Animal Crossing: Wild World

おいでよ　どうぶつの森

Animal Crossing: Wild World

***Animal Crossing: Wild World***, known in Japan as ***Animal Forest: Come on Over*** (おいでよ　どうぶつの森 *Oideyo Dōbutsu no Mori*?)

​ is a life simulation game for the Nintendo DS, set in a town where the player is a person who lives among animals and other creatures. It is a follow-up to the 2002 hit *Animal Crossing* for the Nintendo GameCube and the Japan-only *Animal Forest*, *Animal Forest+*, and *Animal Forest e+*. This is also the first South Korean release, known as ***Animal Forest: Come in to Play***  (놀러오세요 동물의숲, Nollo Oseyo Dongmul-ui Soup) in South Korea. It was also unofficially translated into Mandarin Chinese as ***Welcome to the Animal Forest*** (欢迎来到动物之森/歡迎來到動物之森), Huānyíng lái dào dòngwù zhī sēn). During development, the working title was 'Animal Crossing DS'.

The important features of the first *Animal Crossing* series game return in this one, but with improvements and many changes. Activities in town include buying and selling items, fishing, and several others, especially becoming friends with the villagers. The game occurs in real time, with the real calendar, and time progresses even when the game is turned off.

## Online play

*Wild World* is the second Nintendo title that uses the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection (the first being *Mario Kart DS).* This lets players use wireless access points to connect to the Internet and visit other players' towns.

As of May 20th, 2014, Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection on the Nintendo DS and Nintendo Wii has been discontinued. This terminated Animal Crossing: Wild World's Wi-Fi capability. The local multiplayer will still work because it does not use Wi-Fi. However, some Homebrew developers have created their own custom servers allowing *Wild World* to be played online again.

## Release

*Wild World* was released in Japan on November 23rd, 2005. It was released in North America on December 5th, 2005, in time for Christmas. Version 1.1 of *Wild World* for Japan and North America was created on February 10, 2006. Players in Europe had to wait until March 31st, 2006 for the European release. It was rereleased in Japan with copies of *Animal Forest*.

On November 20th, 2015, *Wild World* was made available on the Wii U Virtual Console service in Europe; on July 27th 2016 in Japan and on October 13th 2016 in North America. Online and multiplayer features are not available on this platform, although the requirement for a friend to visit to upgrade Tom Nook's shop to Nookington's was dropped.

## Gameplay

Following in the footsteps of the popular GameCube original, the player starts out as a human in a town with no bells. The player mortgage a small house from the local shopkeeper, the Tanuki (or raccoon in the English version) Tom Nook. Paying off a loan results in a larger house. Unlike the original *Animal Crossing*, where each player lives in one of four houses in a single estate, all players live together in one house.

Many players will want a bigger house, because decorating their house in their way, with furniture and other items, is one of the main features of the game. The player can collect fruit, fish, insects, paintings, fossils, furniture, and other items. There are over 550 different pieces of furniture. Once the player has some furniture, taking it to their house is easy; the furniture becomes a leaf that fits in their pocket. They can also customize themselves by buying clothes, accessories, hats, or drawing patterns.

Outside the house, the player can befriend the animal neighbors; the animals are much more interactive in this game than they were in the GameCube game. Villagers can still ask the players to do errands for them, but there is no longer an explicit menu item to request them, and they no longer require the player to find a missing item from a long chain of animals. Animals can also give the player their picture of themselves, with a unique quote on the back that is one's picture to keep, even after they move away.

The player can also customize their town by planting trees and growing flowers. At the museum, the player can donate certain items to the collections. At the tailor's, the player can buy clothes or draw their own patterns. This way, the player can customize their town.

Furthermore, if animals are not enough, the player can invite up to three human friends to their town using the Nintendo Wi-Fi connection or DS to DS. The Nintendo Wi-Fi connection was shut down in 2014 making DS to DS connection the only way to play with other players, aside from 3rd-party modifications.

### New additions

* Using Nintendo's (now defunct) Wi-Fi Connection, the player could visit friends online, and the DS to DS connection allows them to visit friends nearby.
* New tools (Slingshot, Watering Can), with gold variants.
* New holidays (Yay Day, La-Di day, etc.).
* Increased character customization, with the ability to change hat, facial accessories, hair-style, and umbrella.
* Patterns can now be placed on the ground outside as removable tiles.
* New characters, like Celeste, the observatory owl, Brewster the barman, and Harriet the salon hair stylist.
* The player can see the sky. Draw constellations, and they will appear at night.
* The museum holds larger collections, and now also has an observatory and a café.
* Animal villagers sometimes give the player their picture, so the player can remember them even after they move out of town.
* Animal villagers are much more interactive. They will chase the player to talk to them, challenge them in fishing or bug-catching matches, come to their house for a chat, tend to their own gardens, and even give the player a picture of themselves.
* At 8:00 PM each Saturday, the player can visit the cafe to hear K.K. Slider play. Some new songs were also added, such as Marine Song 2001, Steep Hill, and Pondering.
* The player can use either the control pad or the touch screen to control their character. The stylus and the touch screen make it much easier to move, manage items and type letters. When playing on the 3DS, the thumb-stick is considered much more comfortable to use than the d-pad (which is tricky to walk diagonally)
* If the player puts a letter in a bottle, it might wash up on a random person's shore, or their own.
* There are 16 new fish, as well as 16 new bugs. For more information see Insects (Wild World).
* Monkey villagers were once able to appear in the game, though this could only be done through Tag Mode in Nintendo Zones (official hot spots that Nintendo would use to distribute downloadable content). Following the shutdown of both these Nintendo Zones and Nintendo Wi-Fi connection, monkey villagers are no longer available.
* The player can now crossbreed flowers to create special-colored flowers known as hybrids.
* 72 villagers are added into the game. However, out of these 72 villagers, only 18 of them are brand new. The rest have made their debut in the Japan-exclusive *Animal Forest e+*.
* Wi-Fi compatibility was introduced (though it has since gone defunct due to the shutdown of Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection).

### Changes

* Blathers can now identify fossils himself.
* Crazy Redd won't let the player come into his shop until they are a member and know a "password", which is given away by a random villager.
	+ After the player becomes a member of Redd's service, he will distribute passwords in the mail.
* Tom Nook no longer sells clothes and umbrellas. The Able Sisters now provide these services.
* Some characters from *Animal Crossing* and *Animal Forest e+* have been removed or replaced.
* Some items and collectables do not appear. (i.e. the collectable NES Games)
* Some buildings are gone. The police station and post office building have been removed from each town, but the town gate and town hall replaces them. The wishing well is gone and town dump is gone, but the recycle bin at the town hall replaces it. The Train Station has been removed as well.
* Don Resetti does not appear. However, he makes a return in *City Folk*.
* The acre system is changed. The world now scrolls continuously, without sudden camera changes at acre boundaries. The world appears cylindrical; objects in the distance curve away so that the player can see the sky instead of having a top-down view, but there are still acres of land that must be filled to get a perfect town (16 x 16 squares).
* The old password system for shipping items between towns is gone. The player can now carry items with them through the Wi-Fi Connection, allowing for more direct trading.
* Tom Nook sells only one house rather than four separate houses, but up to four human players can live in the same house. In *City Folk*, Nook sells four houses again.
* The journal feature, where the player could write a public or private journal each month, is gone.
* Container furniture such as wardrobes and dressers work differently. Each player has a storage area that holds 96 items, and they can use any dresser to access it. This feature replaces the basements of *Animal Crossing* (in *Animal Crossing*, dressers each held 3 items).
* Certain holidays from *Animal Crossing*, such as Toy Day and Halloween, have been removed. They return in *City Folk*.
* The player can only go into other villagers' houses when they are inside them and awake.
* The entire soundtrack is changed; the title screen, all 24 hour themes, all four Nook stores, the tailor, and the town hall (similar to the post office) and the gate (same instance as the town hall). This soundtrack is reused for *City Folk*, but the Resetti music is recycled from the GameCube soundtrack.
* Animalese is altered to bear a closer resemblance to the version heard in the Japanese versions of *Animal Crossing*, and has stayed this way since.
* The Classic Hutch is no longer part of the Classic Series. It is replaced by the Classic Buffet.
* Gracie will no longer ask the player to wash her car to get a shirt. She gives the player one by giving them a Fashionista Badge, they can also get another one by talking to her and offer her 5000 or more Bells.
* The lottery is no longer in the games. Instead, the kinds of furniture earned from it can be bought as rare Spotlight Items.
* The Golden Axe is now obtained through a "Straw Millionaire"-esque sequence of trades, rather than through maintaining a perfect town for 16 consecutive days; the original task now rewards the player with the Golden Watering Can.
* K.K. Slider now appears in The Roost in the museum rather than appearing at the train station, as the latter no longer exists.

## Problems

* On January 26, 2006, an accident occurred relating to the Wi-Fi features. A few weeks prior, Nintendo sent out a free Mario Coin item from Satoru Iwata to all who connected to Wi-Fi while it was available. On the same day, a failed attempt to send a second exclusive item sent a blank letter to all who connected to Nintendo Wi-Fi before 5:00 PM. This letter contained the "glitched red tulip" item. This item could be planted in cement as a tree or, if put into the player's house, would create an invisible, irremovable wall. The item could be disposed of by planting it in the ground or selling it. On February 13, 2006, Nintendo sent out a letter containing 10,000 Bells and an amusing town bulletin board notice to apologize for the mistake. Here is a video of the glitched barrier.
* In 2005, when Nintendo sent fourteen copies of *Wild World* with pre-saved towns to members of the media for review purposes, it was discovered that someone had apparently tampered with the game and changed Baabara's catchphrase to a certain slur. Nintendo quickly apologized and recalled the game cards in question.

## Trivia

* In the game, the Able Sisters is always to the east of Tom Nook's store, but on the cover of the game they are separated.
* It is the first *Animal Crossing* game to be re-released and be on another platform from when it was first released.
* Unlike most games in the *Animal Crossing* series, the Japanese version of *Wild World* is incompatible with other-language versions, due to character encoding differences and different sizes of various data structures.
* In the American version of the game, If the player gets the player face from selecting the first options for all the questions in the taxi, their eyes will be brown. However, in the Japanese version, the eyes are black.
* The game at E3 2005 was called Animal Crossing: Population Growing! DS. The game was also was called Animal Crossing 2

## References

1. ↑ http://www2.ndcube.co.jp/game/index.html
2. ↑ http://www.4gamer.net/games/361/G036140/20171222062/
3. ↑ https://ac-pocketcamp.com/
4. ↑ https://www.nintendo.co.jp/ds/admj/
5. ↑ http://bbs.duowan.com/thread-45341197-1-1.html. Published 2016, December 26. Retrieved 2017, October 6.
6. ↑ BUILDTIME from a version 1.1 copy of Wild World game's data: *2006-02-10 17:52:59*