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Animal Crossing+ Japanese Details Revealed
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.
I don't think this is really all that bad idea or money grubbing. Most likely if the person already has the game they are just going to glance at a re-release with nothing in the fundamentals of it changed just a few bonuses. This kind of "remix" appeals to the people who have heard lots about the game and are still on the fence on whether or not to buy it. They think 'Hrmm maybe I should get it now that is a little updated.' GG Nintendo
Courage is fear holding on a minute longer. George Patton
"Animal Crossing Plus" isn't quite the right name - I don't speak Japanese, but I do remember that Animal Crossing was called Animal Forest + in Japan. Since this is 'Doubutsu no Mori e+', I'm guessing one might actually call it Animal Forest e+ (the e designates the e-Reader capability that the previous one lacked). Anyone who actually knows Japanese care to translate properly?
--- Bwah?
The Animal Crossing cards are cards that you can scan in via an attachment to a GBA which is hooked up to the GameCube. They unlock new items (including fully playable NES games), designs that you can put on your character's clothes, and songs which will play in the background. In addition, one does not need the GBA card-reader peripheral, as Nintendo has provided a password on each card which also unlocks something. The password unlocks a different item than scanning it. Needless to say, one can simply head over to certain websites and get all the passwords without having to purchase a card. Certain hackers have also been able to "unlock" (ie, provide a password for) items that could previously only be unlocked via scanning a card. IIRC, the only items that still require scanning a card and cannot be acquired any other way are a couple NES games.
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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.
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)."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!"
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.