Animal Crossing is a great game that shouldn't be missed by anyone.
The gameplay is simple: You are a child moving out of your parents house. You want to buy a house and live your own life (who doesn't?). But,you can't afford a house! You only have 1,000 bells! (Bells are games currency). A basic house costs 17,800! So,what do you do? You start working for a raccoon named Tom Nook. He gives you simple jobs like delivering items to villagers,writing ads for his shop,ect. After work a little,Nook lets you go. It is now up to you to pay off the rest of your house. And when you do,you can get several expansions to your house making it much larger to hold more items. And there are thousands of items in the game,from different furniture series to single household items like chairs,kitchen appliances,plants,tables,and much more. You can also buy wallpaper and carpet. Some are common,and some are rare and hard to find. Oddly,most of the furniture is not very interactive. You can't use appliances or use any of the gaming items like a pool table. But,you can sit down on chairs and lay down on beds. Plus you can get stereos and get music from a dog named K.K. and play that music on your stereo. The game also runs on the GC's clock,which makes the game real time and makes it more realistic. That's a feature The Sims never had. Add that with the holidays and events that are held in town,and you got a new life for years to enjoy.
The graphics,as mentioned before,are not GC style. The game is a basic port of the japanese game Animal Forest on the N64 with a few added features. The graphics aren't horrible looking,as the bugs and insects you catch look like the real thing. Day and nigh cycles are noticable,from sunrise to sunset and night and day. So,the graphics aren't bad but aren't up to the Gamecube's specs.
The sound of the game is great. Insects make real noises,and you can hear many water effects like the waves of the ocean by the beach,the stream of the river,and the waterfall. The animals talk in their own animal voice,but if this annoys you,you can make them silent in the games settings. There is also some background music (BGM) in the game when you're outside. It changes every hour and the tunes,to me,seem to go with the time of day. At day,the BGM is usually cheery and uplifting. At night,the BGM is slower and quieter. I have many favorite BGM tunes.
The game also has multiplayer. You can have up to 4 human players in total play the game,but they can only play one at a time. You can enjoy writing letters to each other and sending gifts,or even selling some items to them. Your villagers will also comment of their behavior. Another multiplayer feature is the trading system. You can trade items back and forth to anyone in the world using the games code system (no internet connection required). Some items are not tradeable,but most basic furniture items are and if you need a item,go and trade one of your items on the Animal Crossing trading board,or another place where you can trade,and get the item you want quickly. It's a very useful and interesting feature. You can also visit a friends town by inserting your friends memory card into the second card slot,and enjoy a train ride to the other persons town.
I have really enjoyed playing this game for almost four years,and have enjoyed learning all the things about it from the complex code system to the secrets of some very hard to find NES games. Animal Crossing is the longest game I have ever played in my entire gaming history,and as long as I have my Gamecube,I will have this game. There are even more features to the game that I didn't mention. That's how a big of a game Animal Crossing is. Yet,the game is so small is size that it fits in the GC's internal memory,as the system never reads the disk after the first load. If you like life simulation,this game is a must buy.