Animal Crossing: City Folk

Animal Crossing comes to the Wii as a sequel to the original GameCube and DS versions. Featuring a host of new features such as improved online play, a new voice chat option through the use of Wii Speak, a city for players to visit,and new holidays.
 Wii

Overview

Animal Crossing: City Folk supports 4-player co-op.
Animal Crossing: City Folk supports 4-player co-op.

Animal Crossing: City Folk contains gameplay familiar to fans of the series. Featuring tasks such as completing jobs for villagers, fishing, catching bugs, digging up fossils, and designing your house, City Folk retains all of the fun and quirkiness of the Gamecube and DS games. City Folk does away with the flat world style featured in the original console version on the Gamecube, using instead the spherical world setup of Animal Crossing: Wild World . In keeping with the style of Wild World, the game also contains all of the items, fish, insects, and villagers seen on the DS. Online play returns allowing you to invite three other friends into your village, but this mode is still limited by friend codes like the DS title.

New to the series is online voice chat, made possible through the use of Nintendo's new speaker device, the Wii Speak. The Wii Speak sits on top of the Wii Sensor Bar and picks up audible sounds from the entire room, allowing everyone in a room to speak as opposed to a single player wearing a headset.

In-Game Relations

Events

As with other Animal Crossing games, the game uses your Wii's system internal clock to trigger events in your town, typically related to a real-world holiday. There are different events which can happen each month:

Starcrossed Day (Tanabata) - (Japan Only)

New Year's Day - (All Versions)

Fireworks Festival - (All Versions)

April Fool's Day - (All Versions)

Flea Market - (All Versions)

Bug-Off - (All Versions)

Fishing Tourney - (All Versions)

Groundhog's Day - (America Only)

Bean Day - (Japan Only)

Valentine's Day - (All Versions)

Festivale - (All Versions)

Girl's Day - (Japan Only)

Mother's Day - (Region Exclusive)

Father's Day - (Region Exclusive)

Tree Planting Day - (Korea Only)

Bunny Day - (All Versions)

Nature Day - (America Only)

Boy's Day - (Japan Only)

Midsummer's Day - (Europe Only)

Fireworks Show - (All Versions)

Labor Day - (All Versions)

Explorer's Day - (All Versions)

Autumn Moon - (Region Exclusive)

Mushroom Season (All Versions)

Harvest Festival - (All Versions)

Halloween - (All Versions)

Naughty or Nice Day - (Europe Only)

Jingle Comes to Town - (All Versions)

Midwinter's Day - (Europe Only)

New Year's Countdown - (All Versions)

For more information on events visit: AC:CF - Events

Special Characters

City Folk's largest addition is present in its title; a large city. The city can be accessed by placing the player at the locale bus stop, wherein the individual player will be greeted by Kappn' on the city bus.

The city consists of various facade buildings and a couple of stores run by particularly well-known Animal Crossing characters (i.e. Redd the sly merchant, Katrina the psychic reader, Gracie the style coordinator, Shrunk, and Harriet the hairdresser). The city also contains an auction house run by a gyroid named Lloid and a street cart run by Phineas the sea lion.

Various other in-game characters can be spotted roaming aimlessly throughout the city's outer limits sharing of their interactions with other cities and city store adventures. When within the GracieGrace store, Gracie marks an entrance by examining and classifying the specific player's worn wardrobe. Move-out characters are also noted to be seen rummaging the city plaza or GracieGrace. While some are scarce to be seen, others are more prominent in the shopping experience.

Mii Support

Nintendo Miis mark their appearance in Animal Crossing: City Folk as well. Players are able to travel to Harriet's salon in the city and ask for a makeover, at which point they can select one from their list of Miis to wear as a mask. The Mii is incapable of adorning possible head gear features (i.e. hats, glasses, mask) and will consequentially therein be replaced by these items and vice versa. Choosing the first Mii mask is free of charge, with every subsequent change of purchase becomes a 3,000 bell charge. Changing features from the Mii directly from within the Wii console allows for a fresh new change in style and a pass up for a charge in the Miis head gear at the nearest city salon.

DS Support

DS Suitcase

Animal Crossing: City Folk contains a new feature called DS Suitcase, which allows players to transfer their character and furniture catalog from Wild World to City Folk. No actual furniture will be transferred between games but the player's entire catalog is transferred and can be repurchased at Tom Nook's store. This feature is also used to transfer your character to other players system when visiting their towns.

Online Gameplay

Wii Speak
Wii Speak

Introduced to the series in Wild World for the DS, online play has once again been included in City Folk, and the mode doesn't seem to have changed much during its jump from handhelds to home consoles.

Each individual player within a game of City Folk is given the chance to exchange their own Friend Codes by selecting the Friends option on the games Taskbar (Bottom of the Screen) after successfully achieving it from town front guard found within the city gate borders.

Up to four individual players from different towns can interact together in a single hosted town, as long as all four have exchanged the required friend codes beforehand. This process means that in order to interact with one another, players must have exchanged friend codes, preventing all City Folk players from interacting with mischievous strangers, non-intended visiting and personal attempt breech-ins, something Nintendo seems keen to avoid.

Between frequent travels a Kitten named Katie will become lost in one of the outer towns visited, whereas the mother named Katlin will ask the following player of the other town to reunite her with her lost kitten. They both will direct the player to visit the town where the other can be found. Deleting the candidate in question within the player's friends list will allow for the disappearance of the characters, as having these special guests interfere with process of other special characters to gain entrance.