Be Excellent To Each Other

A preview of Animal Crossing 3DS has revealed plenty of new information that any followers of the title are sure to enjoy.

Animal Crossing 3DS will have players taking the role of mayor this time around instead of being just a resident. As such, you’ll be able to customize the village to your liking. For example, you may decide to “add benches or street lamps to brighten the place up and make your villagers happier.”

Since being the mayor isn’t easy to do alone, you’ll be accompanied by a “clumsy” secretary who will help direct your attention by pointing out sections of town that look good and those that have room for improvement. Nintendo stated that “chatting with her may be one of the game’s highlights.”

When you’re done tending to the needs of the villagers, you’ll have plenty of options when it comes to your character and home. You’ll be able to “design every aspect of your house, right down to the design of the mailbox and the colour of fencing outside.” Even the furniture inside can be further tweaked by taking it to an upholsterer shop to get the exact look the player wants. As for your character, you’ll be able to select different pieces of clothing and designs for your top and bottom halves. Nintendo said that if you want “your little Animal Crossing boy to wear a t-shirt and a skirt then, odd as that may look, you can do it.”

The scope of the village is much larger this time around. It’s so big, in fact, that it’ll be broken up into pieces. One of the new sections is labeled “Model Homes.” This area serves as an inspirational tool when players are looking design something themselves. StreetPass utilizes this new area in a unique way. When you pass someone with an Animal Crossing save file, their house will be added to the “Model Homes” section of your town.

It is about time Animal Crossing expanded and improved its formula and it looks like the 3DS installment may very well refresh the franchise.

Major developments are afoot in the world of Animal Crossing: retail raccoon Tom Nook has a new job!

Yes, apparently fed up after a spate of recent lootings and an Occupy Nookingtons protest at his capitalist ways, he's moved into a new role as the estate agent of your stereoscopic settlement. Presumably now he's going to charge us even more extortionate fees for mortgages and add his own commission fee on top. The jerk.

Oh sure, this might not seem like a big deal to outsiders, but this is Animal Crossing we're talking about - a series where "more fish" represents an exciting new feature to shout about on the back of the box. Yet if so far the franchise has been more resistant to change than a tone-deaf busker, Nintendo have been delving into their ideas cupboard for this new edition.

For starters the new, taller avatars can now wear separate tops and bottoms. In a realm where customisation is king, this is big news. Admirably, there are no gender restrictions - girls can wear trousers and boys are free to sashay about in skirts without being judged. Though did we just see Cube sniggering behind his flipper just there?

MAYORY MAYORY

As you're now less squat, the animals have had their dimensions similarly tweaked. So squirrels like Pecan are tiny, while big bears like grumpy old Kurt tower over you. Even without the 3D slider up, the size difference is more pronounced when you're chatting with them about their binge-eating habits or entomological preferences.

One animal you'll spend plenty of time talking to in your new role as town mayor is Shizu, your doggy assistant. She might be a Shih-Tzu, but she's a good secretary (although prone to bouts of clumsiness). She'll help you when you want to change and add features to your village, something you're encouraged to do as part of your mayoral responsibilities.

You can plonk down benches and street lamps to make your hamlet more homely, as well as helping to differentiate it from others. Visiting new places lost a little of its allure in previous games when the only notable differences between locations involved key buildings appearing in slightly different places and alternative native fruits dangling from the trees.

As well as wireless local multiplayer, you can visit others' houses via StreetPass. Nab a flashing green light from a fellow Crosser and a fresh residence will appear on the edges of the village for you to have a wander around. It'd be wise to tidy up before heading outside, then - you don't want your cockroach-filled hovel to be mercilessly mocked by unknowns.

Nintendo haven't breathed a word about online functionality yet, but we fancy it'll work in a similar manner to Wild World, with occasional SpotPass treats delivered via Wi-Fi.

CHANGING ROOMS

If you want your house to look ship-shape for friends or (Street)passers-by you'll probably want to spruce it up a bit by customising your furniture. Lug your sofa to the shop and you can, for example, change the patterns on the cushions (it's the little details that make all the difference, right?). And you're not limited to interior design, either, with a range of options to change the outer walls and fences and even the look of your mailbox. We're hoping we can make it look like a fish to confuse Pete the pelican postie.

Talking of the collectable gill-breathers, you can now swim with them should you so wish. Or, if you fancy venturing into deeper waters, it looks like you can paddle to the shores of a tropical island. Its appearance on a map shown during a recent video interview with the developers certainly suggests as much, which would be a welcome return for a feature absent since the GameCube version.

If it's not included, there's still plenty else to do. Rather than hopping on a bus, you can cross a bridge over the railway to reach the new shopping mall. Hopefully that doesn't mean Kapp'n is out of a job, but it does cut out a bit of pointless downtime - the Wii's city was more curbed and small than urban sprawl, and having to wait to visit its measly selection of shops hardly encouraged repeat visits.

The mall's convenient location means we'll be more likely to indulge in a bit of retail therapy. Plus it's within spitting distance of the model homes, so we can point and laugh at estate agent Nook and his awful yellow jumper.

It's also been confirmed that KK Slider is back, bringing his oddly touching brand of musical gibberish. And with a bigger village comes a bigger soundtrack - Kazumi Totaka (yes, he of rubbish 19-note 'song' fame) has composed a new set of relaxing tunes designed to provide the perfect aural backdrop to a barefoot mooch across the sandy shoreline.

All of which bodes well for what could be a real step forward for Animal Crossing. Agonisingly, there's no release date set yet. But with series producer Katsuya Eguchi suggesting that game's arrival is "still a little way out", that gives us hope that there's plenty of time for even more juicy new features to be revealed.