Nina’s Favorite Things – Animal Crossing: City Folk

Back on Myspace, every so often I’d write a blog of my favorite things of the moment. Inevitably, I’d get a handful of readers hooked on a new drink, ice cream flavor, book or TV show. I received no compensation for that only the satisfaction of knowing that I’d turned people on to some good ish.

I bring my favorite things to BIOB now because I am absolutely head over heels for Animal Crossing: City Folk for the Wii. A few weeks ago, a friend on Facebook (damn you, Vic!) mentioned it and I couldn’t resist the urge to look it up. I told myself I should wait until the semester was over (I really didn’t need anymore distractions), but then I told myself to shut the hell up and looked the game up on Best Buy’s website. It didn’t take long for me to figure out that AC: CF was my kind of game.

The premise: The game begins with you moving out on your own. You hop a bus to a town you get to name. When you get off the bus head over to the town hall and speak to Pelly, the pelican behind the desk. She’ll tell you that there are four houses available and even highlight them for you on the map.

The town hall has the ATM machine, post office, town's recycle bin, and mayor's office. It's also where you pay your mortgage and donate to the town fund.

Map of my town

The houses are pretty much the same – small and bare. Each only has a bed, a cardboard box, a radio, and something to provide light (usually something cheap like a candle or ratty lamp.) You want to pick a house that’s convenient to the store, town gate, or town hall. When you’re done checking out the house you want, head outside and you’ll meet Tom Nook. Tom is a raccoon and your new landlord. He also owns the town’s only store so when the matter of payment comes up, he’ll suggest you work for him at his shop to pay off some of your mortgage. He’s pretty much the town P.I.M.P.

Before you can work for Tom, he’ll ask you to go around town and introduce yourself to all of the neighbors and the mayor at Town Hall.

The currency in Animal Crossing are gold coins called bells. Your first mortgage with Tom will be almost 20,ooo bells and you’ll only earn about 4,500 bells working for him before he tells you he no longer needs you. And the work you do in the beginning are simple tasks meant for you to learn the basics of the game (how to find your neighbors on the map, how to mail a letter, and how to plant trees and flowers.) Once you’re free from work, head to the town’s gate and talk to one of the guards (the one on the right) Copper. He’ll issue you a friend code. If you know anyone else playing AC you can trade friend codes with them and then (as long as you open your gate – Copper will open when asked – and vice versa) you guys can visit each other’s towns.

Friends list

Playing the game: After you’ve received your friend code it’s time to make some bells. That remaining balance isn’t going to pay itself. The quickest way to earn some money that you can use to buy tools that will earn you even more money is to shake trees of fruit and sell them to Tom. Told you, he’s a pimp.

Every town has a native fruit meaning, there’s one type of fruit that grows all around your town. For us it’s peaches. Each tree grows three pieces of fruit every few days. Shake a tree and sell the fruit to Tom. He will only pay you 100 bells per fruit for your native fruit, but if you get your hands on fruit from a friend’s town that’s exotic (any fruit not your main fruit) Tom will pay 500 bells per piece.

Sell some of your native fruit and then buy a shovel, sling shot, net, watering can and fishing pole from Tom. You can use your fishing pole to fish in your river and ocean. AC is played in real time so the date and time is always matched up to the real date and time. You can find sites on the internet (or just buy the strategy guide – I highly recommend the latter) that tell you which fish and insects are available in the current month. Sharks first appear in June, catfish in May, the Coelcanth (a $15K fish we’ve dubbed Old Dirty Bastard) only appears in the ocean between 4pm-9am and only when it’s raining, etc.

My Mom (left) caught ODB while I (right) watched jealously.

You definitely want to swap your native fruit with a friend who has an exotic fruit growing in their town that you need. Whenever you get your hands on an exotic fruit, at least in the beginning, resist the temptation to sell it for the 500 bells. Use your nifty shovel to plant it and in a few days you’ll have your own fruit. It’s great if you can find friends that each have the fruit you’ll need. We have peaches, but we planted some of KeMari’s oranges, some of Stephy’s apples and coconuts, and Misty’s cherries. Now we have our own trees growing those fruits in our town.

Check out my coconuts! On the beach, you pervs. My coconuts on the beach.

After you pay off your mortgage, Tom will offer to expand your first floor… and then you’ll owe him more money. This will continue until you’re living in a four-story house with a mortgage over 500K bells.

Me in front of my crib

As you purchase more items (supplies, flowers, stationery, furniture, etc.) from Tom’s store he’s able to make upgrades. You start out with a simple wooden general store and he’ll eventually upgrade to a two-story department store called Nookington’s. I currently have the level two store, Nook ‘n’ Go. The better the store, the better the merchandise he’ll offer each day and the more he can sell. The bigger the store, the shorter the hours though and that kinda sucks. This morning, Tom told me he’d be closed tomorrow for renovations. On Wednesday, we should awake to a larger store.

Nook 'n' Go - Open 7 days a week from 7am - 1am

One of my favorite things to do in Animal Crossing is decorate my house. There are dozens of furniture sets that you can collect. If you join the Happy Room Academy in town, they’ll evaluate your house each week awarding points to the house that has the most complete set of furniture and best use of feng shui. So far, both Donny and Kali have won… but I’m hot on their asses!

My living room decked out in the Cabana furniture set.

I used to have a kitchen…

… but I recently took all of that stuff down and replaced it with the Regal set. As you can see, I’m not done collecting all the pieces:

My basement has a Kiddie theme going, but I’m thinking of replacing it with the Cabin series:

That pink bookshelf behind me actually has a Nintendo GameCube on it.

There are many ways to collect furniture and other goodies in AC. One way is to buy from Tom’s store, another is to trade items with your friends, and you can even shoot down gift-bearing balloons with your nifty slingshot.

I am the queen of shooting down balloons. I've been awarded the golden slingshot for my awesomeness.

Anything you’ve ever possessed will remain in your catalog even after you sell it or give it away. So, if you’ve been selling all of your Classic series furniture, but later decide to decorate one of your rooms in that theme, just head over to Tom (who else?) Nook and ask to see your catalog. He’ll allow you to order the items and deliver them to your door.

Every day, two randomly chosen trees in your town will also have two items hidden in them. My daily ritual includes first shaking all the bare trees until I find the two pieces of furniture (and bells sometimes fall from trees too), then I shake the trees with peaches on them and place all the peaches at the front gate. This is so that when my friends come to visit, they know they’re welcome to take some peaches home with them. They can sell or plant them in their towns. Then, I shake the trees with my exotic fruit. Kali, Donny, and I will sell them at our store depending on who is in most dire need of bells.

Peaches for my visitors

There are other things to spend your bells on besides your mortgage, furniture, clothes and sending Nook’s kids to college. You can head over to the town hall whenever you want and donate bells to the town fund. Just talk to Pelly. Donating certain amounts will afford your town a new bridge, a fountain, and finally your choice of a windmill or lighthouse.

Another way to display town pride is to beautify it. You can plant flowers and if you’re lucky, they’ll crossbreed into new beautiful colors.

New orange cosmos appeared the other day

New pink roses

New pink tulips

Each town is made up of 25 16×16 grids. The book recommends that you have between 12-15 trees and 6-10 flowers in each grid. Following that advice, Donny and I recently achieved a perfect town rating. Just ask Pelly about your town’s environment and she’ll tell you what you need to work on. Because our town is in excellent condition, we discovered a new flower, Jacob’s Ladder.

Jacob's Ladder (behind me to the left) and pansies

You can also help out your town by donating to its museum. When you first arrive in town the curator, Blathers, will tell you that the museum is without any exhibits. Whenever you catch an insect or fish, you want to donate one of each to the museum. Also, look out for dig spots (star-shaped marks in the ground) and you may dig up rare fossils. When you do, take them to Blathers and he’ll identify them for you. If the museum needs it, you can donate it. He doesn’t take duplicates so you can sell repeats.

Kali at a dig spot

Blathers tends to ramble on a bit, but he's a hoot. Get it? He's a hoot? 'Cause he's an owl and... nevermind.

Proudly displaying a butterfly I caught with my net

In the basement of the museum there's a coffee shop called The Roost. Every Friday Saturday night there's live entertainment.

Animal Crossing is a very social game. It’s important to have friends that play the game regularly. You can help each other by sharing native and exotic fruits and ordering items from each other’s catalogs. It’s also important to talk to your animal neighbors. They’ll sometimes give/sell you stuff and they love asking you to help them become more hip and trendy. You’ll often have the opportunity to teach them new catchphrases or greetings. The real fun begins when  someone in your house that also plays teaches them to say something without your knowledge. It makes for some interesting early morning conversations…

"What did you just call me?"

If you feel like getting out of town for a bit, hop the bus by your gate and head into the city.

There are lots of fun things to do in the city. There’s the auction house where you can display items you don’t want when you’re strapped for bells, a movie theater, the Happy Room Academy, a beauty salon, a fortune teller, and a trendy shop called Gracie Grace. I’ve only been able to afford a few shirts that cost about 5,000 bells. Furniture? No way.

Um, does that bed come with Brad Pitt... naked?

Also in town, you can find Redd’s. Redd runs a little back-alley shop where he sells stuff for way more than their worth. But, he’s the only place you can find rare pieces to each of the furniture sets so you’ll eventually have to go. You can only get in by an invite from a member and it’s 3,000 bells to join.

If the city isn’t your thing, head over to a friend’s town (provided you’ve each registered each other and their gate is open.) It’s fun to check out what items their store is offering that day or maybe it’s fishing where they live and dry as a bone where you live – perfect time to take part in some friendly competition to see who’ll be the first to catch ODB.

Or, you can just use their bathroom.

That's me pooping at Devona's house.

There’s a keyboard on the game’s interface so you can chat with your real-life friends playing AC or you can purchase the Wii mic to communicate that way.

Amy came over to visit the other day and used the keyboard to talk because Jack was sleeping. We call that "Jack Mode."

Sometimes your animal neighbors will decide to move on to another town, but don’t fret. You’ll get a new neighbor to replace them. We just got a new neighbor named Midge the other day. I’m mad that the game put her house plop down in the center of the path I created leading to the museum.

Before Midge

Midge in the middle

Not since Dorothy has a bitch so inconsiderately made an arrival.

"Where are you going with that shovel?" "Where are you going with THAT shovel?" "I asked you first."

Finally, if you have an eye for design you can make your own patterns to display on clothes, umbrellas, and your town’s flag. KeMari made the Obama symbol which proudly flies above my gate.

Oh, and if you haven’t figured it out by now, you don’t have to use the cartoonish character the game starts you with. You can choose to use your Mii. Like so…

The Mii me

If you get this game, and you won’t be sorry if you do, hit me up for my friend code. And then thank me by giving me fruit and furniture.

You Can’t Have Nothing With Kids

My Mom used to say that. Bad English and all.

“Damn, I can’t have nothing with y’all!”

Now, I know what she means.

“Mom, what are you eating? Can I have some? Yeah, I know it’s your last bite, but I wanna taste it.”

I give it up.

“Yuck” *spits it out* “That’s nasty.”

Then there’s the audacity.

“Mom, who drank the last soda?”

“Me.”

“What?! I wanted that!!”

“You were in school. How was I supposed to know?”

“Well, don’t drink the last of anything.”

“Excuse you?”

And it’s not just the ten-year-old.

Jack: Mmmm Mmmm Mmmm

Mmmm Mmmm Mmmm = “I don’t know what that is you’re eating. And I don’t have teeth. But I want it. Give it to me!”

And now it has crossed over from food to my video games! I asked Donny to buy Animal Crossing: City Folk on the Wii for me! ME ME ME! After one day Kali started giving me this face every time she wanted to play and I wouldn’t let her:

"If you loved me..."

“Is it my turn yet, Mama?”

“Who said you get a turn?”

“I thought you said it’s important to share?”

Son of a bitch.