Animal Crossing MMO for Wii and DS Virtual Handheld emulator for GameBoy (Color) games in Nintendo’s future? Signs say yes!
The latest issue of the British games magazine Edge is reporting that “Animal Crossing for the Wii will be an MMO/social networking title. It’s no great surprise – in a few short years, Animal Crossing has become one of Nintendo’s most-loved and top selling franchises (over seven million copies of Animal Crossing DS sold), particularly in Japan. Nintendo refers to the title as a ‘communications game’ rather than a videogame, and playing already depends on real-world timekeeping, weather patterns, social conventions, and above all else economic interactions. In almost every way, Animal Crossing has always been the perfect MMO concept, and this development is simply a fulfillment of that promise.
The game has yet to be officially announced (although Nintendo has at least confirmed that an Animal Crossing game is in development for the Wii) and so details are not so much thin on the ground as nonexistent. But there are some indications of where the game will take the series: Katsuya Eguchi, head of development for the project, has made relatively non-committal noises thus far, but hinted that connection to mobile phones and PCs (for basic functions such as messages) would be included in an interview as far back as last year. Animal Crossing’s earlier iterations already feature travelling between towns, the ability for players to live in the same town (though not to play in it at the same time), and the ability to design your own clothing – and to sell it.”
But the exciting new future developments for Nintendo don’t end with Animal Crossing MMO. Nintendo would be wise to grant retro gamers wishes and offer a classic games emulation service similar to that on the popular Wii Virtual Console, Edge mentions that a DS Virtual Handheld emulation service is underway. To quote the next-gen transcription:
“Of similar importance is the imminent arrival of an official DS flash card, which will initially just be available to allow Nintendo to sell the back catalogue of Game Boy and Game Boy Color games. The uncontrollable homebrew and piracy communities that use the DS rely on similar devices for their more nefarious ends, but this should, in the long term, allow Nintendo to exercise some control over at least the former through the simple step of offering a path to publisher-supported content. Compared to the slightly vague WiiWare proposition, this has the possibility to revolutionize homebrew development – at least in terms of distribution and the possibility of mainstream success –- but how far the notoriously controlling Japanese giant will allow that community the creative freedom it requires to flourish will only be seen in practice. And before getting too excited, the device will launch exclusively for old Game Boy content, initially.”
