Some more ideas for Animal Crossing Wii

All Animal Crossing Wii-related posts and brainstorms can be found right here.



So, a month has passed since my last Animal Crossing Wii ideas post, and still no word on the game from Nintendo. How much longer will we have to wait for even the smallest sliver of information? Well, in the absence of details, we have speculation and brainstorming. So here goes with some more suggestions for Animal Crossing Wii.

Advanced clothing design

In all Animal Crossing games so far, making a shirt or dress out of a pattern always results in the same pattern being used for the front, back and sleeves. For example, if you make a pattern that looks like a suit with a tie, your character will appear to be wearing a tie on their back and arms. Not exactly what you had in mind, huh?

So here's what I propose: Allow players to assign patterns to the individual parts of the shirt/dress. Players could have a pattern for the front, another for the back, and one more for the sleeves.

One problem is this would be unable to work with the usual ability to turn a pattern into a shirt/dress on the go. While in previous games you could just drag a pattern over your character to make them wear it as a shirt/dress, the advanced clothing creation would require each pattern to be assigned to a part of the shirt/dress one by one. This would require a new screen on the menu, and I see it looking something like this:

My concept for an advanced clothing design interface

As you can see in my "crudely-drawn-in-MS-Paint" concept, advanced clothing design really isn't so difficult, but it still requires several different patterns to take full advantage of. If players want to change their clothes real quick, but still want the advanced clothing design results, they can save pre-made shirts/dresses to a secondary function of the above page. This way, they can just open the design page, click on their pre-made shirts/dresses, and put it on. All the personality in far less time!

One more thing I want to point out about the above concept is the button labeled "Switch to Basic Editor". The basic editor is actually the default page whenever opening this part of the menu. The basic editor consists of a list of patterns and the player's character, with the player dragging their patterns onto the character for the old-style clothing design. They may end up wearing ties on their sleeves, but that's a sacrifice that must be made to make things quick and easy.

Online item auctions and trading

Looking for a rare item, but none of your friends have it? This calls for an online auction! Working just like eBay or any other real-life auction site, players can bid on rare items posted by other players in hopes of adding them to their collection. When the auction closes, the winner will receive his/her prize via in-game mail upon the next mail delivery. And of course, you can also set up auctions of your own, selling whatever you feel like parting with.

Not into bidding? Have no fear, trading is here! You can post an item online, and request the rare item you desire in return. You can also check out what items other people have put up for trade, and take them up on their offers if you please. Think of it like Pokémon Diamond and Pearl's Global Trade System, but instead of Pokémon, you're trading for items!

In both trading and bidding, you can search for posted items by name, category, theme/set and size. Here's an example:

Name: Snowman Couch
Category: Seating
Theme/Set: Snowman
Size: 1 x 2

You can fill in as many or as few of the fields as you want, and you can even hit a random button to check out a random item someone posted. The main page of the trading and auction section would show recently posted items, soon-to-close auctions, and the top five hottest auctions. You never know what you'll find, so look often!

More diverse plant life

Run around any Animal Crossing town, and you'll see nothing but tree after tree after tree... I think it's time we add bushes to the mix. Trees are great, but I don't think I've ever walked through a forest without seeing some sort of shrubbery scattered around. The addition of bushes could go hand in hand with berries joining the game, working hand-in-hand with the already-existing fruit. They'd probably sell for less and be far more common (Probably four or five berries a day per bush, opposed to a tree's three fruit), but high volumes of berries would also make it easier to spread the plant around the town, meaning more bushes. More bushes means more berries, and more berries means more money! Quantity beats out quality here.

And how about some more hazardous plant life? Some poison ivy would be an interesting addition. Just imagine running into a villager scratching itself furiously, yelling about how much they hate that poison ivy. The player could remove the poison ivy by digging it up, or maybe do something a bit more diabolical with it. Just imagine you go to dig up some poison ivy, and see some seeds drop from it. You thoughts quickly turn to your least favourite villager, and an evil idea comes to mind. You run to his/her house, surround it with poison ivy, and enjoy the floor show.


"What's that, Monique? You want me to plant some flowers in your front lawn? Can do... Heh heh heh."

This shouldn't be too hard of a feature to add. I'm sure Nintendo can easily whip something up from "scratch".

A bigger town square

The cobble stone-paved area in front of town hall plays host to the occasional visitor, such as Crazy Redd and Gracie. But these are small events. What if there's a festival in town? Surely a big celebration couldn't fit on such a puny little area. Just take a look at the gargantuan festival in the movie!

The festival in the Animal Crossing movie is far too large to fit in the
current town square

The town square certainly needs a bit more space. Festivals would be a blast in Animal Crossing, but it can't happen if it can't fit.

Of course, festivals wouldn't be the only thing happening at town square. The near-monthly Flea Market Day from Wild World could evolve into a full-blown, weekend-long event. Vendors from all over would set up shop and sell rare and foreign items usually impossible to find in your town. There could also be stalls dedicated to games, with even more items up as prizes. The motion controls would turn this into a series of mini-games, with several classic carnival-style games available to be played. The difference, though, is that it will actually be possible to win these games. No carny tricks! Well, at least at any stall not run by Crazy Redd... Crafty little fox.

Alright, so ends yet another list of ideas for Animal Crossing Wii. As always, feel free to discuss this in the comments section or in this forum thread.

The Duck Has Spoken.