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Animal Crossing fans get real about the fictional NookPhone
The NookPhone from 'Animal Crossing: New Horizons' may be fake, but our readers have very real feelings about it.
Is the NookPhone good or bad for your Animal Crossing island?
No, you're not hallucinating and this isn't a late April Fool's joke. That is in fact, the NookPhone from Animal Crossing: New Horizons at the top of this post. It's safe to say that the game has really taken off in the two weeks since its release. It's the perfect salve for our troubled era, and a great way to kill time when you're stuck at home.
Animal Crossing 3DS features gardening shop, real estate market
Tom Nook appears to have lost his ironclad, varmint grip on the various commercial enterprises in Animal Crossing – if these new details about the latest version of the series coming to 3DS are accurate. The game has been given a full title of Animal Crossing: Jump Out, and in addition to the redesigned characters and StreetPass features, the game has a new thift shop run by Lisa the Alpaca, a new shoe store, the familiar Able Sisters clothing shop, a full shopping mall just outside town, and a gardening store run by a sloth.Players will indeed play as the Mayor, and certain other features of the game have been expanded: The museum will reportedly be open 24 hours a day, and have a bigger collection of fish and fossils to find. The gardening store will offer seeds and seedlings, allowing you to beautify your town as you see fit.Don't worry about Nook, though. He's a real estate mogul now, and will be selling house parts, letting you grow your mansion from a tent all the way up into an estate. No matter how much Animal Crossing may change over the years, one thing's for sure: Tom Nook will always get paid.
Check out Tom Nook's price gouging
We all know how crooked Tom Nook is. He has no problem with turning new residents into indentured servants, tasking them with delivering packages and carrying out other duties throughout each Animal Crossing game. Once freed from his grip, however, you're free to give him money by checking out the only game in town, his shop. Curious as to how Tom Nook's store evolves from a shed to the big mart it becomes after you've given him many, many Bells? Check out the video above.%Gallery-27704%[Via Go Nintendo]
The Terrible Secret of Animal Crossing
Have a free hour to waste? Spend it reading The Terrible Secret of Animal Crossing, a twisted tale put together by Chewbot and the Something Awful forums. It's a mixed media production -- consisting of text, screenshots, artwork, audio (radio series-style), and even a Flash animation -- broken into twelve parts. Far from your run-of-the-mill fan fiction, The Terrible Secret is a captivating account of one boy's struggle to hold onto his sanity as he unravels the infernal mysteries governing the town that holds him prisoner. The story goes far beyond your typical "Tom Nook is a crook" plot, suggesting something much more sinister. Peek past the break for a larger version of the amazing promotional poster you see above.See also: Trouble in Paradise: An Animal Crossing homecoming
Animal Crossing MMO for the Wii confirmed
Our good friends at Joystiq are reporting that Edge, a European gaming magazine, has confirmed that the next version of the realtime animal friends/life simulator Animal Crossing will be a "social networking MMO" for the Wii. This had been rumored before, and it really shouldn't be a surprise to anyone who's ever played Animal Crossing-- raises hand for both the DS and the Gamecube-- as it already works more or less as an MMO, and taking the whole thing to the next level will just make it that much more addictive as a game. And it will be fun to see what Nintendo does with social networking and the MMO format.Of course, this probably also means that we'll have to start working the graveyard shift coming up with bells for that slum lord Nook again. That shifty raccoon is a slave driver, you hear me? A slave driver! At least now we'll be able to commiserate virtually together.
Animal Crossing cups for you and a neighbor
The Animal Crossing merchandising explosion continues. Soon you will be able to outfit your house only with things that bear Tom Nook's smug face.The latest cash-in is this series of Animal Crossing cups. They come in pairs featuring related characters, like the set with Mable and Sable above, and another set with Tom Nook and his roaming counterpart, Crazy Redd. Each cup holds about 10.5 ounces, and each set of 2 costs $8.75 from NCSX.We like the design of these cups. The colors are nice and happy, ensuring that your Sunny Delight (or purple stuff, you rogue) is somewhat sunnier and more delightful.
A Tom Nook plush toy at a Tom Nook price
NCSX is selling more adorable Animal Crossing toys, including a lil' plush K.K. Slider and Blathers the owl-- you can pretend to be annoyed about how long it takes to get your dang fossils appraised! But the real star of this update is the freaking huge Tom Nook seen here, gettin' his Potion on. He comes in at 15.74 inches tall, with an 11-inch-wide head. That's big enough to intimidate us about our house payments!Unfortunately, to get an armful of Nook, you need an armful of cash-- $49, plus shipping. Better get started selling cherries you find on the ground!
More academic discussion of Animal Crossing
Animal Crossing is more interesting than we thought, it seems! Whereas we (read: I) found the improvements in Wild World a poor trade for NES games, and not enough to hold our interest after a year or so of Gamecube Crossing, academics are speaking out in appreciation of Nintendo's pointless-by-design communication game.The latest essay on Henry Jenkins' blog, is an excerpt from a thesis by Kristina Drzaic, about "secrets" in Animal Crossing. The idea is that other games feature glitches that allow the player to redesign the game in small ways and alter the basic experience, whereas Animal Crossing features such "glitch-like" abilities as part of the natural design of the game, and allows even more customization than the engine was designed for. One example showed a player creating a narrative conflict between herself and Tom Nook just by trying and failing to buy some candy. We were just wondering aloud why customizable content was so compelling! Good thing there are people smarter than us out there.[Via GameSetWatch]
Animal Crossing: The Movie
There are few things more uplifting in the world of online games than Nintendo's Animal Crossing. We can't help smiling whenever we hear that theme tune. In Japan, where the DS version of AC has patterned the floors of three million households, Tom Nook and pals are leaving town and are headed for the big screens of Japan's movie theaters. Doubutsu no Mori: The Movie will be showing in cinemas across the nation as of December 16th. Tickets are already on sale at our local convenience store. We should go to see the movie on Day One, really, but we have a fishing contest to attend. Shame. Seems the nation's future generations of forest-dwelling fishermen and fisherwomen are all mad for it, though: Doubutso no Mori: The Movie Japanese TV commercial 1 Doubutso no Mori: The Movie Japanese TV commercial 2Doubutso no Mori: The Movie Japanese TV commercial 3
