You can tell the localization team at NOA had their hands full for this one. Doubutsu no Mori, was an extremely “Japanese” game. Packed full of Japanese holidays and the dialects it was surprising on my part when it was confirmed for an English release.

This is a good thing.

After running into the other player’s houses (there are four “open” buildings for players to live in) you notice a few things. There are gaudy pink flamingos, lawn chairs, barbecue grilles: all of which weren’t in the Japanese version. Even the Construction set you can buy is more familiar to an American audience. There has been quite a bit added and things changed around. This isn’t a bad thing, since after all, how many English Speaking gamers have participated in Setsubun?

There was quite a bit to do in the Animal Crossing demo, but since the floor is so loud and this is the sort of title that requires a nice evening to become absorbed in, it was a bit hard to get into the game. So instead I ran around causing trouble. People don’t like being whacked in the head with the Bug Catcher. It was rather amusing to see the characters saying things like “Why are you so mean? You’re usually so nice!” Eventually, if you kept it up they would tell you to leave them alone and get rather perturbed.

I also tried my hand at fishing and can tell right now it will probably be a large hobby of mine, just like it was in Harvest Moon 64. Just throw your lure in where you see shadows in the water and tap A when you feel a tug on the controller. Fun fun fun.

I look forward to the game's release to see how much more there is to find.