Utterly charming, fun and engaging

This has to be one of the most unique, original and thoroughly charming video games I’ve ever seen. I bought this along with a refurbished Gamecube for my 7 year old daughter and she’s been rapt ever since. Frankly, this single title alone justifies the cost of the entire GameCube game system; it’s that good.

Animal Crossing has been variously described as a real time life simulation, or a kiddie version of the Sims. It is both of those things, yet so much more. I would go so far as to call it an educational game, although part of the genius behind its design is that the educational elements are presented in such a charmingly subtle manner that I've never seen it described as such.

Yet how else can you describe a video game that puts an incredible emphasis on reading and writing? One that teaches quite a bit of math, introduces young players to the concepts of debt and mortgage, the grid system, map reading and navigation, recycling, budget management, and even museum philanthropy (I kid you not)? This game will have children composing simple melodies and developing print designs for clothing, flags and signs.

Major themes include helping neighbors, writing letters and keeping the village clean and tidy. Daily activities including fishing, harvesting fruit, collecting sea shells, weeding and chatting with animal neighbors. On-going challenges include furnishing your house and paying for the cost of expanding it. If this all sounds mundane, all I can say is it’s presented in such an engaging way that kids forget that they’re doing anything other than having fun.

Music is a huge part of this game. Players have an opportunity to compose the “town melody”. Different locations, characters and even times of day have different musical themes that play in the background. These are so pleasant, varied and of such high quality that they really add to the play experience.

There’s even a dog, inexplicably named K.K. Slider, who jams in front of the town rail station on Saturday evenings. The first time my daughter encountered this particular character was one of many utterly disarming moments in the game. When the little dog began to play his little guitar, the background slowly faded to black, so that only he and my daughter’s virtual presence in the game remained. The camera began to slowly circle around and around the two characters as this little bit of software code serenaded my daughter with a genuinely sweet and beautiful song. The game developer credits began to roll and then cherry blossom pedals floated by. I thought maybe we had reached the end of the game somehow, but as KK concluded his song the last of the credits rolled from view and the background returned. KK advised my daughter that he wasn’t really into commercialism, so she could have a recording of that particular song to play whenever she wanted. Who else but Nintendo writes this kind of code?

The characters, locations (and indeed the entire game world) are quirky, sweet and oddly endearing. Sometimes the animals that move in or out of your village can be gruff, touchy or shy, but never in a threatening way. All dialogue (and there’s a tremendous amount of it) is displayed in printed form in voice balloons accompanied by an endearing auditory nonsense language that Nintendo calls “Babelese”. Characters will make requests of the players, chat about the weather, or suggest slightly bizarre games to play, frequently with a touch an off-beat humor (some of which goes over my daughter’s head, but is never inappropriate or off-color).

Flashes game design brilliance abound in Animal Crossing. If you have more than one memory card, you can create a second village with an entirely different cast of player and game characters. Put both memory cards in the same GameCube and players can take a train from one village to the other. Or if a friend has Animal Crossing, they can bring their card over to your Gamecube so players can go on virtual visits to each other’s villages.

An interesting twist is that game characters sometimes “jump ship” and move out (complete will all belongings) to some other child’s virtual town. My daughter was somewhat distraught when a particularly favored game character disappeared. We only learned about a week later that the delinquent virtual citizen had relocated to a friend’s Gamecube, and was still asking after my daughter by her character’s name!

The game establishes a persistent world that plays out in real time, so depending on the time of the day and year, different weather and events happen. Some characters might only appear at certain times of the day or week. Seasons change as the year progresses, with appropriate visual and auditory cues. Fire up the game on New Years Eve, the harvest moon or Independence Day, and totally unique characters and events will occur. Start up the game in the middle of the night and you just might encounter a ghost roaming your village with an unusual request!

Just when we thought we’d seen everything the game has to offer, new developments occur. The town’s entrepreneur expands his shop or hires new helpers. The village’s animal mayor approached my daughter one day about where to build a new bridge, and then weeks later, put her in charge of turning on the light house each night while he was away on vacation

These and literally hundreds of other developments and opportunities present the player with choices that have real effects and consequences in the Animal Crossing world. Sometimes positively, sometimes negatively, but never in an upsetting way. That sense of virtual persistence, combined with the child’s ability to both interact and impact, often in unpredictable ways, is part of what makes the Animal Crossing play experience so unique.

There’s always going to be that old saw about children squandering hours of their precious youth staring, zombie-like in front of the TV, their fingers twitching madly over game controllers. All I can say is that my daughter is thoroughly engaged by this game, squealing with delight, constantly pestering me with spelling questions for her innumerable virtual letters and always hatching plans, plans, oh, a little girl’s grandiose plans! Plans for her Animal Crossing friends, plans for her Animal Crossing house, plans for her Animal Crossing town.

Me, I even play Animal Crossing. And one day, my virtual character received a very special letter, one from the virtual incarnation of my own daughter, thanking me for being such a great dad.