A Piece of Childhood
Many people used, and some still do, get up in the morning, boot up their GameCube, and check their mail on Animal Crossing before starting their day in real life. That's how amazingly awesome this game is, where you'd rather check your character's mail rather than your own Email or even regular mail.
Ten years later, it's still a game that has fond memories in people's mind. Just last night, I myself had a dream that I was playing this game. It's just that good!
...GAME PLAY...
There are soooo many fun, interactive and easy-to-do things in Animal Crossing.
You can fish, plant trees, go shopping, do tasks for villagers, donate stuff to the museum, furnish your house, write letters, design clothes, even come with catchphrases for villagers!
Goal: It's whatever your little heart desires in this game! However, most people just aim to pay off their house by making payments to the Post Office. You can do anything you want, really. Why not try to beautify your village and aim for a perfect rating from the Wishing Well by planting trees and flowers in a smart way? Or, why not try to collect every single fish and bug there is?
It's all up to you!
Real-Time Clock: Animal Crossing uses the GameCube's internal clock for real-time game play. Seasons change just like they do in real life, the sun sets at 6pm and rises at 7am, the mail comes around 9:15am and 6pm, December and January have snow on the ground while October and November have vibrant leaves on trees.
Chat with villagers each day and they'll become your closest friends. Leave Animal Crossing for a long time and your town will become infested with weeds, along with villagers becoming worried about your absence!
Multiplayer: Four friends can simultaneously play this game! Not over the internet, but on the local GameCube and memory card itself. That means, up to four friends can move into an Animal Crossing town and live life there! Your friends can impact your town in diverse ways. Too many trees chopped down? One of your friends needs to let up on the axe! Trash covering an area? Someone didn't throw away their garbage!
You really need to work together if you have friends playing on the same town since they can have big impacts on it!
Money: Money is as important as anything. In Animal Crossing, money is called 'Bells'. You will need bells to pay for many things, like furniture, tools, debt-payment, risk-taking (some villagers will offer to play a risk-game that involves paying money in the chance that you win a rare item), and many other things. Bells can be earned in a variety of ways. The easiest and most profitable is fishing. You can also collect and sell bugs, though that method is a bit more challenging.
Bells can also be accumulated by selling sea shells found on the beach, or by selling fruit found on a tree, or by selling furniture/clothes that you don't want.
You can also check the 'dump' to see if there's anything worth selling. The dump is the only place where you can safely deposit junk and items you don't want, although you can also give them to Nook.
House: Your house can be furnished however you want it to be. You can have a theme, randomize it, or just use it for storage. The system of Feng-Sui is also used in Animal Crossing and the key to getting a good-looking house that gets a ton of points is to organize and decorate it properly! Themes help a lot if you know how to use them right. For example, a room with the 'Cabin' theme will get way more points that a room with mixed furniture.
As you pay off your house, it will expand and grow to a huge mansion! Eventually, once you've paid it all off, you'll have a spacious living room, an upstairs room, an attic and a basement. The basement DOES NOT get points from the HRA and can be used however you want. Most just use it as storage.
Gyroids: You may have noticed that arm-wailing orange object next to your house. That is a Gyroid, a unique item found in Animal Crossing. There are many types of gyroids to collect, including sets! Each gyroid makes a unique sound and a set of the same gyroids will make a little song! Gyroids, placed in your house, will offer big bonuses to your house's score from the HRA.
Also, if you have a music player in your house and have a song playing, putting gyroids in the same room as the music player will make the gyroid 'synch' to the song!
Music: Animal Crossing has a wide variety of music. Every hour, a new song is accompanied to the hour. It it's 7am, the 7am song will loop and play whereas if it's 9pm, the 9pm song will loop and play. If it's raining outside (yep, weather is also a big factor in this game), the 'Rainy Day' song will loop and play (though it gets rather dull after an hour or two).
To collect music, you'll have to visit K.K. Slider, a traveling dog musician who plays songs every Saturday night by the train depot.
You can request songs (like 'Two Days Ago') from K.K. who will play the song in a electronic format, and then give you the MP3 version after the song is done where you can pop it into a music player and listen to it!
Designing Patterns: There is a little place called the 'Able Sisters' where your character can, for a small fee, design any pattern he or she desires! Using a simple Paint program, you can create patterns for clothes, umbrellas, wallpaper and floors. Also, if you have a design displayed in the Able Sisters shop, chances are a villager might just wear that same design on his or her clothes. Who knows, you might just have made a new fashion trend from your design!
Random Events: Even in Animal Crossing, there are random events that happen every few weeks! These can range from cleaning a sports car (Gracie), to feeding a starving artist (Wendell). These events are ALWAYS posted on the Bulletin Board found in the acre where your house is! Speaking of which, you can post anything on the town's bulletin board, just make sure its appropriate if other people play in the same town as you!
. . . There as many, many, other things to do in Animal Crossing, these are but a few! You have to PLAY and EXPERIENCE the game yourself to have that feeling.
Closing Thoughts: While this game is superb and stands the test of time, it DOES get pretty dull once you've played it for months and years continuously. It's good to play it every few years but every day it can get pretty dull since you already know what to expect!
Recommended: Yes, even if you've only got a few minutes, it's not a game that requires playing every second to get a rare item. In fact, some rare things are scheduled in the game on the bulletin board, that way, you know when to play to get that item.