Want to watch a slow paced, ten-minute dev diary with the developers of Animal Crossing 3DS? No? Well then, I’ll run down the highlights for you! Either way, you are about to get the facts on the new Animal Crossing whether you like it or not. As previously reported, in Animal Crossing 3DS, you are the mayor. That means you can develop the town… or not. You can add benches and street lamps… or not. Like almost everything in the Animal Crossing series, your mayoral duties are entirely optional. Regardless of how crappy of a mayor you are, you’ll get yourself a mayor’s secretary. The game’s director calls her “Shizu”. She is a shaggy dog lady with yellow ears. It seems like she cries a lot.
On the customization front, you can now alter your furniture with new patterns, and you can change the outer walls, fence, and mailbox of your house too. As for your character, separate bottoms and tops for clothes have been reconfirmed. Also confirmed is that women can wear pants or skirts. Boys might be able to wear skirts too. That bit remains unconfirmed. The village itself is a little different now too. The beach is bigger (probably to accommodate the new swimming and diving gameplay), and there is shopping mall out back (which probably replicates the “city” from Animal Crossing: City Folk).
There are other little details that are almost too minuscule to mention. Tom Nook is now a real estate agent, you can look at other people’s houses via Streetpass, bears are now bigger, squirrels are now smaller, 39-year-old males like playing Animal Crossing for the “realism”, and so forth. That’s all builds up to the end of the video, which features K.K. Slider himself Kazumi Totaka playing new music for Animal Crossing 3DS on his acoustic guitar.
It may be a new song, but it sounds comfortingly familiar, which is exactly what I want out of a “new” Animal Crossing game. Give me the same old relaxing, vacation-style experience with a few new bugs to catch, fish to fish, and stuff to do, and I’ll be happy. Looks like I’ll be very happy when Animal Crossing 3DS is released sometime next year.
