Interior Home Design - Animal Crossing: New Leaf Edition

It occurs to me that, for all the talk I've done about Animal Crossing:  New Leaf (and it has been a lot), I haven't really spoken on the other element that's kept me driven and such in the game.  Aside from going all Recettear on my townies and shaping Kupolis directly to my whims, my main goal is to establish a house that looks baller as hell on the inside, making me quite proud to have been the decorator of it.  Or at least, it was the original goal before I discovered the rest, which means I suppose that New Leaf -does- have some rather welcome additions to it since at least the former is new and the latter is fueled by reasons that I never would have gone to such extremes over in previous incarnations.  Still, one of my main goals from early on was to earn the Golden Exterior pieces (which you can see that I got) that I may live and drown in opulence the likes of which my peasant townsfolk will never even have a taste of.

That philosophy is echoed with my main entrance room, I think.  The entire Golden Series basically lives and breathes the mentality of "Allow the chaff to feel envy that threatens to strangle them" and I couldn't love it any more for that if I tried.  The issue with getting the Golden Series furniture, however, is basically the Animal Crossing mantra: "MUST.  BE.  RANDOM."  You get a stone in your town every day that you can break with a shovel that will give you an ore, which obviously has a random chance of being Golden Ore.  You also have a random chance of getting ores from your Money Rock with a Silver Shovel which, of course, all have a chance of being Golden Ores.  For a single piece of Golden Furniture, you need three Ores which you take to the local Refurbishing Fellow Cyrus, who charges you 10,000 Bells for, wait for it....wait for it....a random piece of the Golden Series.  Sigh.

When you're aiming for specific pieces to complete the set (I'm missing the Wallpaper as you might notice) or spares to make your actual design work, it's just a mite frustrating.  Which is why my room is simply not done yet.  So, this is the point in time where I help you visualize just what it's supposed to look like for your own amusement.  The broad strokes are already there, however (which is purposely on my part) so it's not -too- difficult.  The theme for the room is going to be a Throne/Conference room that's just filthy rich and terrible and gaudy and such.  The Throne (which costs 800,000 Bells) would be nice, but it's off-center (which means I would just buy two, honestly), so I went with the Golden Bench since I can quite literally sit in the middle of it and look like a fucking boss.  Two chairs are on either side of the bench, but I want two more, another for each side, to give the illusion of, you know, set meeting spots and such.  If I could set up a table in the middle without blocking off all access to the seats, you bet your ass I would do just that, but alas, it cannot be done.

Additional goals include getting another Golden Screen, getting the Golden Bed and Clock out (probably the bench on the right side as well) and symmetrically setting up the screen on the left-hand side.  An unknown machine (that the community basically refers to as "The button" ala a nuke switch) is behind my right screen and I'd probably just put some sort of music player behind the left so I would -have- music.  As for the entrance and doors, well, I want Golden Women (the Tiki Torch thing on the left side of the door at the bottom of the picture) to line the entrance (two on each side) and Golden Wall torches to go beside each doorway.  Which....is a lot of Golden pieces.  I don't know if I'll actually ever get those pieces.  I'm hedging my bets on "No", which....is what it is, I suppose.  But that is basically what long-term goals are, anyway!  Things that will probably never happen.

On the right of my main room is the room reserved for what the astute might recognize as Christmas time.  A custom design plastered all over the wall and floor as a place-holder and a few winter-y/Christmas-y themed items to get the mood started and it's basically just waiting til December for the Christmas Series (previously known simply as the "Jingle series").  You are all likely well aware of my enjoyment of Christmas stuff by now, since you're probably good readers of my blog here, but if it wasn't blatantly obvious already, then, well, there it is.  I am an absolute whore for Christmas and this goddamn room will be Christmas as fuck when I can actually get that done.  Either when I can touch them and order them through the catalog or, as stated, when December rolls around and I buy them from the Nooklings obsessively.  I don't really know how I'm going to set it up, but it's going to happen.  And it's going to be awesome.

The room on the left is populated with the Astro Series of furniture coupled with the Industrial Wall and Floor because they're far better than the Astro Floor and Wall, especially since I have these all recolored to Red/Black instead of the original Orange/White.  The original intent was just to have a cool space room because space rooms are cool, but, well, the Astro series looks a little goofy.  Luckily, there are assorted Sci-Fi odds and ends that I can spice up the room with, as well as traditional "Lunar" objects like Asteroids, Lunar Rovers and the like.  All told, there will be a lot of machinery and such going on, and it's going to be pretty great looking.  Possibly.  I think I'm going to keep it science-y regardless, since I don't know what else I would do for that room, since I have to split my design ideas between three different houses and that's going to get a bit messy to say the least.

The Basement.....the basement is literally a mess.  I have absolutely no idea what I'm actually going to theme the room on, and I'm basically just shoving shit down there while I figure things out.  I do, however, want you to take note of the Red Box Corner Sofa at the top of the screen that's attached to the normal Green-ish Box Corner Sofa.  That's going to be important for the next room that is slightly out of order because I wanted you to see that piece first.

The Sleek Series room in behind my main room is the room that is more or less 'finished' and I'm pretty happy with the way that it looks.  The sitting area is set up nice for conversation, there's good flow, and it just looks really nice.  The only things that I dislike are the wallpaper and carpet, as you cannot customize those to match the color scheme of the custom furniture, which seems a strange oversight.  The other issue is that I have a completely empty lower right corner, which I debated on just how to fill that.  And I decided, eventually, that the best idea would be to make -more- seating because there just isn't enough, clearly.  The Box Corner Sofa above in the red leather (it's slightly lighter than the sexy red of the Sleek, but still) will be in the corner, and the appropriate Box Sofa pieces, once I acquire one to order multiple will branch off of that for a nice corner sofa for people to theoretically have their own conversation away from the main one.  Because that's neat.  It can't happen in AC, because the max is 4 people at one time, but it's design.

Finally, the second floor room is going to be my Office outfitted with the Rococo Series of furniture.  It's going to be pretty swanky, what with two sofas (where the one is, make a corner facing the back wall), the desk area in the bottom left corner, and some sort of set-up going on with the rest of it.  I'm probably keeping the Modern Tile floor with the Rococo Wall (once I put that up) since the Rococo floor looks kind of dumb.  I think I'm also going to set up the coffee equipment up in this room because what's an office without a way to get some primo coffee for those long nights of doing things?  The Mannequins will be getting the boot, clearly, and the like, so that's a good bit of space which will probably be occupied by the bed.  I basically just have to order the furniture and set it up, which is...the easiest room of all of them since the rest of the rooms, I don't quite have all the stuff just yet, nor the means to get it easily.  With any luck, I'll get stuff sorted quick enough and can do an "After" post as well which will show off all the new bits and layout.  Because, that's....that's the point.

Showing you things now and how they'll end up, that is.

it's pretty weird trying to describe furniture layout in a basic video game design

Bonus Post: Animal Crossing: New Leaf - The Culling

Far too long ago I spoke of a simple goal in Animal Crossing:  New Leaf.  That goal was to finally obtain the Golden Axe through which my will would be done I would be able to clear-cut Kupolis and replant the trees in places where I wanted them, where they would make sense, and where they wouldn't be in the way of the damn roads I wanted to put down.  The goal was to be free of the bonds that hold you to doing certain things, to playing a certain way if you want "the good stuff".  With 15 days of "Perfect Status", your time beholden to the City, the ways that it wanted it shaped and the ways that it desired the foliage were finished, but you did not have an effective tool for reshaping until you acquired the Golden Axe.  Which of course required 50 saplings purchased from a store that sells one per day.  While the Golden Axe is not required in concept, it certainly is in execution because it is the only axe that simply will not break, and thus allows you to simply enjoy the arboreal genocide.

A few days ago, the Golden Axe was mine.  I was technically prepared, but I wanted to wait for one last harvest of my trees because I wanted to get enough to replant.  Because that's...half the point.  I don't -want- a flat expanse of nothing, I just don't want trees in the middle of my goddamn roads and in the way of my Public Works projects and such.  So I rested on my laurels (almost literally, ha) and simply awaited the day when fruit would spring from them anew.

That day was today.  As soon as I came across a group of two apple trees and two lemon trees with the respective fruits hanging from their branches, a smirk crossed my lips.  This was it.  This was the moment I waited for.  It was time.

Today was The Culling.

The fruit had to be gathered first.  All in all, I have enough trees that give me anywhere from 1-3 baskets of 9 fruit for all of the different types of fruit (Apples, Pears, Cherries, Peaches, Lemons, Durians, Lychees, Mangoes and Persimmons) not counting my native fruit of Oranges, and the two fruits who only drop in twos, Coconuts and Bananas.  So, harvest day takes a bit of time, especially because fruit doesn't auto-stack and you have a limited inventory space to begin with.  Still, it's something that I do and as a sort of fail-safe with myself to ensure I don't miss trees, (aside from keeping the totals to 9s across the board), I generally stack my fruit baskets up and take a look at them to see if it looks more or less like the last time I did it.

This is...generally what it looks like.  I don't need to have the coconuts and bananas because, as said, they don't all total to 9 and I didn't cut those trees anyway because they're on the beach and I don't even care about the beach, but still.  It's nice to have evidence of the bounty.  Of course, it would have been much more impressive if I had remembered my oranges -before- I took this picture and sold all those instead of after, leaving me to just take a picture of the orange baskets.

Still, that's a lot of oranges.  They sell for a lot less, being the native fruit, but it's still a little bit of bells if you need it and are willing to go through the hassle of shaking them all down, piling them up and whatnot.  Of course, I -did- have the forethought to take out fruit from every basket for replanting purposes.  You simply plant a single fruit and it sprouts into a tree that will bear three whenever it's ready to be harvested which means a nice, steady income of bells since the trees bear fruit every three days, I believe.  Which means for every 9 fruit you collect, if you want to replant, you take out 3.  Because 1 fruit equals 1 tree equals 3 fruit, so 3 fruit equals 3 trees equals 9 fruit.  Nice and simple.

This is basically what that looks like.  Obviously, a good portion of the fruit was cut off on the left side, but it helps to get an impression on just how many fruit trees I had in Kupolis and will have again.  So you can understand why I will have to have them sectioned off in a nice little area all to their own which I can keep handled quite well.  That is the purpose of an orchard, of course.  It's much more convenient and clean than having them scattered about willy-nilly within the town proper so that I have to make a trek about all parts of Kupolis just to harvest it all.  Those days are over.  Those fruit were, of course, basketed up and set aside since there will be an event in the plaza tomorrow, but still, it was effective in showing off the enormity of the situation.

I spoke of my trees as a burden at first, and then as an obstacle.  I spoke of my neighbors and in fact the very core of Animal Crossing: New Leaf as antagonistic.  The nature of Animal Crossing, in both meanings, had become something of a rival to me.  Something to be defeated.  To be conquered.  That I could finally take an axe to the greenery around Kupolis was something to be exalted and savored.  The Culling was to be an epic battle of Man vs. Nature, if you will.  Thus, I present to you the soundtrack of my deforestation.

WHITE

WHALE

HOLY

GRAIL

ca·thar·sis

kəˈTHärsis

noun

noun: catharsis; plural noun: catharses

1.

the process of releasing, and thereby providing relief from, strong or repressed emotions.

synonyms:

emotional release, relief, release, venting; purging, purgation, purification, cleansing; abreaction "the hope was that hypnosis would bring about a catharsis"

138 trees later (give or take a couple) and all was right in the world.  I was left with a few special stumps that will, apparently, attract rare bugs to them that I may catch and present to the Museum for cataloging (and thereafter simply sell to Re-Tail for bells) and they do look neat.

It's hard to note, but the upper right one is a Butterfly stump (I believe) and the lower one is a Heart stump, shown off next to a normal "Bullseye" stump.  All of them can be sat on if....you feel the need to sit on a stump, but aside from the bug thing, that's all they're there for.  The special stumps, I didn't dig up, and I left a few regular stumps as well, but everything else was dug up and the earth returned to normal underneath.  All so I could complete the project that I had striven for for these past weeks.  The one project that I wanted to accomplish first, as it would be phase one of making Kupolis that which I desired.  That which I envisioned.

Roads.  Paths to the houses of my villagers, paths to my house and Dinah's, paths to Re-Tail and the Train Station and the entrance to Main Street.  Roads connected all to one another, taking you anywhere you want to go.  Each tile of road, I placed down manually, conforming my will with that of the very ground of Kupolis itself.  With the hands of my sprite, I have begun to bring civilization to Kupolis.

Phase One is complete.  And how sweet it is.

I might be a little obsessed with Animal Crossing, you guys

Bonus Post: Animal Crossing, What Are You Doing to Me?

The screenshot above is one that worries me greatly and with good reason.  You see, I have reached a point in Animal Crossing:  New Leaf where I am almost -free- of some of the most annoying shackles of the game for completionists.  In the world of Animal Crossing exists sets of Silver and Gold tools which, of course, you can only get by performing certain tasks.  Specifically in question here are the Golden Watering Can and the Golden Axe.  The Golden Watering Can requires you to achieve and maintain a "Perfect Town" for 15 days which is honestly more tedious than it is difficult.  The Golden Axe is something you get after you buy 50 Saplings from the plant store, of which they...only sell one a day.  Great.  You might be wondering just how these two things are linked.  It's very simple, really.

The Golden Watering Can really doesn't -matter- in a sense, in that it's more of a symbol, or a trophy if you will.  After you get the Golden Watering Can, there's really no point in keeping your town 'Perfect' anymore if you don't wish to.  Now one of the factors that determines whether your town is perfect or not?  The amount of trees you have.  You start out with so many trees, and you'll inevitably add to them with fruit trees, though perhaps you're not placing them in places that are....good, or where you want them.  So obviously then, you just want to cut them down, but if you do that, then your status drops.  So you tell yourself "I'll just wait until I have a perfect town, then it won't matter what I do" and it won't matter.  It won't matter even the slightest bit.  After you get the Golden Watering Can, it's that much easier to feel that your town is indeed your town to do with what you wish.

So you go buy an axe.  You ready yourself for the tree slaughter.  Perhaps you take down quite a few...and then your axe breaks.  There's only one axe for sale a day, and it's random -when- that day is.  You've started something that you simply cannot finish now, and it's going to drive you crazy.  This, my friends, is why you wait for the Golden Axe, because the Golden Axe does not break.  It cannot.  You can clear-cut your entire damn village if you want and it won't break.  And after that long, is it ever tempting to do just that.  But why would you cut down the trees?  Why would you get rid of a very good source of income?  Why?  Simply put:  Trees are fucking annoying and constantly in the way.

You run around and have to weave and dodge in between trees just to get about and it becomes -tedious-, so you decide to have a set path to go to make it easiest.  Except there are too many trees in the way regardless, so you can't just make a path.  This is why you want to cut them down.  You want to clear them out so you can make a road so you can get around easier.  -Then- you put trees back up somewhere where they're not annoying.  It is -your- town, so -you- make it look like -you- want it to.  The roads above are a testament that I am almost to this point.  I have placed down some roads, indeed some (like myself) would say far too many, but they're not enough.  There are far too many trees still, and I don't have my golden axe yet.  I cannot clear them.  But soon.

Soon.

okay I am kind of creeping myself out

Gaming By The Numbers - The Silly Economics of Animal Crossing: New Leaf

For as much as I have grumbled on and on about Animal Crossing:  New Leaf (even though I had some nice things to say in my review of it) I can't bring myself to say that I don't like the game, even if I can tell you in very many strings of words how I hate a lot of the parts of it individually.  I like Animal Crossing, and I especially like New Leaf because it's the best of the games so far by default.  Though they didn't get a lot of it right, they got more than enough right that even as someone who hates every single villager in his town save two, someone who is so very, very tired of paying off Tom Nook's endless debts, I still play it every day and I still have -fun- with it every day.  Though part of the fun is admittedly in hoping that today will be the day that I finally get a picture from somebody so that I can happily tell them to get the hell out of Kupolis when they talk about moving away.

The other part, however, is the little Shop Simulator they've managed to cram into the game in the form of the Flea Market spaces in Re-Tail, the place where you go to sell the crap you don't want anymore.  Shop Simulator is stretching things a little bit, since basically all that happens is there are eight slots in which you (and other villagers, provided there are empty slots for them, which there will NEVER EVER BE) can put up items that you intend to sell for a price that you get to decide.  Obvious rules apply here - the price has to be somewhere in the realm of reasonable, so if you think you're going to sell a Cushion for 999,999 Bells, you're out of your damn mind and the villagers will tell you as much.  Of course, the issue then becomes -what- is a reasonable price for any given item?

The answer is that it's just complicated because the villagers all actually know exactly what everything costs because the game is cheap and they're cheating assholes.  See, because it's a Flea Market, the actual intent is -not- to make a profit because the items are all used and as such they've depreciated and blah blah blah.  Of course, that's not how things work in Kupolis, because I know the bullshit and things do not depreciate in value in Animal Crossing no matter what anyone says because they're digital and not programmed to degrade as such.  So I fly my Capitalist flag high and make a profit on every damn thing I sell.  The side effect of this is that everything is a bit of a hard sell because it's, well, being sold at a premium so that I make something out of the deal.  It doesn't actually matter what the price -is- so to speak, so much as it matters what the price is in relation to.  For instance, trying to sell a Wooden Box (Retail: 200, suggested sell price: 50) for 300 Bells and trying to sell a Kitchen Sink (Retail: 2,400, suggested sell price: 600) for 3,000 result in the exact same grumbling that they won't have enough bells for their groceries or this or that.  Which is bullshit.

Generally speaking, you will be able to sell something to everyone who walks in (only one at a time, of course, and sometimes they stick around after a purchase to go "OH MAN, I REALLY BOUGHT SOMETHING, IT WAS SO AWESOME", yes yes, get the hell out) though it may take a while.  There's a 'flow' to the sale, so to speak.  A villager will walk in, move about and usually get a sort of surprised expression before rushing up to whatever it is they're looking at to wait for you.  Then they'll go "Oh man, this is pretty good, BUT it's PRETTY EXPENSIVE, I DUNNO" (unless you're just selling things for quarter-retail in which case, pfft, whatever sucker) which gives you the option to tell them "BUY IT ANYWAY" or "Yeah, you don't want it, actually", the latter of which is only good if you are playing on the same cart as someone else and you want to be a gigantic asshole and make sure nobody buys the other persons things.  Telling them to buy it will either lead to them going "You know what, I better treat myself" and buying it, or them saying "NOPE, TOO EXPENSIVE AFTER ALL".  If it's the latter case, you just sort of...nudge them into line-of-sight for another item to repeat the process.  If you do this for every item for sale and nothing gets sold, congratulations, your villager is an asshole and you should look forward to the day they move out.

Ideally, this won't happen because you're probably not going to want to stray -too- far off of the Retail Price since profit is profit.  Because of the randomness in whether or not they'll reliably buy something, it's hard to say what kind of margin to -expect-, but I can tell you that trying for the ideal 100% retail markup is going to end in tears.  Somewhere between 30-50% would likely be acceptable - obviously start at 50% and work down if things aren't selling as fast as you want them to (as in, somebody looks at all your items without buying) and understand that it's random.  As are most things in Animal Crossing:  New Leaf.  So what I'm saying is that, for your 2,400 Retail Kitchen Sink, you'll want to try and sell it from anywhere between 3,120 - 3,600 Bells and you'll likely see a purchase on that.  Easy money and depending on how long you've had the item, it might seem -more- profitable than not since sometimes you just want to get rid of shit, god.  Of course, as long as you're making profit, it's all good no matter what.

Now you might be thinking "Well that all seems like a lot of effort for not a lot of profit" and you are correct, because it's not a lot of profit if you're selling things that you have just bought (or bought previously at Retail price), but that's where a lot of the fun things come in that make the Flea Market seem downright evil like CAPITALIST HEAVEN.  You see, very little of your inventory of items will likely actually come from you handing over retail bells to acquire said item in the first place.  Every day, there are two trees that you can shake to get random items (let it be known that by Items, I mean furniture) for absolutely nothing.  This isn't counting that sometimes your villagers will say "HEY, I feel super generous here, so have this item" or some variation of that, and just hand it over.  Or sometimes they give you a little errand (get this package to this person before the end of the day) which they will hand over something (sometimes clothing which is bad, but usually furniture) for the sweet sweet price of free.

Do you see where I'm coming from?  That Kitchen Sink you shook out of a tree somehow, that sells for 2,400 bells Retail and 3,120 - 3,600 bells via mark-up?  PURE PROFIT.  That Balloon Dresser you shot down from a balloon with a suggested sale price of 670 bells, meaning a retail price of 2,680 bells, meaning a markup of 3,484 - 4,020 bells?  PURE PROFIT.  -Now- you can see how the bells start piling up rather quickly and -now- you can see why the effort is actually worth it.  Because this isn't a profit margin, now, of 720 - 1,200 bells, this is a profit margin of everything you get.  That's not even the sweetest part.  No, no no no, not even close.  Do you want to know what the sweetest part is?  What the absolute best, greatest part of the whole thing is?

When you sell something to someone and they turn around and give it back to you as a gift, free of charge.  Because that means you can put it back up for sale at the same markup and make that profit all over again.

That, my friends, that is a thing of beauty.  And -that- is why I'm still playing Animal Crossing:  New Leaf in a nutshell.

this is why I'm sad that my computer is shit and I can't play Recettear because I would be so good at it

Review - Animal Crossing: New Leaf

The Roost Cafe; truly something to celebrate.

It's an odd thought, trying to review a game that is, by its own design, endless, but it's something that can be done, and more than that, it's simply something I want to do.  At various points before and after its release, I mentioned being in various states of excitement for it and its new additions to the series, some good, some bad, but the fact remains is that not only was I excited enough to get it, but I was excited enough to get a bundle specifically of it, rather than waiting on my must-have title, Rune Factory 4 and seeing if there was something better by then.  That I wanted the game by this method that much means that it was a game that I wanted because of what it promised to be, and more importantly, what it promised not to be - which was just the previous Animal Crossing games over again.  A review then is not only the best measure to say whether or not they actually managed that, but also if they created a game to be excited for.

One thing that remains relatively unchanged is the controls of the game which is not a bad thing.  Animal Crossing has never been an overly complicated game to play, though to ever call it stream-lined would be stretching the truth a bit, if not a lot.  Improvements have been made here and there:  The D-Pad allows you to cycle through your tools without bringing up the inventory screen as previous installments (except for City Folk, I believe, where it was an actual legitimate new feature) and both shoulder buttons can be used for sprinting/text speeding, negating the accidental "No, I don't want to do your easy errand that will score me major points with you" moment with the villagers.  Additionally, both shoulder buttons pressed -together- allows you to take a screenshot of the scene as it is, which is a feature that absolutely every game should have in some form.  Admittedly, this is more just me speaking from my extended time with the Vita, where the screenshot feature is in almost every native-Vita game (Resistance:  Burning Skies is the sole exception I know of), but that exposure has also shown me how great a feature it is, and it's sorely missed when it's not around.

There have also been some very mild Quality-of-Life upgrades that have been made in New Leaf which are appreciated, even if they're not quite numerous.  For one, you can stack common fruit in your inventory now in baskets for up to 9 fruits per basket.  It helps a bit even if 9 is still a bit limiting, all things considered (given that there are at least 12 types of fruit in the game and it's wise to have all of them in your city thanks to 11 of the types, as in all but your native type, sell for a decently high price every time you have them.  Simultaneous harvests means big, big bells) but it's at least a step in the right direction.  You can now also swim around, provided you have the right equipment (a Wet Suit, which can be loaned at a specific area and later bought at the same area, provided you go on a day where it's for sale) which is...not exactly useful for anything, given that your swimming area is rather limited, but it's neat nonetheless and allowed them to add a lot of deep-sea/seafloor finds to the game for you to find, catalog and donate or sell if you're so inclined.

Housing has also been tweaked for the better for the most part, which is definitely something to appreciate.  First off, every player you have (up to four players, I believe) gets their own house rather than just a bed in your attic which is huge and it also brings the validity of having a secondary character into the light as something you might want for reasons I'll expound on later.  Houses can also have a total of six rooms now - Main floor, three side rooms from the main floor, a basement and an upstairs - all of which can be decorated and eventually become 8x8 rooms which is roomy but comes just short of feeling truly...expansive.  Space is extraordinarily precious in Animal Crossing games, so while six 8x8 rooms sounds like a lot of space, it's really -not- considering the ridiculous amount of money you have to spend to get to that point, as well as how much dead space there has to be just so you can get around in said rooms.  One of the nicer things about the game, however, is that you can now customize the exterior of your house as well - the roof, siding/façade, mailbox, fencing and bricks under the building itself - which allows you to truly make your home your own, or at least more your own than previous iterations.

The most wasteful walk-in closet you've ever seen.

Returning fans of Animal Crossing games will probably not be surprised to know that the old enemy, Storage Space, is still around in full-force, perhaps even moreso than previously.  Animal Crossing games like to boast of having thousands of things to collect and whatnot, and it's the definite truth, but actually collecting is something of a pain considering you have a very limiting amount of space to do said collecting with.  To bore you with a bit of math for a moment, each character has access to a single area of storage that's linked between every storage option you have (dressers, cabinets, etc.) and it has a total space allotment of 180 bubbles (three sections labelled A, B and C, ten bubbles a page for six pages of each section, thus six times ten times three equals one-hundred eighty).  Every piece of anything - clothing, furniture, art, insects, fish, tools, etc. - takes up a single bubble.  So you might think it doesn't actually sound bad, but this is where things start getting bad, because you start considering just everything you might want to keep on hand.

Another Quality of Life upgrade that has been received in the meanwhile between games is that everyone actually has legs now, rather than bodies that end in stubby little feet.  Thus, pants and socks are now a clothing option.  At any given point in time you can have up to six articles of clothing on:  Hats/Helmets, Face Accessory like Glasses or such, a shirt, pants, socks and shoes.  If you have just three 'outfits' that you like, that's eighteen bubbles right there, but if you're smart (i.e. you read a guide and know that you -need- outfits of specific types) then you are going to have a lot of spare pieces if not separate outfits altogether specifically for that one-day-only event, meaning you need to have them before it happens (and you have no way of knowing beforehand) or else you're out of luck unless your stores are selling them.  So you can very easily fill a single section with just clothing items and still want for space (as you see in the above, I want for space for clothing items).

Then consider furniture options and realize that furniture comes in sets.  Sets can have upwards of eleven or so items in them including flooring and wallpaper.  You can have a maximum of six rooms in your house.  If you have a back-up set for each room in your house (considering you...might actually get bored of your furniture which is a given that might happen and probably will), that's sixty-six bubbles, or more than a single section in your storage.  This is, of course, considering that you're only keeping items from the sets that you actively want (you're not) instead of keeping things that you think are also just cool that you might like to decorate with someday if the mood strikes you.  This is especially so for the Nintendo-themed items you can get through the fortune cookies at the Nooklings store, because I defy anyone who has even a little bit of love for Nintendo to receive a Master Sword decoration and not want to keep it, if not actively display it.  So basically, you're going to have a lot of furniture because a lot of it, if not most of it, is attractive in the right light and unless you know specifically what you want, and sell absolutely everything else, you're going to have a bit of it hanging around.

Of course, you don't have to keep everything on-hand and some argue actively that you shouldn't thanks to the Cataloging option in the game.  You see, if you ever lay hands on a piece of anything and it's saved safely (meaning you don't lose a connection to someone else, exit suddenly without saving or something else) then it's available in a catalog from then on out that you can order from, allowing you to receive items in it the following day.  The caveat of this is that not only are some things not available through the catalog for purchase (a lot, really), but you pay full-retail for them every time you order them.  Full-retail is, obviously, not something you get for selling an item unless you put it up in a Flea Market spot and get lucky (sometimes you can even make a profit off an item, of course) so the answer is pretty obvious - hold onto things you might want or that you know others might want so you don't have to spend extra bells and wait a day for the items.  This brings us full-circle with the original storage complaint, though, so it's a bit strange.

This time around, you can also mitigate the storage concerns with Museum exhibits, should you chose to bastardize the point of having them available at all.  Eventually you can fund a second floor to the museum that brings with it four exhibit rooms, 8x8 spaces that you can rent out and decorate however you wish.  Decorate can mean "throw everything on the floor to take up the maximum amount of space allotted (64 spaces) just because" if you so choose it to mean that, and while I -have- done that with two rooms, it's...just a waste.  My furniture room (appropriately dubbed "The Warehouse") comprises solely of items I've shaken out of trees and received from villagers that I intend to sell through the Flea Market for full-retail rather than a pittance, but given that there are two items in trees everyday, and villagers can be...generous sometimes, compounded with the fact that ReTail only has eight Flea Market spaces (and I'm lucky to clear two a day), it becomes obvious why I have a lot of overspill.  My defense for this is simple: For a full house, you need somewhere around Six Million Bells, which doesn't count anything else whatsoever and goddamnit, I am going to wring every single goddamn bell out of everything I have.

Everything above is simply bandages applied to a problem that has another cure altogether, however.  Put simply:  It's 2013 and this is the 3DS, so are the restrictions even necessary?  The 3DS isn't overflowing with power, but it's not exactly running two gens ago either so -some- upgrades in that area could have been made.  You're still stuck with an inventory of only sixteen bubbles (and three of those are going to be full of tools, specifically the shovel, fishing rod and net at least, but you're gonna want the other tools too) for some reason, as well as the mentioned 180 storage bubbles (I'm not sure off-hand how this stacks up against previous versions, but I'm assuming it's about the same) and it just seems arbitrary.  It also becomes near-infuriating when you realize that fruit doesn't stack automatically nor do bells stack or even go right into your money spot right away (neither of these make any sense) and you have to see the "Oh no! My Pockets are full!  Should I swap this with something?" message over and over and over again because you don't have enough pocket space goddamnit and I have to simply wonder at the why behind it.  The easy answer is likely the online stuff, but even then....I'm not quite sure.

Pictured:  Apparently what spaces are.  Not Pictured:  ANY HELPFUL VISUAL CLUES WHATSOEVER.

Space in the context of infuriating lack of forethought comes in another flavor as well, one that I have already covered in some detail, but will nonetheless talk of here as well now that I have a little more experience with it, though not necessarily more knowledge on it.  One of the bigger things in New Leaf is the fact that you're the Mayor of your town, and being Mayor allows you to populate your town with things like benches and fountains and a Sphinx or a Lighthouse or a Police Station or a Streetlight, all of which are just considered the same thing in terms of the -how- you place them down.  Which is taking a lovely stroll around with Isabelle, your faithful secretary, unto you find a spot that you think might look good for whatever you have in mind to put down.  Most of the time, Isabelle will simply tell you that it's too close to something else (Because it's almost always too close to something), but she'll also inform you of how many spaces you need for whatever the project at hand is.  Pictured above is a 2x3 plot of land (apparently two spaces to the left and right and three spaces back means that instead of...more than two spaces across.  Am I the only person who reads it that way?) which is all well and fine, but if you'll also note, there's also no..grid or anything visually helpful in the picture.  This is not different when you actively seeking a spot for placement.  This is something of a problem, I'm sure you can imagine.

Something else that makes it difficult is that I'm not quite sure where the thing is placed in relation to where you stood when you addressed Isabelle.  The obvious answer seems to be that you were dead in the center of it, but when you're talking square spaces (as I can only assume we are), dead-center of a 2x3 grid is...something that I'm not quite sure how it works.  While I haven't tested it, one solution would likely be plotting out a grid with flowers (assuming flowers only inhabit a single space), digging holes around them as a barrier (equally assuming holes are a single space), pulling up the flowers (to be placed elsewhere) and then pulling Isabelle into that cordoned-off area while managing to get right in where you want and hoping that she doesn't say it's too close to "something else", which in this case means the goddamn holes you dug to try and mitigate this problem.  Knowing how this game operates, this type of thing wouldn't surprise me in the least.  This does eventually lead to simply haphazardly throwing down whatever projects where ever they'll fit with the least amount of effort, rather than at specifically desired locations, which seems a bit counter to the point.

Regardless in the quibbles of the placement and execution of getting it funded and the like, being able to throw down these things in your town is impossibly cool, and does add a lot to the experience, quite frankly.  People with longer attention spans than my own, patience and the ability to plan things with no frame of reference have been able to make some lovely looking towns, and I've even heard tell of 'theme' towns, in which you can go and see a town that plays out with a certain storyline in mind, which just baffles me in a good way.  Even barring that, it basically ensures that no town, even with the same basic layout, will be the same in practice, which is something truly astounding.  The more free-form structure to building placement in general helps with this, of course (previous games had certain 'spots' where villager houses could be located, and nowhere else), but nothing says individuality potential like the ability to throw down a Police Station near a Geyser that's near a Zen Clock.

The buildings go beyond simply what you have in your town, however, thanks to the Main Street shopping district located just beyond the tracks at the top of your town.  The starting locales include a single-floor museum, Nook's Housing store, the post office, the Nooklings store and the Abel Sisters complex.  Eventually as the game progresses, you'll implement a Dream Theater (if only because it's a source of 5,000 bells a day), a second floor to the Museum (covered above), a Nightclub where K.K. Slider DJs and does acoustic sets every Saturday night, better classes of Nookling Stores, a Garden Center, Shampoodle's and a Shoe/Sock store at least.  It's really quite enjoyable to see how malleable and dynamic the Main Street actually is.  It's also an appropriate measure of progress that.....could be argued is present elsewhere (mostly public works projects and your house) but is nonetheless what I judge on.

My secondary character, Dinah, knows how to make a good cup o' joe.

Thankfully, there are a few new bits in New Leaf that offer new kinds of gameplay to shake up the norm when you finally have access to them.  My favorite by far, considering I have a disproportionate like for the Cafe' than I should, is actually getting to -work- at the Cafe', serving up to-go cups of coffee to patrons from your town and elsewhere in the world.  It's strange, being excited to work in a game that's....not about reality at all in that form, but it's refreshing and enjoyable all on its own.  It's a simple mini-game to be sure; three patrons enter one after another and order a cup to their specifications, though you won't always know what -all- the specifications are.  There are four types of coffee beans, four levels of milk and four levels of sugar, and your goal is to, obviously, hit the optimal range for that villager's tastes.  Some folks walk in and order "the usual" and considering there are some 300 villagers in the whole of Animal Crossing, it's...hard to remember everyone's favorite.  Luckily, there's a handy list on the internet that tells for them, but also the 'special' characters (like Tom Nook, K.K. Slider, etc.) who are often a bit pickier. (Normal townies generally want the same amount of milk and sugar, so if you know one, you know the other and that just leaves the question of blend.)

The other heavily advertised feature of the game was the Island Resort that you get access to after Tortimer (the former Mayor) visits and tells you that you'll have a boat waiting for you whenever you wanna head over.  The Island is a good source of income, considering it plays host to various rare beetles when the sun sets (all year-round, even), but the main attraction it -wants- you to visit for is the "Tours" which are just mini-games to play by yourself or with friends for Medals, the currency accepted on the Island.  If there's an activity in Animal Crossing, there's probably a tour for it.  Navigating a large maze to find particular bits of fruit, beating up a rolling robot with a hammer, fishing and catching bugs (either specific types or just 'a lot'), digging up matching furniture, fossils or gyroids and my personal favorite, the Scavenger Hunt.  In the Scavenger Hunt, you're given a list of four things to find and placed in a map with randomly generated buildings.  You have to rush in, find items from the list in the houses (the difficulty places more and more of the same type/set of item in the buildings, meaning higher difficulties requires you to be particularly discerning) and take them back to Tortimer before time elapses.

The thing is, both of those things I just made mention of are not things that you're going to do every day, multiple times a day, or if they are then they're not particularly involving or long so you're just kicking around in a new situation for five or ten minutes before it becomes old news officially.  None of it re-invents the wheel, so to speak, nor does it invigorate the game beyond its roots of previous Animal Crossing games.  You can dress it up however much you want, with whatever new things that you want, which New Leaf tried, but unless you really dig in and insert something new with force, all it is is window dressings.  Not only are the additions to New Leaf just that, window dressings, but there are still ridiculous Quality of Life changes that still have not been made, perhaps in lieu of a set of furniture made of gingerbread.  New Leaf should have been the biggest, best Animal Crossing game so far, but it only managed half of that.  I'm not surprised, but I am still disappointed.

The Good

• Stacking Fruit is a very nice Quality of Life upgrade
• As is the D-Pad Tool switching
• The Roost Cafe' is so nice and the mini-game offered by it is fun, if simple
• Secondary Characters have their own houses now, rather than just a bed in your shared attic space
• Actually being able to add things to your town in a tangible fashion makes for good things
• The Flea Market allows you to make some good bank and offers some enjoyment from it
• Taking Screenshots is always nice, all games should have it
• Being Mayor is a neat feeling, even if it doesn't mean much mechanically
• It's still Animal Crossing at its core

The Bad

• Fruit and Bells not automatically stacking is a ridiculous oversight
• Storage space is needlessly limited, and the Catalog isn't the best answer to that
• Still a general lack of things to do, depending on what times of day you desire to play the game
• Placing Public Works Projects is an exercise in frustration at best
• Bells are entirely too scarce considering you need Six Million+ to renovate your house fully, -plus- fund the PWPs you want
• The only way to get new things to build (and single-handedly pay for) is by waiting for Villagers to randomly suggest them....meaning it takes a while before you get a new option, and it's likely not one you want
• Honestly, just -too many things- in New Leaf are random, from the days when someone special might visit (and then don't a lot of times, such as Crazy Redd skipping a week) to what they offer when they do visit (such as Crazy Redd selling three fake paintings and the one you just bought last week goddamnit)
• Being Mayor doesn't mean much mechanically, and instead is just a neat feeling
• It's still Animal Crossing at its core

Mogs Says

Animal Crossing: New Leaf is Animal Crossing: City Folk with new stuff which is Animal Crossing: Wild World with new stuff, which is a fairly big departure, for better or worse, from Animal Crossing.  The series has not been re-invented or re-invigorated, despite what you might have thought or what might have been stated to suggest as such.  It's still a fun game, of course, and one that you'll find yourself playing because you want to, and not necessarily because you feel you -have to- out of some sort of responsibility for the town (which admittedly goes to hell without you around).  Still, each iteration is another chance to add a whole new level to the series as it is, and New Leaf simply didn't do that.  I'm not even sure that they honestly tried, but at least there are a few new toys to play around with in the same old sandbox we've come to know and enjoy.

Animal Crossing: New Leaf - Public Planning is Bullshit

Continuing the trend of not being able to talk about New Leaf in a completely positive light, I have a whole new complaint about the game now that I've put quite a bit more time into it.  This time around, it's a biggie, unfortunately, because I have a bone to pick with the entire new mechanic they added to New Leaf: The Town-Building aspect.  I was initially intrigued and hopeful for the mechanic, but its become quite clear that it was under-thought and implemented poorly as one might fear.  To be honest, I have a sort of complaint with every single facet of how it's handled, if you can believe that, and it's annoying that I -can- be that bothered by it, since it's really something that shouldn't have been too difficult to implement.  Yet, Nintendo took the route they usually use and over-complicated something that could have been refined and enjoyable instead of obfuscated and tedious.

I've already mentioned that everything costs an exorbitant amount of bells, so I won't harp on that so much aside from reminding that the lowest-cost item is 30,000 bells (a bench) and a project that was 39,800 Bells only raised 1,200 bells in three days in my village, if that much.  As mentioned, you are pretty much going to need to fund these projects yourself, and that means frittering away doing menial side tasks for the express purpose of simply scraping together said amount of bells.  Though, to be fair, they only exist to buy things with - there's no reason to save them in the ATM aside from getting some badges whenever the badge guy decides to stop into town.  Still, gathering Bells without the express intention of doing so is hard to do, and the process of doing so is tedious at best.  It's not a good thing.

Of course, that doesn't even skim upon the issue of actually obtaining things -to- build via the means of throwing bells at a gyroid because your villagers won't do it their damn selves.  The step at the start, simply sitting in the Mayor's chair and picking a project to work on is tricky because you only have a certain caste of things you can pick from initially.  Thereafter, everything else has to be suggested before you can build it.  Some of these are fairly simple - You cannot get a second floor to the museum until you've played for something like 10 days and have at least one piece of work displayed in all four exhibit areas of the museum.  That one's understandable and easy and when the conditions are met, all you have to do is talk to Blathers, and he'll tell you that he's going to suggest it to your secretary.  Next time you're there, you can pick it, and it's just that simple.  The -other- method, unfortunately, is simply walking around by your villagers in the hopes that one of them will make the animation of noticing you and speak to them, hoping that it's a suggestion and not a request for you to find them a common/rare bug/fish or something equally inane.  Suffice to say, it doesn't happen a lot and indeed, I've only gotten three suggestions in my, what, month of playing(?) to add to my list via random suggestion.

Perhaps the most annoying step of the whole process is the actual placement in New Leaf.  You see, once you've figured out what you want to build from the minute list of what you -can- build, you and your secretary have to wander about.  She's looking for you to tell her where a building should go, and it's based on, roughly, where you're standing when you ask her.  It's inelegant, unwieldy and is guaranteed to keep you from putting things where you actually want them.  You pick out the perfect spot and, without fail, Isabelle will inform you that it's too close to a rock or a pond or the City Hall or a bridge or a previously constructed project (by a degree of 'spaces' which aren't...marked in even the slightest bit) and it quickly becomes a game of just trying to figure out where in the hell you can plop down this goddamn fire hydrant so that it'll be out of the way and won't ruin and of your fruit trees.  Oh yeah, picking an area with trees will just sort of get rid of those trees.  Which you only know about when Isabelle says "Oh this is a good spot, here's what it'll look like!" which brings up a flash and then you can see the spot with the project built minus whatever was there previously with no visual indication that anything is, indeed, gone.

It stands to wonder how this couldn't have been handled in...a better way.  You cannot do this sort of thing when your city is open to others, so doing something a little more 'restrictive' but far more precise is...something that comes to mind.  Personally, I would've liked the ability to just use the map on the touch screen that you literally have from the start of the game while in the office to bring up an area.  On the top screen, it shows the building or what have you as an outline (white if viable, red if not) with anything that would be destroyed as a red tinged object.  You know, like every single other game that allows you to plop down buildings too.  That Nintendo missed about two decades of design cues on this very type of idea is nothing short of astounding and disappointing, considering their method of this thing isn't even charming, it's just bad.  The whole of it is just an exercise in frustration and it's bothersome, since this was supposed to be the big draw of the game and it was barely thought-out at all.  I'm...just not sure if I'm surprised by this or not, unfortunately.  Always next game, I suppose.

Isabella, you cannot tell me that this thing is 2 spaces by 4 spaces because I HAVE NO VISUAL CUES AS TO WHAT SPACES ARE

Animal Crossing: New Leaf - It's Good to be the Mayor

It's been over a week since my purchase of an Animal Crossing 3DSXL bundle and, unsurprisingly, during that time I have spent a goodly amount of it with Animal Crossing:  New Leaf.  As its release drew on the horizon, word of all its changes started piling up and in the weeks, the days prior to the time when it was purchasable, the word was that it was the "Best Animal Crossing game to-date".  As someone who had been jonesing for some Animal Crossing, the news practically drove me to salivation whenever it came up as I could only wring my hands and reassure myself that my bundle was already in a box somewhere and it was only a short journey away on that awaited day.  It was less for the box and more the ability to not only play Animal Crossing, but an Animal Crossing that was apparently better than all the rest.

To be fair, it's...true.  In the most minimalistic way possible.

In what I can only describe as listening to the only, -only- complaints about the last iterations of "There isn't enough to do" but stopping at "enough", all that Animal Crossing has over City Folk/Wild World is more stuff.  Which doesn't sound like a bad thing, of course and it's not, really.  But none of this stuff really...adds more to the game that allows you to have something to do when you otherwise have nothing to do.  Which was the problem, of course, though some would suggest that it's -not- a problem.  That in itself seems to be the real surrounding Animal Crossing and has since its second incarnation where it became obvious that there wasn't very much it intended to change about the formula established in the first game aside from...unnecessary things like a rounder world and the like.

One school of thought insists that Animal Crossing is and always has been a game that you simply play for 15-20 minutes a day to upkeep appearances, collect bells and work towards paying off your loans that you accrue in playing the game.  Everything else, everything beyond that checklist is optional since it only adds 'fluff' to that experience.  Which, to be fair, there is fairly little else to do aside from a daily checklist.  You could hunt for bugs or fish, but that's...about it.  Which suggests then that the 15-20 minutes approach is the correct one, clearly, and that's just how it is.  There's no problem with it if that's simply the way the game was meant to be played.

The other school of thought insists that Animal Crossing is a game and that games should generally have something to do when you play them.  When you play during the day, you have a fine bit of things to do - the checklist of course, but also walking about, talking to folks, going shopping, etc.  When you play at night, quite late, in fact, there is....none of that.  Most everyone in your town is asleep, the shops are closed and all you have available to you to entertain yourself is the same bit of bug hunting and fishing that you can do at any other point in the day.  Or you could play interior decorator, of course, but only if you already have the pieces you want since, well, you can't just go and buy something else.  To say that you're never without something to do because you have a net and a fishing pole is disingenuous, if just a little bit.

To be honest, the fact that your character plays Mayor to the Animal Crossing town this go around means very very little in the long run.  You can enact one of four ordinances to sort of try and categorize your town into either being Beautiful (having a lot of flowers which are taken care of), Rich (except not really because selling -and- buying prices are increased by 20%), Late (shops are open two hours later, townsfolk stay up later) or Early (Like late, except early.) which...is something, I suppose.  Certainly not what I thought of when initial reports claimed you could determine the hours the stores were open.  Yes, technically you are, but it's semantics.  There's absolutely no further customization to that end of things than that, no "This ordinance, but", nothing.

The Public Works Projects are where the bulk of the updates come in which ensures that you'll never ever ever have bells burning a hole through your pocket, as if they ever would in the first place.  Public Works Projects range from Park Benches to Street Clocks to Campsites to a Cafe with everything in-between.  You can only have one project open at a time and the project stays open until the amount of Bells it requires has been 'donated', read:  You raised that many bells and force-fed them to the damn gyroid asking for donations to actually fund the project itself.  Sure, you'll see the bell total go up by a hundred or so everyday, maybe, but I think the least expensive thing is 30,000 Bells, so I'm sure you can see how that might pose a problem.  If you're playing only the required 15-20 minutes a day, you'll be earning 16,000-20,000 Bells a day, or somewhere in that range, so you can see how that is also a problem.

Obviously, I -like- Animal Crossing:  New Leaf because it's more Animal Crossing.  But I also like the game -in spite- of it being more Animal Crossing.  There's a nightclub in the game that is unlocked eventually, so perhaps that's....something that will provide minutes of entertainment should I pick up the game in the middle of the night without the express purpose of building up a collection of bugs and fish to flood Re-Tail with come daylight's rays.  And perhaps once I make Kupolis a bit more...personalized with some effects, I'll enjoy it a little more, but until I get to that point, where I no longer have to spoon-feed hundreds of thousands of bells to the ATM to add just a little bit extra to my house, well, I know what I'm doing in the game.  Possibly unfortunately.

most disappointingly, Nook is a -bitch- in this game, he ain't got shit

3DSXL Impressions

Through all of the E3 talks and excitement, I've had a sort of new companion with me every step of the way to compliment my Vita which is also with me every step of the way.  Especially last night with the storms that prevented me from being on the computer for fear of power outages (of which we had several).  My shiny new Animal Crossing 3DSXL which may or may not have something to do with my suspicious impulse purchases of Strawberry Pop-Tarts and Captain Crunch's Oops! All Berries cereal has been my first dip into the 3DS line at all and has indeed proved to me that I have been missing out on a whole world of things.  It's not an expansive world, so to speak, but it's a world all its own, which always merits exploration.

The one major thing that both the 3DS and Vita -want- to do is give you a major impetus to carrying it around as you move about in the outside world, or perhaps simply in your own space of home.  My Vita accomplishes this merely by being a thing that has games on it that I find that I cannot be detached from for long periods of time as well as being my sole musical device thanks to Music Unlimited, whereas the 3DS takes a slightly different route, something a little meta if you will.  Within the 3DS is a pedometer, which if you're somehow unaware is a device that tracks your steps as you carry it about (I think only while it's closed), and not only does the 3DS track this, but it rewards you in the form of currency known as "Play Coins".  On its face, it's rather interesting, of course, but there is a rather unfortunately long list of caveats to them.

First off, you can only get 10 a day, and you get one per hundred steps, so that's 1,000 steps in a day.  That's.....that's really nothing in the scheme of things.  Beyond that, you can only use them in select few things, like Swapnote, Find Mii and Puzzle Swap, all of which are basically pre-loaded into the system now.  Swapnote is an amusing little app that allows you to send notes to friends where you are free to use the touch screen to draw and write whatever you want which opens up a world of horrific potentiality that is, of course, limited by the scope of 'friends only'.  Find Mii and Puzzle Swap are both basically meta-games for your Mii (Which is appropriate, since they're in the Mii Plaza) where the former allows you to use Miis that you Street/SpotPass to try and traverse a dungeon that grants you treasure in the form of Mii Hats and the latter uses those Miis as delivery systems for pieces of a picture representing a Nintendo game in some fashion.  It's not really a puzzle in that you don't get to 'assemble' the picture which was rather disappointing for me personally.

However there is -one- game that uses it in a rather lovely way and that way is Animal Crossing:  New Leaf.  In Nookling's shop, you can purchase a Fortune Cookie for 2 Play Coins.  Upon eating the cookie, it gives you a lucky ticket that you can then exchange for a Nintendo-themed article of clothing or decoration.  Thus far, I've collected Mario's Kart from Mario Kart 7, the Goal Post from Super Mario Bros. and Link's boots from Legend of Zelda.  Be assured that I am wearing them everywhere.  What that basically means is that your little Animal Crossing Tyke is able to cosplay as your favorite Nintendo character while also being Mayor of an entire town.  It's...somehow appropriate.  And just plain enjoyable, as well, which is sure to surprise absolutely nobody.

Something that constantly confused me about the 3DS prior to my owning one was always whenever someone would bring up SpotPass and StreetPass.  All I knew was that they are content-delivery services of some nature that deliver unto you neat things at times.  Now owning a 3DS, I have to say....I am still mostly in the dark.  As stated, however, they are content-delivery services, but the way they work is a little different since they're entirely passive things.  You'll mostly become familiar with them because of Swapnote and the Mii Plaza games, however.  They are mostly location-specific things that do the same thing, really, where SpotPass gets you things in 'spots' where you have access to the internet, and StreetPass gets you things while you're out and about and pass other people with 3DS systems.  Using my previous examples, SpotPass is what lets me send and receive notes in Swapnote from my friends in other states, whereas the Miis I look forward to getting will be enlisted purely from being near people who also have a 3DS.  (There are exceptions, of course, in that there've been all sorts of special Nintendo Miis from E3 using SpotPass, but shh.)

Of course you really can't talk about the 3DS without talking about the 3D so, here it is:  Yeah, it kind of works.  I haven't hit the level where I just turn the slider all the way down, as half-way seems to produce the best "Still 3D, but I don't have to keep my head in the exact same spot" yield.  It's kind of jarring because some games look absolutely gorgeous on it, like the cutscenes from the Project X Zone demo, where other games just....it's not even a matter of not using the 3DS' power, but rather not really having an idea about the art style, really.  Or they're using something that worked on the DS and not putting a whole lot of extra effort into it.  Which, I admit is a little frustrating when I see something fluid and dynamic like Fire Emblem:  Awakening, but I'll just attribute it to unfamiliarity with the product since it doesn't seem like most of the cases are intentional to reign in the budget some.

All in all, it is a rather nifty little piece of technology with some games on it that will ensure I spend -quite- a bit of time with it.  (Harvest Moon, Animal Crossing and Fire Emblem is, apparently the tri-fecta of "you have no time for a year now")  It's not going to threaten my Vita for handheld dominance, of course, and I do find myself missing features that the Vita touts when I'm playing my 3DS.  Namely the screenshot one - while Animal Crossing has an in-game command for this, it's the only game I have that does.  I don't regret getting it, however, of course, and I'm glad that I did.  It was never that I wasn't going to get one, it was always simply a matter of when.  With Animal Crossing released and Rune Factory 4's release on the horizon whenever the wonderful Brittany Avery is done with the text for it, that time was now.  Or...the 9th.  When I got it.  And now we simply go to the future, ready for anything in the handheld space.  It's a good feeling.

Nintendo Announced Some Things

Yesterday saw yet another Nintendo Direct wherein Nintendo saw it fit to throw even more things on the 3DS, finer-tuning their laser focus while....mostly ignoring the Wii U still.  Which is kind of the exact opposite priorities they should probably have at the moment considering the 3DS can probably carry on its own momentum for a while, whereas the Wii U needs help desperately, but hey, what do I know.  I'm sure it doesn't have anything to do with the disparity of success between the -other- things in the respective markets or anything like that.  Regardless, like most Directs, there was some reiteration of some points while also providing a few rather large announcements that deserve a mention.

The biggest news, certainly, is that a sequel to The Legend of Zelda:  A Link to the Past is in the works for 3DS.  Yes, a sequel.  A direct sequel.  In Legend of Zelda.  (Yeah, it's happened before, but that was a -while- ago)  Or at least a game that takes place in the exact same world as A Link to the Past, albeit with a brand new story, new dungeons and the like.  Something else that it adds that I'm a little undecided about is Link's ability to turn paper-thin and walk along walls which is, obviously new to the series and a decided reference to Paper Mario.  While it is an interesting mechanic, I can't help but look at it, scratch my head and say "Why? because it is...more than a little confusing.  It seems superfluous at best and the only thing I can figure is that it's the answer to the "Dark World" transformation that, for a little while, turned Link into a bunny.  But that was not a mechanics thing and it wasn't permanent, so I don't even know what to think.

Those aren't the only sequels that are now heading for the 3DS however!  Joining LTTP2 is yet another Mario Party and a sequel to Yoshi's Island, also known as "That game with Baby Mario".  And yes, Baby Mario returns and yes, he probably cries very horribly once again.  Possibly.  From what I can tell, there is damn near no information on either game except a screenshot of Yoshi's Island 2 (probably not the title) showing Yoshi with Baby Mario on his back in an area similar to the original with a slightly different aesthetic.  One comment states that it looks more watercolor than crayon which is very astute.  Yoshi's Island, I can understand since that was a game that people liked, despite its issues, but when has Mario Party been relevant after the first three iterations?  No online play was mentioned which probably means there will be none which means....there is very little incentive to buy it unless you are constantly around people who have 3DSes and you all want to play what amounts to a board game on them, I suppose.

It's not like there wasn't -any- Wii U news announced at this Direct thing, however!  Next week, the oft-mentioned Spring System Update is hitting, which brings a lot of little improvements to the Wii U's overall workings.  Faster Load times, the ability to boot right into Wii Mode and some fancy things with downloading games and updates for said games in the background are all included as well as the actual, really real Wii U Virtual Console.  As in the platform that will allow you to buy NES, SNES and eventually GBA and N64 (and possibly other systems) games and play them with full integration to the Wii U's features, including the ability to play directly on the tablet to free up your TV.  Also Miiverse stuff, which I suppose is good since it is apparently to thank for Earthbound getting a VC release.  Apparently a flood of Miiverse posts and the like wanting Earthbound is what inspired them to do that.  That's...you know, probably not true, since doing something like this isn't a magic wand type of deal, but it's nice all the same.

Of course, the bit I'm most interested in, if you couldn't tell, is that the Animal Crossing 3DS XL Bundle is coming to NA, which is the thing at the top of this post.  It's not exactly what I want, and I know I'm going to be disappointed by New Leaf, but I want a 3DS XL and my only other options are Washed-out Red or Blue, maybe pink, and the special Pika-Nipples Yellow unit.  (Seriously, I bet you can't unsee it now)  So I figure, I'm getting New Leaf, I'm getting a 3DS XL and that one's not -bad-.  Besides, the version of the game is digital, coming pre-loaded on a 4 gig SD stick (that is easily moved to a bigger stick which is exactly what I'm going to do), so I'll be able to have it available whenever in case I feel like just hopping into it for a bit between Harvest Moon sessions.

There were a few other announcements, but those are the main ones that grabbed me in any way, so they're the only ones I'm really concerning myself with bringing up.  It seems pretty divisive, with either people being in the "oh shit the is all of the amazing at the same time" camp or people being in the "meh" camp about it.  With the people from the former camp being absolutely disgusted at the people in the latter, it seems.  Obviously, I'm more in the latter camp since even a sequel to my favorite Legend of Zelda game only has me wary instead of excited, but maybe that'll change when we start getting some more information about it.  Still, I guess it's a successful Direct, since they've finally convinced me to part with 220 of my dollars come June 9th, and I'm probably going to pick up a few 3DS games between then and now in preparation for when I actually get my system.

Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old Boss

It's no mystery that I have been anticipating the newest Animal Crossing game because it is an Animal Crossing game which I am fond of.  It's also no surprise that I have also been dreading the newest Animal Crossing game because it looks like the Animal Crossing games that we already have that, while I am fond of, I have played the hell out of and found that there are no more worlds to conquer in it, so to speak.  The Animal Crossing games of the DS and Wii, the ones that New Leaf itself looks like almost to a T, are games that have no sustainability beyond a front-loaded glut of hardship.  The various loans that you're saddled with, the need to make all your tools better and get established all hits right at the same time at the start and stands as a brick wall for you to chip away at very slowly.

The issue is that, once you have tunneled through the wall, made a hole through it, there is nothing new on the other end.  You look behind you and see a blue sky, green grass and tall trees.  You look in front of you and see a blue sky, green grass and tall trees.  It is functionally a brick wall that surrounds nothing, protects nothing and only stands as something to be destroyed, circumvented, undermined.  The wall exists not as an obstacle, but as an optional and that's really what a lot of Animal Crossing's problem is.  The 'wall', so to speak, is more or less the narrative, the main 'quest' as it would be in other games, and other games manage just fine to have this thing, this main thing that can be ignored safely for time immemorial.  Of course, those games traditionally have other things to do.

New Leaf, from what I can tell, seems to be heavily leaning on the whole "You are the Mayor" aspect which, I mean, is good.  It really is.  If nothing else, it allows you the ability to make all the shops open at night or whenever is convenient for you.  Plus you get to move stuff around and mold the city in whatever image you desire.  Presumably, there are other things involved with this that make it more than a very, very light town sim, because that....is really what it sounds like.  I don't know if there's any way to upgrade things, to make new 'types' of buildings or anything of that sort, meaning it ends up a bit shallow.  I hope at the very least that the residents have their own requests as to where they live, ala Dark Cloud, since at least you can meta-game that part of it.  Still, I can't see how a lot of game -time- could actually be spent with the sim portion.

So, minus that, you basically have....Wild World/City Folk.  The above video literally shows everything from both games (being that they were almost one in the same) to a T with only slight alterations.  Seasons are very welcome, and I wonder if they'll be actually in tune with real-world seasons, or if it's sort of a variety thing so you can see snow in the game when it comes out this summer.  I'd bet on the former, unfortunately.  Beyond that, being able to swim is....not a big deal.  A night club where you presumably don't do a lot more than you do on the nights KK Slider would play in the coffee house from WW/CF is hardly something to celebrate.  Really, it all seems like token additions so far, and nothing really yells out that "Here!  Here is the actual sequel with actual improvements and a bunch of stuff!", but instead that it's the same game, except with a few different things.

Either way, I'm pretty much stuck in -actually- buying the game when it comes out.  It's one of the handful of titles that galvanized my purchase of a 3DS XL (well, I haven't bought it -yet-, still holding out for a better color) and even if it's not much different than Wild World, I'll have a whole timesink to start putting into it to break down that wall standing in the middle of a field.  That is there for no reason.  Which isn't necessarily as bad of a thing as I make it out to be, really.  I just wish that there would have been something done with this game other than a very light sim element.  But hey, maybe it will surprise me and be super deep and awesome.  I would like that kind of shock.  But I'm certainly not counting on it.

Making a Better Clone - Harvest Moon

In realizing that I am actually going to pick up a 3DS XL this year thanks to Rune Factory 4 finally getting a localization window of 'this summer', I started thinking about the reasons why I want a 3DS in the first place.  Obviously Rune Factory 4 is the tipping point, but really, all things Harvest Moon and even tertiary to what Harvest Moon is about is pretty much what's drawing me to the system.  The other Harvest Moon game that came out towards the start of the 3DS' life, Animal Crossing, Project Wonderful, all just games that have the same little charm to them while being relatively similar in that you're just making a little life for a little avatar and working to better it in some way.  Of course, such a realization paints a pretty big light on the fact that such games are few and far in-between and while I get the why of that, it still bugs me a little.  Since these kinds of games are -fun- and I would happily buy more of them.

So, what is it, precisely, that makes Harvest Moon and its related games tick?  More or less, it seems to be the sort of free-form style of gameplay that generally allows you to do what you want.  In proper Harvest Moon, it's all in what you decide to grow, what you decide to raise animal-wise, who you decide to date, etc.  In the Rune Factory games, you have that still as well as fighting styles and skill development to consider.  In Animal Crossing (since it's honestly in the same thing), it's maintaining a day-to-day ritual and getting acquainted with the various townsfolk that breeze in and out of your lovely town.  It's all simple stuff and because of that simplicity, it's charming.  Even though things don't -stay- simple in a sense, it never becomes over-complicated and thus that charm only ever gets away from it because you simply get used to it as you're going to get used to -anything- with enough exposure.

Were I to make another iteration into this type of series, a little blend of everything that was mentioned previous is honestly the way to go, I think.  Harvest Moon's structure, Rune Factory's flexibility and Animal Crossing's importance on your avatar and its impact, as well as the transient nature of the town/city/what-have-you will all blend together to make for something rather wonderful, I should think.  A New Beginning's penchant for customization is well appreciated however, though perhaps not quite as ambitious as it could be.  Though what Harvest Moon does and does solidly is establish an area, a town, a valley or a city, what have you, and subtly guide you towards everything you'll ever need.  Rune Factory adds a lot of variety and longevity with skills and crafting, giving you tangible goals to work towards that aren't House Addition related.  And Animal Crossing makes sure you have something to do every time you play it.

Something that all three series suffer from, however, is the lack of real surprises after a while.  Eventually, you sort of get -everything- the game has to offer, in terms of understanding the characters, of figuring out the mechanics, and of really understanding just what you're going to do.  There's no real element of surprise or randomness and they could really do with that - the only example of that, really, in Animal Crossing is when folks breeze out and new ones come in to replace them.  Of course that gets stale when you realize that there's about twenty personalities for 50 or so characters, but it's a sound concept.  Something that I would honestly encourage in a proper 'clone' game and with things that we have now, namely internet connections, this type of thing would be -really- easy.

Have it so that the game can 'push' in new content at will without having to rely on DLC, since it's all...I don't want to say server-side, but something along those lines.  Take Spore, for example.  When you're playing around in Spore on, like, the Tribal stage, I think, you start running into other creatures and -some- of these creatures are actually created by people who have played the games themselves.  You are fighting or allying with the creatures of people who you don't know, who have simply played the same game.  You didn't download some DLC pack that put their creatures into your game, it was just 'pushed' in and that is what I'm getting at.  In much the same way as Animal Crossing denizens come and go, you could just as easily have randomly created people come in and leave your city/village/etc. unless you manage to convince them to stay permanently one way or another.

This all just gives you another level of control over the game and the environment while also giving you a long-term goal.  There's always the chance of that 'perfect' villager showing up, and, depending on how the game is set-up, you could do other things with that same set-up.  Perhaps have people come into town bearing exotic animals or things to grow.  With careful patching, you could coordinate new content with this type of thing as well, making everything new and exciting and surprising if only for the simple fact that that's fun to do.  Hell, you could even do events from that front, having Holiday-themed visitors coming in around whatever Holidays they're celebrating and sticking around for a few days for shenanigans before heading out.  There's honestly a lot of really neat little things you can do with something that simple.

Really, my 'big plan' would just be mixing three popular series and adding a new level of longevity through randomness and support, but, well, it's an idea.  Certainly Natsume, nor Nintendo, have really gotten that yet or just haven't implemented it in a proper enough way.  I very much hope that Animal Crossing:  Jumpin' Out (I think that's the name) will at -least- make somewhat nice use of the 3DS' online capabilities.  I'm not exactly expecting a full-blown version of what I suggested here, but adding a couple new animal villager types.....couple new personalities....new outfits, things like that, it would be really nice.  I'm not expecting it in the slightest, as I haven't heard anything like that for the Japanese version, but a man can hope.  I seem to be doing a whole lot of that lately.