The Animal Crossing City Folk / Wii Speak Microphone bundles arrived in force today, despite never showing up in many preorder systems. While the Wii Speak Channel is not scheduled until sometime in December, Animal Crossing fans will still have plenty to do… even if it is the same stuff already well-remembered from the GameCube and DS editions.

This very special First Thirty is a tale best told in pictures…

The DS transfer hits you right away. If you have Wild World, you can transfer your character’s face, name and partial catalog into City Folk. Your Bells (currency) will NOT transfer, nor will your inventory. If you tell good ol’ Rover here that you have the DS version, he prompts you to turn on the DS with the WW game inserted, and then do a quick download as the Wii steals the necessary info from your WW save file.

As we surmised, the DS can also be used as an impromptu memory card for transporting your City Folk character to somebody else’s Wii. They call it the DS Suitcase, which is adorably appropriate.

Hey, what gives?!? We’re still limited to eight characters for our town’s name? What the hell kind of 2002 crap is that?

Animal Crossing City Folk is clearly grounded in fantasy.

Here’s my town’s randomly generated map. The houses in circles are the four available to human players. Play smart, folks… that house down south by the beach may seem like a beautiful and scenic choice, but remember that whenever you want to sell items, mail letters, or go to the City, that it’s a far walk north to get anywhere.

And now my relationship with Tom Nook begins. He owns my shack and expects me to pay him a ton of bells for it.

Yuck, what a lousy hairstyle! I do not recall having that ‘do in Wild World, but then again it’s been quite some time since I booted that up.

After agreeing to the terms of his loan, Nook triggers a lengthy tutorial by taking you on as a part-time employee of his small shop. The first task is to meet everybody in town. Like Jitters. “Beefy.” I love the vocabulary of Animal Crossing. You get the feeling the the localization team had a great time with this one.

Then you have to plant flowers around Nook’s store.

I’m still a little iffy on the control scheme. You can use the Nunchuk to walk around (which is pretty normal) or the Remote pointer (which is a little weird, but similar to Wild World.) You can either use A/B on the Remote as your main buttons, or C/Z on the Nunchuk for the same results. What I don’t like is that even if you’re using the Nunchuk as your primary controller, you still have to use the Remote whenever a menu screen appears. You don’t seem to be able to use the Nunchuk analog stick or even the Remote d-pad to select through button choices.

I also do not like that the game still obscures the screen with a giant soft keyboard even when it knows you have a USB keyboard connected. Dumb.

Nook requires several deliveries during the tutorial. I had to take something to Wart Jr., who offered this sage wisdom on my inevitable servitude to Tom Nook.

Then I had to write a letter advertising Nook’s shop, and send it to Nate.

While I was at the post office, I checked out the Wii Message Board interactivity. You can send a message to your Message Board, or (I think) directly to the Message Boards of your Wii Friends who also own Animal Crossing.

Pressing 2 on the Remote instantly snaps a picture (dialogue boxes and all!). You can save these pics to an SD card… and in fact you’re going to want to because the game only keeps one unsaved photo at a time. The pictures can be attached to the Message Board mails, but you can only attach ONE photo per day. Nintendo is so scared of everything.

Then Nook asked me to post a message on the town bulletin board.

He’ll never learn.

After all that – and believe me, I’m right up against the First Thirty mark here – I still owe over 18,000 bells. So it’s off to sell fruit and seashells to generate some funds.

You’ll note that there’s almost nothing new in this First Thirty of City Folk. True that. I have not changed my guy to look like a Mii, met anyone for multiplayer, or even travelled to the new City section. Animal Crossing is a game that glacially unwinds over weeks and months of play. With the emphasis on real time events and a slow drip of discoverable items and collectibles, it seems impossible that anybody could adequately experience the game in the First Thirty Days, let alone a single weekend devoted to writing up a full review.