Animal Crossing's hook perforating my eye socket.

Animal Crossing’s hook perforating my eye socket.

Submitted by Stephen Munn on March 24, 2007 – 5:15 pm6 Comments

For those unfamiliar with the “hook” behind Animal Crossing, I’ll give it a second here. Both US releases are aware of the system clock, and as a result, time passes. There’s a day and a night, seasons, appropriate weather, an assortment of secular holidays, things like that.

The problem with this system is if you don’t play for a while, your town becomes overgrown by weeds and the animals in town start to resent your absence. The longer you’re gone, the more pissy they get. It’s charming at first, but depending on your personality, you might start to feel guilty.

My advice for Animal Crossing is don’t ever part with the game, because interest in the game comes in waves. You’ll go weeks or months without playing and then play every day for several weeks. It’s just the way it happens… but keep in mind when you rediscover the game, there’s a lot of work ahead of you.

I stopped into my town today for the first time in a while to get my friend code for someone, and yep, the place was overgrown, I needed to check the mailbox, and there was an insurance salesman on my front step waiting for me. Well, the insurance salesman is there every Saturday, so that’s no big deal. So I ran through town to talk to Copper to get my friend code, and decided it was time to spend some time with the game again… and the hook digs into my skull once more. It’s back to the weed-pulling simulator for me.

Sifer2400

Sound like this type of game needs non stop attention. Id get kind of pissed it like time is moving on and ur in hibernation in way. do you still try to keep the “place” in shape so to speak every once in a while?
Cruds

I have the cube version, hasn’t happened to me yet. I play it almost every day just checking the mail, do my round, catch some fish, digg up some fossils and trade items for money, all this can be done in 15 minutes.You just made me curious how bad it will get. Maybe I’ll leave the game alone for a while, just for the sake of it.
Stephen

Well, the animals in town will yell at you, but they get over it quickly. That’s in both versions of the game. The town gets overgrown with weeds, to an alarming point, and it takes a long time to pull all the weeds if you try to do it all in one sitting.

Time travel is also an option, you just change the clock before you go into the game, in order to make things better, or worse for yourself. You can also catch the holidays you missed that way.

One of the biggest nuisances about leaving the game for a while is you miss out on catching certain fish that are only in season at certain times.
Nathan

At first I liked the idea of Animal Crossing. I loved the first one. But after months of trying to scrape up money and the game having no real continuation after you’ve played nearly every day for a year, it gets old quick. I get sick of the weeds and even more sick of having to come back to it a few times a week. I can’t devote that much effort to one game for, I don’t know, the rest of my life. I try to pick it up once in a while but it doesn’t really get me anywhere. Sure I don’t have everything but, I don’t really care.

I can’t achieve anything in the game really so it just feels empty. Especially with the stupid friend code system. Maybe if I could just visit random towns I would play more, but this friend code thing makes me not want to put in the effort.
Stephen

Nathan, if you’ve unearthed all the fossils, hooked all the fish, and netted all the insects in just one year of play, I am very impressed with your dedication to the game. But there are hundreds of items in the game to decorate your now-massive house, and that should keep you busy too. I would recommend you hit a site like ACCentral.net to find someone to link up with so you can visit and trade items.

I will regularly go two months or more without even plugging the game into my system, and it never takes me an hour to get back up to speed in the game. When I played last night I went online and received a spring gift from Nintendo in the game, it was a mop. For spring cleaning. Cheeky.

Keep an eye open for my upcoming article on Animal Crossing for Wii and what I want from it.
Chanyou

I have animal crossing an i was wondering if anyone could give me thier code..i have never been to another town b4 so plz here is mine

town : Florida
code: 240613967726
name: Chantel (with a music note next 2 it)

THANK U