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Animal Crossing+ Japanese Details Revealed

Posted by simoniker on from the buffing-up-skylines-bonus-minigame dept.

Thanks to an anonymous reader for pointing to an IGN Cube story summarizing the new features in the Japanese expanded re-release of sleeper Gamecube hit Animal Crossing. These include brand new features such as "..upgraded animal designs.. all-new events added.. more than 100 additional items.. visit the island without a GBA.. take photos of village life, store on SD Cards, and print using photo printers", and a number of features previously only found in the US version of the game. Gamers.com has some new screenshots of this release, which follows the pattern of titles such as Kingdom Hearts:Final Mix in exporting US-release improvements back to Japan in a 'special edition'. Although non-Japanese Animal Crossing fans may be looking hopefully for this expansion, a release outside Japan seems unlikely, and the poor Europeans still don't have the original Gamecube version.

1 of 31 comments (clear)

  1. Why AC wasn't released in the UK by Lewisham · · Score: 3, Funny

    I'm not going to quote Mr. Head of Nintendo Europe, because I feel my paraphrasing is more appropriate (he gives a review in the UK magazine Edge Gamecube special called Equip):

    "We didn't have the resources to translate everything, so we decided that we'd translate Pokemon and shelved AC. Because I'm a spacker desparately holding onto a past that is now long gone. Please hurt me.
    "Of course, it would be easy to assume that the UK and Australian markets were big enough on their own to justify a PAL conversion without translation, but we couldn't be bothered with all that extra hassle either. Viva la Wigglytuff!"

    That last paragraph was me completely putting words in his mouth, but I've often wondered why this isn't done? Is it some really anal distribution channel thing? Surely putting those discs on the right ship out of Taiwan isn't that hard? The game was already translated, and the UK is definitely one of the biggest video gaming markets (couldn't comment on Austrailia).

    Perhaps Nintendo Europe don't want to be seen not shafting the non-US/Japan world. Chrono Trigger, anyone?

    It's about time they went the same way as Sega, and let some hardware manufacturers who know what the they're doing distribute their titles. We've never seen such appalling treatment by Sony or Microsoft.