KK Slider - A ledg? Defo
The following is taken from “Nintendo Power”:
The city area, which was revealed in the trailer, is separate from your town. You have to grab a bus to get there. It functions as a common area for online play, except that you do not see other live online players; it’s just you. An auction house lets you bid on items posted by other users, and a Happy Room Academy Showroom displays rooms by players that have exceptional decorating skills.
One problem… Eguchi states that the city “is a place for people who you have registered as Wii Friends.” So this passive online mode seems limited to your buddy list, not a true any-and-all approach like an MMORPG.
The trailer showed player avatars that looked like Miis… you’ll get your Mii face by visiting Harriet the hairdresser. Eguchi refers to the Mii face as a mask, indicating you will be able to wear it at will.
But the best is yet to come…
If you have the DS version of Animal Crossing, you can take your DS character and have that kewpie doll become your Wii avatar. No word if you also get to keep any of your items or bells (bells are AC’s monetary unit).
Eguchi alludes to some kind of crazy Wii-to-DS linkup, where “you can actually take your travel data and download it to your DS.” What exactly does that mean? I have no idea. It sounds like you can take your Wii game and shift it to the DS and then play on the road, but his statement is frustratingly vague. The first Animal Crossing (on GameCube in the west) had a similar feature where you could transfer your Island to your GBA, and then tool around with your Island, portable-style. So the precedent is there, but the Island was far limited in scope compared to the entire town.
Photo mode! Prepare for Animal Crossing screenshot posts. Building on the baby steps of the screenshot features of Smash Brawl and My Pokemon Ranch, City Folk will let you snap photos and email them to Wii Friends, email accounts, and cell phones. You can also save them to the SD card, perfect for transfer into Photoshop for all those Animal Crossing/Grand Theft Auto mashup artworks you’ve been pondering.
Excellent news… sounds like they’re bringing back all the awesome holiday events that were painfully excluded from the DS version. Jingle the Reindeer is back for another secular Toy Day, along with Zipper T. Bunny… a new character for a new holiday, Bunny Day.
Downloadable content. “We’re thinking of a service where you download new furniture, new wallpaper designs… that sort of thing,” says Eguchi. STOP THINKING. DO IT. Eguchi points out that this would be genuine DLC, not unlocked data hidden on the disk, so it seems like he is planning something. He also categorically states that it would all be free. No murder-by-micropayment here!
Eguchi is tightlipped about motion controls, other than to mention a pointing-based control scheme (presumably similar to the DS controls). The game will support USB keyboards for letter writing, just like the Wii itself.
There’s some stuff about Wii Speak, the communal USB microphone that is intended to let an entire room of people chat online at the same time. The big bad news: Nintendo Power says the mic is NOT bundled with City Folk, as early rumors reported. NP says it will ship concurrent with the game and cost around $30.
More bad news: the accompanying screenshots show zero new furniture items, which makes me think I’m going to waste my time collecting the entire Classic bedroom suite for a third time.
Also, no word on what you can actually do with the four-man multiplayer, aside from general running around and chatting. The DS online mode was pretty much a once-and-done deal, because there was nothing to do with your AC-lovin’ pals. Here’s hoping they have some multiplayer-specific minigames to fill those online visits.
And as expected, no mention of any retro games. The first AC made serious buzz by including a healthy pile of NES games as rare and semi-rare items, but since the arrival of the Virtual Console, it seems unlikely that Nintendo would dole out digital copies of Donkey Kong and Balloon Fight for free. A fantastic compromise would be to let players access their VC purchases while inside City Folk, but that is pure speculation.
I’m looking forward to this, Animal Crossing is a freaky game as it is, now it my become even more absorbing.
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Tags: Animal Crossing, Animal Crossing: City Folk, Downloadable Content, KK Slider, MMORPG, Nintendo DS, Nintendo Power, Nintendo Wii, Online Multiplayer, Video Games
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