippy otter Pascal and (obviously) Joan the turnip-selling warthog. There's also a comeback for one of the rarer characters in the first Animal Crossing: Wisp the Ghost, a spook that occasionally appeared at night who could be caught in your net, and forced to do your weeding and paint your roof!

Contrary to what we originally heard, it looks like the Wii Speak Channel won't be launching alongside Animal Crossing: City Folk on November 16th.

IGN snapped a picture of the WiiSpeak box, complete with a disclaimer that the Channel (which allows chat outside of Animal Crossing) will actually appear in December. When in December isn't clear, though we know the Channel will be available in Europe from December 5th, so maybe then. Until then, you're just going to have to pick fruit and chat simultaneously. We can probably cope with that!

Nintendo has confirmed to Eurogamer that the Animal Crossing: Let's Go to the City and WiiSpeak bundle will cost "£59" in the UK when it launches there on December 5th. We guess they mean £59.99, but let's face it: only chumps will pay that sort of money when the likes of Play have it for a penny under fifty quid. If you do still live in the late-1990s and buy stuff from high street stores with real people in them, then expect to pay a premium. Separately, the game will cost £40 and WiiSpeak £25. Again: if you're a chump.

As for the North American price, we're still waiting on official word, but Amazon's price hasn't budged from $69.99.

It's easy to hate on the new Animal Crossing: City Folk ad. Gut reaction is that it's not for us, for the real gamers, so clearly, Animal Crossing itself isn't, either. But that isn't the case; if you liked Animal Crossing at all before, you'll probably like it now. So, no, this commercial isn't for us. It's for everyone else, everyone who thinks Animal Crossing might not be for them. And when taken that way, it seems pretty effective to us.

The latest trailer for the rapidly approaching Animal Crossing: City Folk offers a look at the process of migrating your DS Animal Crossing: Wild World character into City Folk. You may not be able to keep your house or your possessions, but migration allows you to maintain your character's appearance and Tom Nook shop catalog. If you want, you could probably recreate your DS house as soon as you got the money.

Head to the link for a second, longer trailer which shows the DS-Wii move in more detail, including the specific steps for moving your character.

A Portuguese Nintendo fansite happened to notice the appearance on Amazon of the Animal Crossing: City Folk/WiiSpeak microphone bundle. Only just now after looking at it have we realized what Nintendo has done here: they've guaranteed City Folk's bestseller status by making it yet another first-party Wii game with a bundled peripheral. It now joins Wii Play, Mario Kart Wii, and Wii Fit. People really love big boxes!

Amazon's price for the bundle is a cause for concern. Either they never bothered to update to the $59.99 price or the price is back up to $69.99. We'd like to make an official announcement at this time: Wii Fanboy endorses the lower price this November. We think it's the right decision for this county.


[Via FNintendo]

If you have no interest in actually paying for a Wii and Animal Crossing: City Folk, Nintendo has your back. For the next three weeks, the company is encouraging people (North Americans only) to dress their pets in adorable outfits, and send photos of the unamused, uncomfortable animal(s) to this website. Come November 16th, the fifty best will win a Wii, a copy of Animal Crossing: City Folk, and a WiiSpeak microphone. Maybe this is the excuse you've needed to justify buying a pug?

The rules encourage an Animal Crossing theme, meaning the entries featured so far on the site are fairly rubbish, with most people just putting a hat on a disgruntled labrador. We sense our own idea is a winner. Protip, though: getting a necktie on a giraffe is hell.


[Via press release]

IGN's Craig Harris tested out the WiiSpeak microphone and voice chat functionality inside Animal Crossing at Nintendo's San Francisco office. His experience seemed much smoother and friendlier than my own, possibly as a result of improvements in the technology, a quieter environment, or a voice that is capable of normal human volume. Treehouse staffers told him that the voice chat has improved significantly since E3.

Conversations came in clearly enough from multiple positions in the room, though Harris noted a drop in quality when his interlocutors in Nintendo's Redmond office drifted far away from the mic, which seems pretty obvious. He was able to converse in a normal speaking voice from his position "six to eight feet" away. However, with no option to turn the music down or off in Animal Crossing, the game tended to drown out the voice output.

There was a mysterious "Use Headphones" option available in Animal Crossing, whose function is currently unknown. Harris speculates that it sends voice and game audio through separate audio channels, but maybe it just changes some preset audio settings to optimitze performance through tiny speakers. It's not as if you can plug a headset into the Wiimote or anything.

The video here may be a little ... YouTubed, but you can see it at the Animal Crossing: City Folk website. And it's clear enough to see that there are a ton of clothing and style options. You can make yourself look like a Power Ranger, a sumo wrestler, or pretty much any variety of ridiculous you'd like. And all it takes is months of scouring shops, the dump, the lost and found, trees, the sky, the ground, the mail, and your friends' catalogs!

After the break, more life in (and around) the Animal Crossing city! Enjoy a brief serenade by Totakeke, learn about the shoe-shine skunk, who will happily change the color of your shoes with what must be really thick polish, and visit the tent of the roving fortune teller, Katrina. And at the end, presents! Well, a video about presents.