I got the new Animal Crossing for the Wii this Christmas. I had played the GameCube release before, and found it to be very enjoyable. Unfortunately, the methods by which letters were sent to friends that had their own copy of the game required extremely long and complex codes to be shared that were essentially encrypted messages. This was a neat feature, but one that prevented me from being very social with it. The other frustrating feature was that everything closed down at 8 or 9 pm, real time. Since I was not usually getting home from work until then, I was missing out on nearly everything that was available to do in the evening.
So, shortly after my time in the city of “Room 12” began, I had moved on. I ultimately traded the game on Goozex, knowing that the Wii version would make up for the shortcomings of the GameCube version. Now, having got the Wii version, I can confirm that I was correct. Citizens of the town stay out later, Tom Nook’s shop stays open later, and with the city available to visit from the early stages of the game, there’s always something to go do.
But the really big feature of the game is being able to visit friends’ towns. My wife was awesome this Christmas, and even though the Wii Speak/Animal Crossing bundle was sold out everywhere, she managed to find a deal on Amazon to get them both separately for the same price as the bundle. And I am so glad that she did.
Last night, I visited my friend Andrea’s town. She and her husband have been playing together for the last several days and (thanks to the fact that they got a 12,000 Bell gift from a reindeer on Christmas Eve), have  already upgraded their house and spent enough money with Tom Nook that he has opened a Kum’N’Go (okay, Nook’N’Go, but seriously, the parallel must be drawn). I visited her town for about an hour or so and spoke to her via Wii Speak the entire time. She didn’t have the microphone herself, but she plugged in her USB keyboard and away we went. She was so impressed with the way the Wii Speak worked that she decided she’s going to get one herself. And, never once did she have trouble understanding me.
Today I turned on my game to check my mail and an hour later I finally put down the controller so that my wife could create her character. The best part of all this is that when my son visits his mother, my wife and I will be able to play with him (assuming his mother doesn’t freak out on him for it).
If anyone is interested in coming to town to visit, my friend code is listed in the About Me / Contact page, but I’ll list it again here for convenience:
Friend Code: 3867-2149-5247
Town Name: Taurith
Come by anytime!
