DS Animal Crossing shipping

Gamers tired of The Surreal Life reruns can now make their own lives a little more surreal with Nintendo's new bill-paying, garbage-dumping, bug-collecting, zoological life sim. Nintendo confirmed today that it has shipped Animal Crossing: Wild World for the DS to retail.

Wild World, like 2002's life sim Animal Crossing for the GameCube, once again drops gamers into a small town populated by anthropomorphic animals and asks them to make a living and spend their time however they see fit. The DS version of the game retains the open-ended approach of the original, but sports a number of new features and tweaks to the gameplay.

Chief among the new features is the game's Wi-Fi compatibility, which lets players travel around the world to visit each other's towns and chat, trade items, or play games together. The game is also controllable entirely using the DS touch screen, from navigating menus to customizing clothes. Up to four players can also share a house in the same town, though only one can play at any given time.

Animal Crossing: Wild World is rated E for Everyone and retails for $34.99. Check back later today for GameSpot's full review.