Wednesday, August 8, 2007

Ideas for Animal Crossing Wii

Nothin' to say here, folks. Straight on to the article, then!

Among the various Mario, Zelda, Metroid and Pokémon games, Nintendo still manages to invent a new franchise every now and then. One of their greatest new creations as of the last few years would have to be Animal Crossing for the Gamecube. Succeeded by Animal Crossing: Wild World on the Nintendo DS, the next step for the franchise is the Wii. With more storage space, graphical power, online capabilities and control possibilities than ever before, Animal Crossing Wii is sure to be the biggest game yet in the franchise. Here are a few of my ideas on how Nintendo may expand on this already amazing series.

New ways to interact with items and villagers

(Summarized from a previous article called Bits and pieces: Random game ideas)

Imagine shaking hands with new villagers or the mayor by actually making a hand-shaking motion with the Wii remote! Extremely minor, yes, but it's these little things that really help the game feel more realistic.

And how about item interaction? With the Wii remote, you could actually simulate cranking the handle on a Jack-in-the-box and then mimic pressing the lid shut when he pops out! The great thing is, what motion you have to perform would be up to you to discover! You could have a fancy sword for ages and never know that swiping the Wii remote upwards allows your character to unsheathe the sword! The items that seem uninteresting may actually hide some amazing secrets.

Caves and tunnels in the hillsides

Remember those cliffs whose only purpose it seemed was to get in your way? Well, what if these cliffs hid secrets, such as caves and tunnels? Every town would come with at least one cave or tunnel, where players could find rare items and maybe even stumble across a fossil or two. There could also be a new holiday centered around the cave, such as a Halloween-type event revolving around a monster rumoured to roam the subterranean corridors. The possibilities for caves is nearly endless, and it'd be amazing if something like this were paired with Nintendo's awesome creativity.

Once boring cliffs could now be dotted with caves and tunnels


Weather in-game reflecting real-life conditions

Now, this is an idea EVERYBODY has been pondering ever since the Forecast Channel was announced: What if the weather in the real world were mirrored inside the game? For example, if the Forecast Channel says there's rain, Animal Crossing would pick up on this and turn on the water! This would also be pretty cool when visiting other friends' villages across the Wi-Fi Connection, as your character could be in a Winter wonderland one minute, and in a sunny Summer scene the next!

Temperature could also be worked into things. Say it was snowing like heck on Sunday, then the temperature suddenly shot above freezing on Monday. You'd still see snow, but it would diminish over time. Droplets would roll off roofs and puddles would form. Or what if it were hot and dry for several days? Trees and plants would turn brown, and water levels in the local rivers and ponds would drop slightly. Rampant raining? The riverbanks would fill to bursting, and plants would grow at astonishing rates. No flooding, though, that's just too much.

Of course, if you don't have internet, and thusly no access to the Forecast Channel, the weather would be pre-determined. But who doesn't have internet?

And, of course, the obligatory additions

As is the case with any new Animal Crossing game, there would of course be new villagers, furniture, music, fish, insects, fossils, clothes, etc.

Those are my thoughts on what could be added to Animal Crossing Wii. What do you think is a must-have when it comes to the next game in the series?

The Duck Has Spoken.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

i think it would be cool if u made animal crossing but let it be where u r in a city and there r tons of people and tons of things to do

CMM1215 said...

Hmm...I like your ideas for weather implementation a lot.

I've also been wondering about potential incorporation of Miis into the game, potentially even as a substitute for the standard human characters. Perhaps they could be altered to give them the Animal Crossing style.

Who knows. The possibilities are quite endless, really.

Anonymous said...

I really like the cave and item interaction ideas. I wish more items already had interaction. I can almost see some Harvest Moon type things making it in, like mining or something if you had tunnels.

I wish they would have mini-games or NES games like they had in the first one. Those were always a good distraction.

I can't really think of much else though.

Anonymous said...

youra a genius i have been pondering ideas for AC: Wii, but this sounds ingenius

Anonymous said...

I think it would also be coo if they gave us special codes that (when typed in) will change you city or town to look like something like paris, some where in texas, etc.

Anonymous said...

i think these ideas are great. i think the idea of there being another town that you could walk to over those pesky mountains, would be cool. I've heard talk of cars, but.. it wouldn't be the same, a bike or scooter, but we'd best not get pollution into it. Also, as cool as it is to have roomates, i liked having my own house in GC. maybe you should be able to have a roomate or not, like your own choice. Also the villagers get to pick what lot they live on. that would be amazing if you could do that yourself. and maybe, as my last thought, you could have a backyard, or even front yard of sorts with swings maybe, just not the same annoying concrete ! (a garage would make a cool expantion! (after biggest house, etc..) thanks,
AC GC WW.

Anonymous said...

My ideas would be to have new equipment such as a pic axe to break rocks. (you could get them in the mail after wards to change teir locations) also have a house that would have one large room a basement, 3 up stairs rooms with a hall way to get into each of them an attic a balcony, a sun roof, and a back yard. also their would be a guy called Crazy Blue (Redd's real cuzin) who would sell you fire works and firecrackers. and if you had four villagers in your town and all of you had bought something from crzy blue he would close down. becuz tortimer would bann selling firecrackers. you would have a quest that would let tortimer allow firworks and then crazy blue wouldnt have a tent anymore he would have a store seeling different types of fireworks and firecracker. (fireworks could be used in your backyard.) most people think that the sling shote would be gone becuz there would be no split scrren but you could buy a sling shot and when an item would be over head you could "snipe" the ballons down with your sling shot. mind you you would only have 3 shots. the goldon sling shot would allow you to shoot 5 times with 3 that go off each time. the statues in animal crossing gamecube when you completed the game were cool so add those.

jony