Iwata Asks: Animal Crossing Wii

Nintendo has translated the Iwata Asks roundtable quizzing the folk behind Animal Crossing for Wii.

The Nintendo President quizzes the producers on getting City Folk up to scratch for a near-simultaneous release worldwide, problems and experiences with Wii Music and trying to balance and create a suitable offline experience and expanding on the success that Wild World had online. It looks like the developer and localisation teams had a fair bit of work translating the project also, as there'd quite a bit more text in this title over the others.

They also mention some neat environmental features, like more realistic grass growth, patches of existing homes where fellow villagers have left and being sad when your buddies leave town.

But what's the main gimmick with what appears to be a similar to the DS version? The town, but that in itself seems a little limited:

The idea was that this city would be the only one that exists in the world, and that all of the various towns would be connected by means of this city. It's not that the city is actually located on the server. The city is in each player's separate copy of the game, so different data is actually being used by each player with the game. But we designed it so that everyone feels that they are really going to the same place.

Two players cannot actually meet up in the city, but you might get an animal that tells you something like: "Just the other day so and so came to visit!"

That said, the lack of online city action is complimented by being able to get together at certain times and enjoy events in your town:

Players are now able to enjoy various events together with their friends. In the DS version, because it was for a handheld console, there were hardware limitations, so the event would come to a halt while the DS units were communicating through the Internet. But in this version, for events like The Night That Jingle Comes to Town and carnivals, you can all gather in your friend's town and enjoy it together.

… [About K.K. Slider] Yes. He wasn't able to appear while players were using Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection in the DS version. If you had friends visiting your town, you wouldn't be able to listen to the performance, even if it was 8 o'clock on a Saturday evening. But in this version, up to 4 players can enjoy one of K.K.'s concerts together. When everyone uses an event like that as a reason to get together, I'm really happy. There are also events that take place simultaneously worldwide.

Finally the group discuss a neat feature - being able to take your character along with you by using the DS's download play (without a copy of Wild World) and by leaving the DS in sleep mode take it over to a friend's Wii to play there instead. There's also talk on limitations with transferring characters such as lack of money/items.