New Animal Forest details

At its recent summit, Nintendo revealed that the North American version of Animal Forest is now known as Animal Crossing. In addition, Nintendo announced that it would be releasing the e-card reader in the United States so that players can buy Animal Crossing cards, swipe them in the reader, and then get a password that they can send to other characters in the game. The character who receives the e-mail will then send players back a prize of some sort.

There will be approximately 1,000 items in the game, most of which are just various types of Nintendo memorabilia, ranging from the Master Sword and clothing from The Legend of Zelda games to Mario's shirt. Animal Crossing will also have a full NES emulator and full versions of 10 games, including the original Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr., and Balloon Fight.

Nintendo also mentioned that Animal Crossing would support Game Boy Advance connectivity. Players can edit clothing patterns on the Game Boy Advance, and they can wear the clothes or sell them to other characters in the game. Moreover, when the Game Boy Advance is linked, players will be able to visit a normally unreachable island where a virtual pet is located. Players can then download the virtual pet into the Game Boy Advance and continue to interact with it as long as the Game Boy Advance is never turned off or is put into sleep mode.

Like the Japanese version, the game will have time-specific events that occur in accordance with the date of the internal clock in the GameCube. For example, if it's a player's birthday, then another character in the game will come by his or her house and drop off a present--in one case, the present was a copy of Donkey Kong. There will also be special events to commemorate New Year's Eve and other holidays. In addition, cockroaches will start to infest a player's home if the game hasn't been played for a certain period of time.

The localization is currently being performed by the same team that performed the localization of Paper Mario for the Nintendo 64, so players can expect the same type of quality in the translation. As far as additions to the game are concerned, Nintendo plans to add new pieces of furniture and the aforementioned special calendar events.

Animal Crossing is scheduled for release in the fall and will include a memory card. An official release date has not been revealed for the e-card reader, but it's expected to launch alongside the game.