One of the most unique and addictive titles on GameCube yet, Animal Crossing has captured the staff at PGC like nothing else before it. You play the role of a human who moves in to a town full of animals and spend most of your time earning money to pay off your mortgage, keeping in touch with your neighbors, and arranging the furniture in your house.

Let’s get the bad news out of the way first. Animal Crossing isn’t going to win anyone over with its graphics or sound. This is obvious from the moment the first pixel-faced friend greets you when you set up your town. You can call it fun-shading or enjoyment-mapping or whatever your heart desires, but the fact is that the graphics have been ported over from the N64 with little improvement, if any. I don’t have a problem with the style or even the fact that the faces are painted on, but more polygons could have been used to round out the characters and the textures could have been a lot cleaner.

Sound-wise, it’s not spectacular, but there isn’t much that’s worth complaining about either. Sound effects are varied and appropriate, and every kind of insect has its own trademark sounds. The town music is fun and changes several times a day. There are some songs that you will only be able to hear at 2:00, 3:00, or 4:00 in the morning.

There is also an assortment of songs that you can play in your stereo at home and hear Totakeke perform on Saturday nights. However, the most creative use of sound in Animal Crossing is Animalese. When you talk to people, they all have voices that sound out the words letter-by-letter in rapid succession. It apparently was a feature that worked better in Japanese, but once in a while you’ll actually hear a word or two pretty clearly. Every villager has his or her own voice that matches their personality as well.

When you start off the game, you are introduced to Tom Nook by one of your train buddies, and he shows you the ropes. After you choose which house you’ll want, Mr. Nook will give you a job in his store that introduces you to many of Animal Crossing’s main elements. You’ll talk with people in the town, plant some trees and flowers, make deliveries, and send letters. Typing can be a little painful since you have to punch out each letter one at a time which makes you wish Nintendo would have released and provided support for the keyboard shown at E3. The nice thing is that the in-game interface is designed to look like a keyboard, so if you already know how to type, you won’t need to search for each and every letter.

After Tom runs out of work for you, the game becomes very open-ended. You can go fishing, catch bugs, do some landscaping around town, and post messages on the neighborhood bulletin board. You are supposed to pay off your house and rewarded when you do, but how you go about that and anything else you do is up to you. You earn most of your money by helping villagers or selling items you don’t need, but there are other means of earning money, and discovering them is a large part of the fun.

One of the most compelling features of Animal Crossing is the use of the GameCube’s internal clock. The game follows along in real time, meaning that if it’s midnight in real life, it’s Midnight in the game. Because of this, you’ll have to deal with everyone’s schedules. Some people go to bed earlier than others. Late-nighters also sleep late into the morning. Most stores close at 10:00 PM, and as mentioned above, the famous singer Totakeke only comes to town on Saturday nights from 8:00 to 12:00.

Also, every town is randomly generated when you start the game. So when you happen to travel to a friend’s town, you’ll see a place quite different than your own. Landmarks, buildings, native fruit, all vary from town to town. If you want to travel to a friend’s town, you simply put their memory card in slot B and take the train. You can take their fruit, mail letters to their villagers, and chop down their trees if you like – but don’t forget that they can travel to your village too.

The more you interact with the townsfolk and with real people, the more little touches you’ll find. If you talk to your neighbors often and write them long letters, more animals will move into town. Posting your custom designs in the Able Sisters’ fashion shop, could result in one of your patterns becoming very popular. (My friend Amanda designed something a few weeks ago, and now half the girls in town are wearing it.) After you begin traveling, villagers will move from your own town to your friend’s and vice versa. Then, everyone in the town will start talking about your friends in real life and whether they made a good impression or not. They’ll show you letters that they received and play other town tunes if they used to live somewhere else. If someone else moves into the same town, you’ll be able to send the other person letters and gifts as well as leave things for sale in the gyroid outside your house.

As you get farther into the game, customization also becomes more and more important. You’ll find yourself trading items with many of the villagers and even people online to try to get the wallpaper, carpeting, and furniture you want. “How do you trade online?” you ask. Well, you go to the store with the item, give the clerk the name of the person you’re sending the item to and the name of their town. He will then give you a password. (I like to think of it as a tracking number.) Tell the password to your friend over the net, the phone, or by passing a note in class, and all they have to do is tell the password to their store clerk to receive the item. If you’re looking for a place to trade, feel free to stop by our Trading Post .

If all that wasn’t enough, Animal Crossing also makes excellent use of connectivity to the Game Boy Advance. The pattern design tool and all of the NES games you find can be downloaded to the GBA and used while you’re on the road. You can also connect to the e-Reader and special Animal Crossing trading cards that will be available soon. The cards will give you new music, furniture, and perhaps even items that aren’t available by other means.

The most useful function of the GBA link, however is the island. There is a dock in every village, and if you have your GBA hooked up and turned on, a boat will be waiting to take you to the island. You’ll travel there on the GameCube and be able to drop off items and interact with the locals, but when you leave, you have the option of taking the island with you in the GBA. You can then see a faithful replica of the island and interact with the islander. Any tools left behind such as fishing rods or nets can be used by the islander, and if you’re clever, you will uncover very effective means of making money. (This is how you pay off those huge additional mortgages.) Plus, if you want, you can link together two GBA islands and trade. When you get home, hook the GBA back up to the GC and the changes you made will be uploaded as you travel.

One thing that’s very interesting about Animal Crossing is that it truly does appeal to women like no other game before. Several staff members have gotten their wives and girlfriends hooked. My best friend Amanda has also caught on to it. She usually doesn’t play games, but I’ve watched her spend hours shaking the trees for money and catching fish.

Overall, Animal Crossing has a charm and an addictive nature that keeps you playing, keeps you looking for a good set of furniture, and keeps introducing new events and characters as you do more with it. However, there are going to be people who write this off due to the graphics, and others may not think that writing letters and decorating your house is all that interesting. Everyone should give the game a try first though. You might be surprised by how much you like it.