Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp is Nintendo’s newest mobile title, and I have been into it ever since it came out!  The Animal Crossing game series is very special to me, so to celebrate just how much fun I’ve been having with Pocket Camp, I thought I’d go over all the games and spinoffs in the series, and rate each one and share my special memories of each.  So let’s get started!

Animal Crossing (GameCube)

Before the first game even came out, I knew I would really like it.  And I was right!  I liked it so much that the first game on the GameCube is one of my top five favorite games of all time!  There are two main reasons why I like this game so much.  One, I have so many fond memories playing this game with my family.  This was back before the Internet was commonplace on consoles, so in order to visit towns, you had to bring your memory card to your friend’s house and put it in the second slot on their GameCube!  The other reason why the GameCube version is still my favorite, even though the others in the series improved on it greatly, is that you could get furniture of NES games, and when you touched them, you could actually play those games!  Yes, really!  It was like having two games in one.  A life simulation and a classic NES collection!  I set them all up in my house like it was an arcade.  I know why Nintendo didn’t do this with any other Animal Crossing game because since then, they discovered they could sell these games separately via Virtual Console and whatnot, but man it was cool for them to do that back then.

So I have one particular memory I wanted to share about this game.  When I first got this game back in 2002 right when it came out, I was in a rough spot in my life.  I had just gotten out of college and was having trouble finding a job, and I was also even having some small problems with a few members of my family, too.  So my birthday that year was a bit uneventful and depressing.  But when I popped in my Animal Crossing game on my birthday, Prince the Frog was standing by my house, in the rain holding an umbrella, and gave me a birthday present.  It was the NES game Donkey Kong!  It’s kind of sad and pathetic, but that was one of the best birthday presents I got that year.

Animal Crossing: Wild World (DS)

The biggest improvement with the DS sequel is that you could now visit other players’ towns online.  I have so many great memories playing this game online with friends from the now defunct 1up.com.  Some of those friends I still keep in contact with to this day!

Animal Crossing: City Folk (Wii)

Of all the main Animal Crossing games in the series, City Folk is my least favorite.  It didn’t really do anything to improve upon Wild World, in fact, some of the gameplay aspects were better on the DS.  And the ‘city’ you could visit was very disappointing, as it was just a strip mall with overpriced items that weren’t very interesting.  Plus, since the Wii’s online functionality sucked, after nine months of playing, the save on my memory card got corrupted and I couldn’t play it again after that without starting over.  I like to think the animals just kicked me out of their town.  Ha ha!

Animal Crossing: Sweet Days (Wii U)

This wasn’t really a game, just a mini-game you could play in Nintendo Land, a launch title for the Wii U.  It was just a variation on Miyamoto’s Pac-Man Vs.  Players could choose to be animals trying to eat the most candy in town that came from trees, or you could control both gatekeeper dogs and try to catch them.  Between this, the super cool Animal Crossing Mario Kart 8 track, and the Villager and Smashville being in Super Smash Bros, you’d think that there would’ve been a TRUE Animal Crossing game on Wii U, but there wasn’t.  Hopefully they’ll make one on the Switch!

Animal Crossing: New Leaf (3DS)

New Leaf has the most significant improvements out of all the mainline Animal Crossing games.  In past games you were just a villager, but in this one, you’re the mayor.  So you can not only customize your house, but many aspects of your town as well.  That wasn’t the only improvement either.  This is probably my second favorite AC game other than the original (yeah, the NES games really won me over).

I have a couple of special memories about New Leaf as well.  Like I said before, many of my family members have enjoyed Animal Crossing games, but none so much as my mom.  I think she plays them more than I do, even though she denies it (she really does).  Anyway, when New Leaf came out, for Mother’s Day I got her a pink 3DS and a copy of New Leaf.  And also when the game came out, Nintendo sent me a package of pears and apples from Harry and David’s to promote the game!

Another memory I have associated with New Leaf is a bit more bittersweet.  A few months after the game came out, my grandmother on my dad’s side passed away.  After the funeral, we all gathered at her house to eat and spend time with each other.  My cousin and her kids all had their 3DS systems and copies of New Leaf, so we all played it together.  Several thoughts raced through my mind as we did this.  One, it reminded me of the times when we were little and I’d visit my grandmother in Alabama, and all of us cousins would get together and play.  I imagine my grandmother must’ve been very happy watching us from Heaven seeing that we were doing that again.  But it also made me a little sad because this may have been one of the last, if not the last, time that we get to do that together, because as we get older and have more commitments of our own, it’s harder to do things like that.  So take every opportunity to spend time with your friends and family as much as you can, because you never know when it’ll be your last.

Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer (3DS)

So I guess sometime after New Leaf, someone at Nintendo came up with a better way to rearrange furniture in your house using the touch screen.  I bet they wished they would’ve come up with that BEFORE New Leaf came out.  Actually they did add that in an update.  A couple of years after New Leaf came out, they released an update and also a physical cartridge called Animal Crossing New Leaf: Welcome amiibo.  It let you rearrange the furniture with your touch screen, as well as add a mini camp site where you could scan amiibo figures and cards to have animals visit you in campers.  It also added a few mini-games, one of which was a version of Puzzle League featuring AC characters.  I didn’t delve into the updates for this because it had been a couple of years since I played the game, and I didn’t feel like going back for just the updates.  Only one that interested me was the Puzzle League game.  I think Nintendo should just release that separately as a My Nintendo reward like they did with Zelda Picross.

Anyway, sorry to go off on a tangent there.  Before they made that New Leaf update, they created a whole game out of moving furniture around with the touch screen.  In the game, you are hired by the Happy Home Designers to be an interior decorator, and animals will come in and have you decorate their houses.  Sometimes even Isabelle will commission you to design restaurants and stores for the strip mall where your office is located, so it’s a bit more deep than it sounds.  Even so, there wasn’t much challenge to this game, and I can understand why people may have been disappointed with it.  But I still found it a relaxing time waster and it did keep me entertained for a couple of months, which isn’t shabby.  And I also liked that it wasn’t a time-based game, so you didn’t have to worry about playing it every day or at certain times.

One other neat thing about the game is that you could compete in online design challenges and get new furniture every few weeks.  One time, they gave out themed furniture based on Monster Hunter, and the cat from the game showed up as an animal here.  I found that very interesting and I bet a lot of Monster Hunter fans didn’t know that.  Just a good testament to how popular Monster Hunter is, I guess.

Animal Crossing: amiibo Festival (Wii U)

Out of all the games in the series, I bet most would say this was their least favorite.  And I can understand why, even though my least favorite is still City Folk (this would be my second, though).  It’s just a video board game where you roll the dice by scanning amiibo figures as playing pieces.  And it’s the most basic of board games, too.  No cool rules like buying property in Monopoly or Mario Party mini-games.  They did add some side mini-games involving amiibo figures and cards, but none were very noteworthy.  Although the island survival game made it into the New Leaf update I mentioned earlier.  Even though this was a disappointing game, I have to say it did have a lot of attention to detail.  For instance, if you play as Blathers the Owl (my favorite character), when it’s his turn and it’s daytime, he’ll be asleep at first and then wake with a start, just as he does in the other games!  This game also introduced a myriad of AC themed amiibo figures, of which I have all of them.  When I go to a store and see what kind of amiibo figures they have, most often it’s a bunch of AC ones.  They also released a bunch of Animal Crossing cards for this game, but I don’t have them all because those came in blind packages.  I tried to get them all for a while, but after losing my last job, I just couldn’t keep up after that.  So it’s just amiibo figures for me!

Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp (iPad)

When this game first came out in November of last year, my old iPad couldn’t run it.  So I was like, ‘oh crap.’  So a few days later I went out and bought a new one.  I know you’re probably thinking, “Wow Cary, you bought a new iPad just for Pocket Camp?”  Well, not entirely.  My old iPad is from 2012, and while it still runs fine, it can’t take any new updates and there were other games lately I couldn’t download either.  So it was time for an upgrade.  Next I should do the same with my phone, which is even older than my first iPad!  I prefer playing mobile games on my iPad anyway.

Pocket Camp is aptly named, because it’s a bite-sized game about a campsite.  Instead of a mayor of a town, you’re now a manager of a campsite.  So in Animal Crossing games I’ve been a villager, NES arcade owner, mayor, interior designer, and campsite director.  That’s what gave me the idea to title this blog My Animal Crossing Resume.  So at your campsite you can decorate it with furniture how you wish.  You also can furnish a camper trailer, which acts as your ‘house’ in this game.  You can expand your trailer at OK Motors similar to you how did your house at Tom Nook’s place.

One of the main goals of this game is to invite animals to stay at your campsite.  To do this, you must raise your friendship levels with them by fulfilling their requests to give them fish, fruit, bugs, and shells, which you can gather in other areas.  They’ll also want certain pieces of furniture at the campsite, so when you do them favors, they give you materials for you to craft furniture.  By driving your camper, you can visit other areas where you can fish in a stream or on the beach, pick fruit from trees, visit an island to catch bugs, shop for clothes and such at the market, and sometimes a quarry where you use a shovel to break rocks for goodies.  Typical Animal Crossing activities scaled down for mobile play.

The game is free to play, so how do they make money with this?  With Leaf Tickets.  Doing most anything like crafting furniture takes time, sometimes even up to 12 hours or more.  So if you want to speed things along, you use those tickets.  The game will give you some for achieving certain goals, but after that you must buy them with real money.  But for patient Animal Crossing veterans, I don’t think you’ll have to spend too much money on this game.  I haven’t spent a red cent on this game and I have managed to get most everything I want in the timed events, and while I spent some Leaf Tickets at the beginning, I haven’t done so in a long time and have over 700 tickets right now.

Sure this game isn’t as good as a main Animal Crossing game, but it’s still kept me entertained.  Will I be playing it a year from now like some other AC titles?  Well, maybe not, but as long as my friends and family are playing it, and they keep having neat events, I imagine I’ll be playing it for a good long while.  Some problems I have with this game are the limited interactivity with friends, the boring garden in your campsite, and the lack of any museum to donate things you get (Blathers the Owl and his museum was always my favorite part of other AC games).  But even so I’ve had lots of fun with this game anyway.  Several members of my family, as well as online friends are playing this game with me, like my mom and pals from 1up.  But because it’s free and on a device most everyone has, I’ve also been able to get other who wouldn’t normally play these kinds of games to try it, like my dad and stepdad.  If you would like to be my friend in the game, I’ll share my friend code below.

9466 4856 161

Animal Crossing: Friend Finder (FaceBook)

This isn’t really a game, but a few weeks before the launch of Pocket Camp, Nintendo made a Web site where they picked an animal friend for you, and then you could use Facebook to share furniture with other players.  If you got all the furniture in an area, you could get wallpaper for your phone.  Normally I wouldn’t do stuff like that on Facebook, but it was Animal Crossing, so yeah, I got all the furniture.  So I thought I’d share my wallpapers here, which you can download if you want, as long as you don’t mind having PeeWee the gorilla on them.  That’s the friend they chose for me.  I would’ve rather had Blathers the Owl or Prince the Frog, but whatever, I don’t care.

And that’s all I have to say about Animal Crossing for now.  I think maybe the only Animal Crossing thing I haven’t been involved with, beside the early games on the 64DD in Japan, was the Animal Crossing anime cartoon.  I’d love to see that.  Anyway, in the comments section, let me know which AC games you’ve played and which are your favorites?  Do you have any special memories to share as well?  I’d love to hear them.  Also, who are your favorite characters?  Later!  –Cary

Tags: Misc