The first Animal Crossing game on the Nintendo DS celebrates its 15th birthday. This game inspired many people (unless the GameCube original got there first) to continue playing with the franchise and led to the latest release on the switch to achieve the height of popularity last year. But such a cute franchise begins with humble origins.
Reading over what this game first introduced is like stepping into a time capsule. Many days were spent building a town and making friends. We would often take our DS’s down to the pub while we went out for dinner and would play while waiting for our meals. Nothing nowadays captures the imagination quite like your first time.
Animal Crossing: Wild World introduced some classic features that we know and love. Brewster, the coffee pigeon(?), made his first appearance in this game, as well as Celeste the owl. KK Slider could always be found at 8 pm on a Saturday night playing his music, with the chance to take his vinyls home and play them on your own stereo. This version also let all people with an account on the game live in the same house, meaning that islands were less cluttered (this comes after versions of later games left defunct houses across my town after my brother decided he didn’t want to play ‘for a while’).
Sadly, while 15 years isn’t too old, some special features of the game are now unusable as the Wi-Fi capabilities of the DS have been disconnected by Nintendo, meaning you won’t be able to visit villages far away. The game was very special, but after seeing future updates in graphics, it may be best to keep this one consigned to the memory, or else you may put a very blurry streak across hours of childhood fun.
Check out the classic trailer below:
