Animal Crossing: 2003 Official Bootleg

If anyone knows the iconic Animal Crossing franchise, produced by Nintendo, then one should know about the series. You know, you, a child in a village, acting or serving as a mayor or town rep., in a town full of anthropomorphic animals. Around the mid 90's, when I became an adult, I was living abroad in Japan, and with a bit of knowledge of the Japanese language, I became a worker at Nintendo, seeing how my early classes back in my home country of America were about art and computer coding, thus, I decided to work there.
I never felt excited, but rather just curious to see how game development works and how it feels like it, and, heck, maybe with working here, I could have made a future game! But that thought never came into fruition. Years go by, and soon, I decide to return home around '04, said goodbye to my colleagues, and soon, met mom and dad, got a house, family and years later, I hear of a new Animal Crossing game being released.  Because of my history as a Nintendo employee, my son was mi ano did I introduce him to game makers like Nintendo, and others alike for not only Nintendo products, but stuff like PlayStation, XBOX and so fourth. But something in my mind clicked when I saw a commercial for the new game. Allow me to explain.
Around late 2001, around October if I am not mistaken, when Animal Crossing was finally released into America to critical acclaim, a small team at Nintendo were working for a new project, myself included in this department, were thinking of doing a one-shoot game based on the series; same characters, same setting, but in a horror-style genre. At first the idea was bogus, and it was.  Because first of all, Animal Crossing, the series as a whole, was, and always will be a family-friendly game, not some sort of horror game like Resident Evil or Silent Hill. 
If I am gonna be honest, I don't know why the purpose of giving a horror spin-off was worth it. I mean, unless it was aimed at adults for it's own "adult" section, then I could somewhat understand, but the idea was bogus. I had concerns for this, because one, if this were to get released, I tell (at least of what I thought) that it was gonna spark controversy. I would imagine of how parents would buy this, thinking it was the Animal Crossing game the boys and girls were talking about it, only to see character deaths, blood and swearing. 
But I kept my mouth shut, since while we were discussing it, it only began with the leader of the group saying what genre it was and how it would go.  I was chuckling a bit but continued to listen. Then, they went into the plot of the actual game itself; supposedly, it would be about a random-generated human villager, the protagonist of all the games, and supposedly finds out a thief or "striker", preying upon a town, where strange robbery and injuries amongst the town folk, and try to find it, but this time, it was laced with cutscenes. 
When they talked about the cutscene parts, I would always think of the cutscenes in Grand Theft Auto III, where it goes from a free mode explorer, then to enter missions, the characters talk to one another and actually, you know, move in areas not similar to when your exploring (in my words at least), like any cutscene really. 
Because of that, while I was intrigued at first, I wanted to see concept art, and most importantly, the mechanics and how the story would go. Days later, several colleagues were laid off, including me, for which they gave us no reasons whatsoever. I was confused but hesitant to ask, seeing how they would reply with them yelling at us about questioning them. Thus, I shut my mouth. Luckily, a good friend of mine, a worker who stayed in the project, was giving me secret insight of the project. It was only later that it was soon been spread through the building, via word-of-mouth by the employees of the Nintendo building.  
After several free samples of playing the game, seeing how because of the different turn for this project, they had to use us employees as to see if it is good enough, and I mean ALL, of us employees. I was there, and the only thing I can recall is that the music sounded similar in sounds alike to those of Aphex Twin, Boards of Canada and, as I recalled even Nero's Day at Disneyland (even though the music project did not exist at that time). The overall art visuals were the same, but with different colors and overall, "shaded" with darkness. The feedback was mixed at best, but it was decided it wouldn't be good, since sparking controversy would be a bad look at the game as a whole (which is ironic seeing how they did spark controversy with a character saying the N-word). Thus, the project was scrapped.
Cut to a few years later, and there, as I told you, I remembered this event. The only thing I knew about the game if it had copies was that only four were made as test samples and how would the game work when inserted. I don't know why as cartridges, though I have heard that it was gonna be Japan exclusive, seeing how Animal Crossing was released in 1999, a year before the worldwide release of it, and it was on Nintendo 64, so it gave me a good idea and reason for it. Back to the point, I heard two of them crashed for whatever reason, and the third was for testing, though I heard it was scrapped when everyone said it was not a good look. However, the fourth one was lost. No one knew where it went and as far as I know, it became someone of an urban legend amongst the workers, but it supposedly died off as years went by. Well, for whatever reason, the legend came back to me, in a strange matter actually. 
See, now that I am a grown ass man, the job I took at that time, was a clerk at a thrift store I worked for, and while the place was small, I was paid a good amount of money. To describe the shop, think of it like some sort of abandoned house, but with old items to take.  The store interior was of course not an abandoned house, and it did have electricity, but it had a style reminiscent of old homes. 
The shop had aisles of clothes, toys, statues, gear, and even a music section of old CDs and albums by unknown artists. But being serious now, I was given an item from someone who claimed was working for a small, electronic retail company that sold old pieces of computers and low, run-of-the-mill movies and games, and was selling this piece of equipment. Before I looked at the equipment, the guy gave me his money, and thus I proceeded to look at the game, since it was on it's area where it's title with colors was not in sight.  
As soon as I saw it, I paused to look to see if I was being deceived by my own eyes to see if it was the real thing, or it was a fake. The equipment, was, a cartridge piece with a copy-and-paste image of the Animal Crossing logo along with several Japanese letters whom I forgot after a while. I soon put the cartridge in my pocket, and as the hours passed, I decided to go home. Luckily, being the scummy person I am, there was a Nintendo 64 up for sale, a used one at best. I turned off the cameras, and I took the console with me home. After dinner and putting my kid to sleep, I told the wife I had to do some work. She let me go, and soon, I hooked it up to the outlets on the wall of my home, slapped the cartridge in, and waited. 
And...
It crashed.
I groaned a bit but I mean hey, it's been a while and the thing has been lost so I cannot do anything about. Sure, I still knew how to code a bit but never emulate an old game. But then again, it could just be a cartridge with a style similar to what we saw, but then again again, the cartridges were spelled that way, but hey, coincidence? I think so.
The following morning, I put the two pieces of equipment back on the store aisles. Whilst driving, with the two things beneath my seat, I could feel as if something from the cartridge, not the console, was speaking. Of course it wasn't, but it felt strange. Not paranormal, but enigmatic.
I soon brushed it off, and soon went back to work. While working, hours later, I met an old friend, the guy who gave me insight. I was happy I got to see him, whom he told me he was living on the other side of town. With this reunion in mind, I gave him secret insight too.
I grabbed the cartridge from a box and showed it to him. When he saw it, he just stared at it. I did not know what he was thinking, but he breathed in a deep sigh. Not like it was a sad one or mad one, he just sorta, I guess, remembered.
He told me to meet him around seven in the afternoon, where I left my job. I soon accepted and as the day went by, I met him at the parking lot. He brought his old work van that he bought once he moved to America. He told me to look behind his van, as we both opened the doors, and he pointed an old box, full of keyboards, notebooks, and two computer monitors. He told me that one of the computer contains several textures and coding for the game. He told me that tomorrow we should meet up again. Coincidentally, I have the day off tomorrow, thus it was a good time to check up on each other, but also catch up on how our lives are.  
The day after, I catched up with him, and we talked about how are lives were going. Then we got straight to the point. My friend (to whoever wants know his name, his name was Lee), hooked up the two monitors. After grabbing his notebooks, where his passwords and other stuff was, and after several minutes of the computer booting up and loading slowly, with his password and hand and entering it, and, with that, the computer finally loaded up.
The first thing we noticed when we saw the files that were aimed at this Nintendo-based project was the overwhelming amount of detailed documents and textures. Lee told me that other workers lead by the group gave them their passwords and other software in order to upload the documents and textures were downloaded and imported to remember which was which and how it was done. Secondly, when we went to see the documents, all in Japanese text with Lee's assistance of translation, it began with the words "NOT APPROVED BY EGUCHI - PROJECT MADE BY WORKERS" and so fourth, and along those lines were various writings of how characters would interact, how the mechanic and timing would work, but also about the "striker".
Oh yeah, the mentioned "striker".
This striker feller, was suppose to be the main villain of the story, a model either a lion, bear, alligator, cat or dog, and was supposed to be silhouetted as a shadow person, lurking in plain sight or even background models, giving off an eerie aspect and atmosphere.
But all we saw was the mentioned striker textures in it's own files, but was just the color black with small white dotted eyes and pretty much all that, along with dialogue such as "Why do we act like this," and "you forgot, eh?," which I think was a form of some sort of creepy humor, seeing how the original games are about fun and being wholesome, and with this addition of creepy vibes could have work.
After that, we decided to check the textures. The villager textures were somewhat... strange. For example, some villagers had eye bags in their eyes, with eyes in the form of distress, such villagers included the textures of Ankha, Lobo and Huck.
Some had sparsely, outgrown "spiky" fur, probably about being mentally "insane," but maybe about their distress-in-game, like Bob and Leopold's fur model, and some had injuries like bruises, cuts and scars, but with a bit of a mixed color feeling and a bit of "bloody open cut" vibes, or something like that. Scars that were similar to Rasher's and Spike's, but scars in character textures that seemed out of place. Like a bruise on Alfonso's snout and a scar over one of Pompom's eyes.
Lee told me these were injuries that were given to the villagers once progress slowly becomes a bad percentage or something again, like Grand Theft Auto. I feel like it took influence from GTA. It, probably did.
Aside from that, there was no playable game or anything, but rather in the form of videos, recorded on video camera. The videos were shot on a stool (I presume), facing a box-shaped TV, and it showed the videos. About the videos themselves. Only five were shot. Along with pictures as well.
The five videos included the beginning, a video about not doing the missions and other activities and talking to the villagers, and three missions filmed. The photos had more than the videos. Let us talk about the photos first, since those have the least information but had to be examined. There were a lot of photos, mostly the backgrounds, an option and settings menu amongst other photos, but there were the photos I deemed important.
Some of the photos listed were as follows:
# A map about the acres and villagers. The villagers include Bill, Cube, Tangy, Peewee, Hugh, Olivia, Limberg, Lobo, Cesar, Roald, Maddie and Opal.
# The interior of the Able Sisters and Nook Cranny's. The interiors of both of the shops were filled with several cracks and some parts that looked like they rusted, but were probably stained.
# The character himself, or as he is referred to as just "You." The character wore grey close, a classic detective trench coat along with a pointed cap, probably since "You," work for the law. The character had circle eyes, a square nose, but in a constant frown or disappointed face.
# A "progress bar," which is self explanatory.
Now, about the videos. The first video was, essentially, the beginning of the game. Similar to the original Animal Crossing, it opens with you in the back of a cab, where the driver, Kapp'n is driving you to the town, the destination. Kapp'n begins to explain what is happening.
He goes onto explain "Hey, I heard you was part of this trip to solve what was happening?" and other lines "I hope you do fine, as well as the locals, don't want nothing bad to happen." After that, we are showed the main character, in a movie style introduction, showing the characters feet, then slowly going up for the face. The protagonist (which I am gonna refer instead of "You") walks to the town hall where he is exclaimed by Tom Nook.
Tom Nook claims that Tortimer went out of town for a while, and some strange things were happening around the town. With the help of the protagonist, he should solve the town and who is the culprit. It then showed after the cutscene that we need to go to our temporary house, and then we sleep. It soon ends there.
The second video involved the protagonist entering the Able Sisters, after what the progress bar and the option menu says that there were seven missions completed. When entering the shop, Mable is then seen with a happy face, saying quote "Are you the town mayor! Thank goodness you're here, we need your help. Anyways, looking for a new look for your next trip?" and in the back of the shop, Sable is organizing clothes while the protagonist went in to check the clothes section.
A note before we begin is that while most of the commentary is somewhat silent, albeit for background sounds, some people, probably the creators or testers where chatting about this, in Japanese of course.
The clothes was your average thing, tees, pants, hats, all of that.
The protagonist heads out and talks to two of the residents, those being Olivia and Limberg. When the protagonist went up to Olivia, she exclaimed that "Please, we appreciate your help here, if not, we could have been...been...GONERS!" with a tearful and scared expression. The protagonist goes up to talk to Limberg, and in his appearance, he was in an agitated mood. "SERIOUSLY, HE STRIKES AGAIN. GRANTED, THANKS FOR YOUR PROGRESS, BUT I AM SCARED OF MY LIFE, THAT I NEED WEAPONS!" 
The video soon ended. What was strange is the absence of The Roost and the Police headquarters. I think it had to do with this being a demo, but a demo with a storyline already present. I feel like they were too lazy to add them. Lee explained about everything I said, so massive props to him, but anyways...
The last three videos were the missions. Since they were long, albeit the last one, I am gonna have to cut them short. The first one involved the protagonist encountering a small camp near the outskirts. The camp had destroyed pieces of a what seemed to be a tarp, and trashed items. They included rusted cans, a rusted piece of metals, an empty, dirty plastic canister, etc. The character then wrote about this in a notebook, and soon, with that a small message at the bottom said "MISSION COMPLETED!"
The second video involved Tom Nook sending you out to an abandoned house in the outskirts, where from word-of-mouth, the strikers hides out apparently. The protagonist walks for a bit and encounters the house, and for a small amount of seconds, the house is shown, a two story house, boarded up, but an entrance in the front, a broken window, in a cutscene, with a wooshing wind sound. The house's interior was decayed, with things thrown and broken, and the only way to navigate was a small map at the bottom, and the protagonist holding a flashlight.
The part that was the climax is when we investigate a room full of items that is spotted from using the flashlight, covered a blanket door. Before the protagonist investigated it, a crashing sound is heard, which causes the protagonist flees. The mission then turns into a God-Of-War-esque game, where buttons are pushed and shown on screen which button is which to progress. Footsteps are heard and in the end, the character hops out the window, and flees.
The last video was of the supposed ending of the game. The villager houses are empty, and we are soon met face-to-face with the striker. It soon goes out with a selection of weapons: a slingshot with stones, a cut piece of iron, and several stones to throw, two weapons to throw and a melee weapon. The striker threw some stones, and then it became a full on "chase-and-seek" but through the middle of the video, one of the players goes to check on the camera and says "the battery is almost dead!" and while in the span of it, minutes later, the climax is about to happen, where the character entered the town hall and a fight happen, but in a matter of second, it stopped. Looks like the battery got the best of it.
After some file hunting, it all became a dead end. In the end, we shut it down, and we asked why such a worker-based project, which I deemed a bootleg, would have been conceived in the first place. Of course in the beginning I mentiond it to you, but I had more questions. The documents said that Katsuya Eguchi did not approve, but probably (most likely not) did he ever acknowledged about it? But for now, we can only question. Animal Crossing is a happy game series, obviously, so I have to wonder why my former co-workers were to be conceiving a horror idea, but then again, who am I to ask. 
Category:Video Games
Category:Animal Crossing
Category:Creepypastas made by John Pulsar