Animal Crossing: City Folk

Animal Crossing: City Folk (街へ行こうよ どうぶつの森), known in PAL regions as Animal Crossing: Let's Go to the City, is a 2008 life simulation video game by Nintendo, for the Wii. Animal Crossing: City Folk is the third game in the Animal Crossing series, and the sequel to Animal Crossing: Wild World.

Gameplay
The gameplay is built upon the gameplay of previous Animal Crossing games. The Wii Remote pointer and motion controls (including the Nunchuk) can be used for handling tools, such as axes, slingshots, fishing rods and bug-catching nets. Also, players live in individual houses spread apart from each other, unlike Animal Crossing, in which all four houses are located in a central plaza, and Animal Crossing: Wild World, in which all players share one house. Each town begins with six animal residents, and can grow to a maximum of ten. In previous iterations of Animal Crossing, custom clothing involves a single image that is repeated on the front, back and sleeves; in City Folk, the player can make separate images for each, which is called a "Pro" design.

The player will be able to celebrate as time progresses several real world holidays, such as Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, Thanksgiving, Easter, Fathers Day, Mothers Day and Halloween, although they are named differently in the game itself. Holiday-associated characters from previous games return, as well as new additions such as Zipper T. the Easter Bunny, Pavé (a peacock who celebrates "Festivale"), and Nat (a chameleon who hosts the "Bug-off").

The city is a new area added to the game. The player can go there by taking a bus from town, driven by Kapp'n. On their journey there, they will sometimes talk to Rover, the game's introductory character.

Online connectivity
Animal Crossing: City Folk is the first Wii game to use Wii Speak, a microphone option for the Wii that enables voice communication over Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection (WFC). With Wii Speak, all people in a room can communicate with those in another room also containing the device, and can also have live text chat using a USB Keyboard. Players can communicate with other players by sending messages to their town, Wii Message Board, mobile phone or personal computer.

An auction house run by Lloid, a Gyroid, is available in the city and is where players can auction items to other players via Nintendo WFC. There is also an office for the Happy Room Academy run by Lyle, where players can see how other players' towns are progressing. Free downloadable content, such as furniture and items, will be released periodically.

The game supports Nintendo DS connectivity functionality. Instead of creating a new character, players can import characters from Wild World. Only the character's face, hair (including color and style) and catalog (the items purchasable from Tom Nook) are imported; bells and items owned by the character (including items in the character's inventory, house, town or dressers) are not transferred. The data in Wild World is not modified when a character is copied to City Folk, so the character can continue to be played on the DS as well. Items from the character's catalog can be repurchased with bells from City Folk. A system error occurred with Australian versions of City Folk when connecting with the DS claiming that it was "the wrong game card". Nintendo Australia allowed gamers to send back their game discs to fix the error to allow compatibility. Additionally, the DS can be used to transfer characters between Wii consoles as a means of visiting other player's towns via DS Download Play.

Development
In a 2006 interview, Katsuya Eguchi, leader of Animal Crossing's production development, stated, "someone could send a letter from their cellphone or from an email address on a PC to the Wii, and then the player living in the town in Animal Crossing could receive that letter." In another interview with IGN, Katsuya Eguchi also discussed how his team continues exploring potential ways to take advantage of the WiiConnect24 feature such as allowing friends to visit other towns or leave messages while the machine is in standby mode.