Animal Crossing: Wild World for Nintendo DS

Animal Crossing: Wild World is a social simulation by Nintendo EAD, released by Nintendo for the Nintendo DS in late 2005. Metacritic shows a Metascore of 86, and it was the first Animal Crossing with online play.

Overview

The player moves to a village of animal residents and spends time collecting, decorating and talking with them. Wikipedia calls it the second Animal Crossing, following the GameCube release, and says it was announced at E3 2004 as Animal Crossing DS. Hisashi Nogami directed and Katsuya Eguchi produced.

The game follows the DS clock and calendar, so day and night, snowfall and seasonal creatures depend on the real time. Developers decided early that nothing should be region-specific so the game would localise easily. Events tied to Halloween, Christmas or the Japanese Cherry Blossom Festival were therefore changed, a step that reviewers later criticised.

How it plays

Daily life is the loop: collecting items, fish and insects, planting and chopping trees, and furnishing a house. Clothes can be chosen from many options or drawn from scratch with help from the Able Sisters tailor. Wild World added the option to draw constellations that appear in the night sky.

The two screens show the ground and the sky together using a “rolling log” effect, in which the terrain seems to bend beneath the player’s feet. This replaced the top-down view of the GameCube game. The stylus manages the inventory, writes messages and draws clothing designs, though the character can be moved with buttons or the touch screen.

Online play ran on the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection, on which the game was the second DS title to appear. Players visited each other’s villages, exchanged items and custom patterns and received gifts from Nintendo. Friend Codes had to be exchanged first. Up to four DS systems could be in one village, according to Wikipedia, and a player could be moved to the Wii sequel City Folk by a wireless link between the consoles.

A letter sent through the service on 26 January 2006 carried a glitch item named Red Tulips that could damage saved data. Nintendo said the cause was an internal error in the upload tool, not a hacker, and advised deleting the letter.

Release and credits

Wikipedia gives 23 November 2005 for Japan, 5 December for North America, 8 December for Australia and 31 March 2006 for Europe, plus 6 December 2007 for South Korea. Metacritic prints 5 December 2005. The Wii U Virtual Console edition appeared in October 2016. Wikipedia and Metacritic both list Nintendo EAD and Nintendo.

In its first week in Japan, 325,460 copies sold. By 31 March 2016, 11.75 million had been sold worldwide, which made it the ninth-highest seller on the DS.

Reception

Metacritic’s Metascore is 86 from 57 critic reviews. Reviewers agreed that online play was welcome. Computer and Video Games said it turned the experience into true social gaming, while IGN credited Nintendo with delivering the trading and sharing that GameCube owners had asked for. Both noted limits: Friend Codes were tedious, mail could only be sent to someone while visiting that person’s village, and North American and European players could not connect to Japanese ones. Producer Eguchi said hardware and memory constraints were the reason.

Other critics called the changes incremental, and Nintendo World Report found stylus movement imprecise. The Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences nominated it for Simulation Game of the Year in 2006.

Can you still play it?

A Wild World card works in the DS, DS Lite and DSi, and in the Nintendo 3DS family through DS mode, but not on Wii U or Switch. Wikipedia’s region lock article says non-DSi DS cards are not restricted by region, which includes this one. Note that Wikipedia says players in different regions could not connect online even when the service ran.

The village, seasons and events work offline. Visiting other towns does not, since the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection ended on 20 May 2014. The Wii U Virtual Console version could be bought only until the shops for those systems shut on 27 March 2023, and the 3DS line was discontinued on 16 September 2020.