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At Nintendo's Space World 2000, legendary game creator Shigeru Miyamoto discussed a new game he was working on. A game with an interactive "living" world. A game that allowed communication with-out internet use. A game that... nobody quite understood. Ofcourse, Miyamoto-san was describing the upcoming game (at least in Japan), Animal Forest.
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Animal Forest (Doubutsu no Mori)
Developer -
EAD, Nintendo
Publisher -
Nintendo Co., Ltd
System -
Nintendo 64
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Releases -
Japan 4/14/01
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Animal Forest, a game the first of it's kind, was not intented to be objective bassed as most games are, but to create an interactive living, breathing world, not for peaple to mearly play in... but to live in. The game borrowed elements from MMO games such as Ultima Online to create a similar, but yet very unique experiance offline that console gamers had never seen the likes of before.
While Animal Forest was a succes in Japan, do to N64's dieing sales and being made in a style that Nintendo thought would be unintresting to American gamers, the game never made it to North America.... not unil it's GameCube remake a year and a half later.
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Animal Forest + (Doubutsu no Mori +)
Developer -
EAD, Nintendo
Publisher -
Nintendo Co., Ltd
System -
Nintendo GameCube
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Releases -
Japan 12/14/01
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Although Nintendo's Animal Forest saw some succes in Japan, it suffered do to the dieing N64, and never even made it to the US as the market had dried up. Not even a year after the game's release it was re-released on Nintendo's GameCube as Animal Forest + with more then a few enhancements.
Some of the more significant changes included the games use of the GCN's internal clock (the N64 version required the player to re-input the time and date every time they loaded the game) which allowed for the games slogan "It's playing, even when you're not". Also new to the game was the Museum which gave users a few more things to do in their virtual town. The use of the GCN's connectivity to GBA allowed for yet another new feature, the ability to visit your own little Animal Island, and trade islands with other players.
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Animal Crossing
Developer -
EAD, Nintendo
Publisher -
Nintendo Co., Ltd
System -
Nintendo GameCube
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Releases -
North America 9/16/02
Player's Choice 9/25/03
ESRB Rating - E
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A year later the game was released in North America under the name Animal Crossing, and one more enhancement was added. Animal Crossing used the newly released e-Reader so that players could get new furniture, songs and other assorted items that weren't in the game's orignal release by purchasing Animal Crossing-e cards. This feature was also in the later released Animal Forest e+ in Japan.
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Animal Forest e+ (Doubutsu no Mori e+)
Developer -
EAD, Nintendo
Publisher -
Nintendo Co., Ltd
System -
Nintendo GameCube
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Releases -
Japan 6/27/03
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Animal Forest e+ included yet more new features such the ability to take pictures of village life, visit the island with-out a GameBoy, download mini-games to your GameBoy, along with many new items, conversation topics, and new character designs.
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Animal Crossing (PAL)
Developer -
EAD, Nintendo
Publisher -
Nintendo Co., Ltd
System -
Nintendo GameCube
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Releases -
Australia 10/17/03
Europe 8/24/04
OFLC Rating - G
PEGI Rating - 3+
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The Australian version of Animal Crossing was nearly identical to the North American version except that, as the e-Reader was never released in Australia, it lacked Animal Crossing-e support. When it finaly hit Europe over 3 ½ years after it was first released in Japan, it had been pushed back and even canceled several times, but lacked any changes from the Australian version.
Despite rumors, neither the Australian version nor the European version had localised holidays.
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Welcome to Animal Forest
(Oideyo Doubutsu no Mori)
Developer -
EAD, Nintendo
Publisher -
Nintendo Co., Ltd
System -
Nintendo DS
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Releases -
Japan 11/23/05
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Animal Crossing: Wild World
Developer -
EAD, Nintendo
Publisher -
Nintendo Co., Ltd
System -
Nintendo DS
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Releases -
North America 12/05/05
Australia 12/08/05
Europe 3/31/06
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The first true sequal to the original Animal Forest, Animal Crossing: Wild World brings many changes to the Animal Crossing series. The most prominate of which will be the series's, and Nintendo's first foray into online. Instead of taking a trip on a train to another town on another memory card, players will be able to visit towns all over the world via Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection and interact with other players.
Animal Crossing: Wild World will also take advantage of the system's dual screen feature and touch screen feature allowing players to type and draw using a stylus.
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Animal Crossing 2 (tentative title)
Developer -
EAD, Nintendo
Publisher -
Nintendo Co., Ltd
System -
Nintendo Revolution
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Releases -
Japan tba
North America tba
Europe tba
Australia tba
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Right now being mearly "announced", there's currently no information regarding Nintendo's new Animal Crossing for their upcoming system, the Revolution, other then that it is infact in development. We'll have more information as it becomes available.
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