Animal crossing in portable form!

Hello, i am here to express my satisfaction for Animal Crossing for the Nintendo DS as one of the best and most innovative games for the Nintendo DS. I have not played the original animal crossing on the gamecube so i really cannot make comparisons between the 2 games since i have not played the first, i can only go on what i have heard.

Animal crossing is basically a life-sim game. You start the game by arriving in a new town basically, and you are assigned a house and after doing a few chores for the local shopkeeper, Tom Nook (yes someone we have all come to love haven't we hehe) you are free to do whatever you want in the game. This isnt really a game per say, so please dont expect the normal beat the high score fare or whatever, its a free roaming play as you go as much as you want type thing. You basically create your own goals in this game as well. Whether your goal be to complete the collection of fish in the museaum or collect as many items as possible, there is something here for everyone. This game does focus a lot on collecting if thats your thing, but again this game doesnt have any defined goals, you create your own, there is really no benefit to collecting every item in the game.

The chores you have to do for Nook before getting let go are running errands. They are very easy to complete so dont expect to have many problems here, and involve delivering furniture, writing letters, and posting a message on the town's bulletin board. This also helps to introduce you to the town and villagers that live in your town.

After this you are free to do whatever you want, the first things you should do is probably start making money to pay off your loan. What happens is that when you move to your town, you are given a house, but that house is not paid for yet. So you have to pay for it in Bells, the currency of the town. You do this by paying Tom Nook the shopkeeper through his account in the Town Hall. Its very easy to do. Once you pay off your loan the first time your house will get upgraded as a reward, you can also choose not to upgrade i believe. Then you have to pay off the next upgrade and so on, but there is a maximum amount of upgrades that you can get.

You do pretty much have to pay off at least your first loan though to get anywhere in the game, and face it you will want a bigger house. Plan on spending some time making money with this game. However bells are easy to make, you can get money from just picking the fruit that falls on the ground and picking up the things from around the beach. This is very easy to do. Paying off your debt really is no problem as i was able to pay off my first debt on my first day of playing just by doing the above things.

You can also buy items from Tom Nook, you have to do this to be able to do other things in the game such as fish, catch bugs or plant fruit/other things. For example to be able to catch fish you have to buy a fishing pole and to catch bugs you have to buy a net. Don't fret if these items dont appear in the shop right away as the shop stock changes daily and the shop upgrades every so often!

You can also visit villagers, write letters to villagers, just talk with villagers. You can also make your own pattern designs for various things such as clothing or the town flag, and you can also make your own constellations in the sky via the observatory, and they will appear in the sky at night.

Now i will talk about the online mode: Note to parents: Please supervise your children while playing online. It is up to you the parent to decide whether or not your child or teen plays online, it is not up to me to decide that for you. It is also not essential to play this game online as it can be played offline just as any other game can, think of the online mode as a bonus feature in the game.

I am not here to discuss the ramifications of connecting to the nintendo Wi-fi service, the only thing i can say is that it is not really a difficult procedure at all and can be as simple as going down to the local mcdonalds. I recommend checking out www.nintendowifi.com for all information relating to the online service. The game also comes with the standard instruction manual and a special manual on the wi-fi service.

I have played this online. The online mode is basically the same as the original game except you visit a friends town, and can chat with them and basically can do anything you can in your own town but in their town. You can also open your gate to allow friends in to visit your own town if you so desire.

You cannot let random people in your village, and you cannot go to a random person's village. The person who you are visiting must have your friend code and you must have theirs. It will not work unless both parties have each other's friend codes. You also cannot send a letter to a person when they are away, what you do is go to the person's post office when you are in their town to leave them a letter, you can also leave them an item with the letter.

When you are in someone else's town you can give items to them and you can go to Nook's shop and buy from their Nook. This may sound a bit confusing but the selection in each person's shop will vary since its a different game but when you buy an item you are still buying from Nook and not that actual person. You can also fish in their river and collect fruit from their trees. You should probably ask them before you take the fruit though! You can also post messages on their bulletin board and write letters to their villagers.

You can chat with the people you let into your village, and you can chat with people in a village that you are visiting. You can type anything you want to these people although the message size is short so just type many long messages.

I am not sure how exactly this works but things from your town get transferred or added to the other person's town or vice versa when you play online. No you wont lose any of your stuff or anything like that, its just an added benefit of the online mode. You might get a new villager in your town or you might see your friend's constellation in your sky for example.

The online mode is pretty awesome in my opinion and really adds a lot to the game.