There are times in a person’s life when they will experience a new kind of video game. Unlike any other they’ve seen before, and Animal Crossing just happens to be one of those games. Picture your life. You wake up, go to school or work, and slave the day away. When work and school is over, you go home, and entertain yourself in some way. Take your life, in all its pleasures and perils, and simplify it to about a 5 year old version of itself, and here you will Animal Crossing. Life is so much simpler here.

As you start, you find yourself on a train bound for a city of your naming. You meet a cat who begins a conversation with you and begins establishing your character: name, gender, things like that. Then he asks where you’re going to be living, and you say “I dunno,” like the moron that you are. He thinks you’re a moron too, but he feels charitable and decides to hook you up with a house that a friend of his has in the town you happen to be going to. As you pull into town, you talk to this guy, and he lets you choose your house. The house is all nice and fine, but it costs way more than you have, you cheap bastard! Why are you picking up and moving without any money? So he decides you can work off the remainder of the debt you owe by doing odd jobs for him. So not ten minutes into the game you’re already somebody’s gopher, but it’s not that bad of a racket. After doing all of his odd jobs, he gives you some money and items, and tells you that you’re on your own for the rest of your debt. This is where the real game starts.

By the time you finish all of your chores, you have already established yourself with the other inhabitants of this town, all of which happen to be animals. The characters’ designs are quite ingenious. They know what you’ve said to them in the past, if you make them mad, they stay mad at you, and when you haven’t talked to them in a long enough time, they know it and yell at you accordingly. The game has many features like this. It’s no wonder that it requires an entire memory card to play (at least it comes with the memory card so you’re not shanked out of yet more money). The game also utilizes the Game Boy Advance quite thoroughly (Nintendo makes another quick 70 bucks), provided you have the GameCube connector (Cha-ching! Nintendo milks more money out of you).

The town is equipped with a post office, so you can send mail to the other people although you can just go a few screens over and talk to them in person. But the post office does serve other purposes. You make deposits to your landlord there, and you can send fossils you dig up to a museum for identification so you can put it in your own personal museum in town. You can also trade things (including classic NES games) between the game and your e-Reader, which you also should have to get the full experience out of the game (mo’ money fo’ Nintendo). Granted, you can always play the game without any of this, but it just doesn’t seem to be much of a game without all the peripherals.

In all, the game proves to be a pioneer in real life gaming. The reactions are real, your choices in the game affect how you live in your town, and you must play the game all the time; otherwise your town falls into decay and you piss everyone off and you have to start over again. Animal Crossing: it’s your life, only goofier.