Animal Crossing is not so much a game as it is an activity. There are no scores, no bosses to fight, and no real goals to achieve. It’s really just kind of a life simulator. You, a human, move into a town completely inhabited by animals. Why? Nobody knows. You just set out to see the world, apparently bereft of cash, and direction. The minute you get off the train, in your new town, the local store owner makes you a deal for a house, which makes you indebted to him for quite some time. You work off the debt at first by doing some errands and some odd jobs, but you’re eventually free to do whatever you want. Don’t want to pay off your house anymore? OK.
So what else is there to do? Several things!
You could:
- Meet your neighbors, send them gifts, chitchat, teach them catchphrases, or run errands for them
- Pull weeds
- Collect, plant, and sell the fruits that grow in your village
- Fish
- Dig for fossils
- Design your own clothes
- Decorate your house
- Visit the mysterious island
- Participate in the events throughout the year
- Listen to concerts every week
- Etc.
Lots to do!
The game seems to be set up to allow you to play (or ‘visit your town’) for a little bit every day. Certain events happen on certain days throughout the year to keep you going. This all kind of gives you the impression that your town is there and stuff’s happening, even if you aren’t playing.
This doesn’t really sound like the kind of game that I’d be interested in too much, and you’d normally be right. But there’s something oddly compelling about checking out this little town every day or so. Makes it worth coming back occasionally.
Okay, so the silly little town isn’t the main reason I got this game (although it didn’t hurt things). The real reason I even gave this game more than a quick look was that several NES games are available in the game, tantalizingly locked away. They’re pretty hard to get, but I did manage to build quite the collection, and eventually just played this game so I wouldn’t have to fight with my aging Nintendo to try and get these games to play.
[...] got the original Animal Crossing game just because I could use it to play old NES games. It would turn out that the game was pretty [...]