Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer

          First Impressions of Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer. I received this game as a gift from my sweet Nintendo loving fiancée after he received his special edition New Nintendo 3DS. He even gave me the awesome Isabelle Amiibo card that came with the system. The game was a pretty quick download from the E-Shop and I was playing it within ten minutes of receiving the download code. First you are greeted by super cheery music and an awesome start screen of a little building on top and moving geometric Escher style bottom screen. There are four characters standing before the building and they all turn and scurry inside when you press the “A” button or tap your touch screen and then start a new game. Your character starts out being greeted by Tom Nook himself, which in all of the Animal Crossing franchise is known as the overlord of indentured slavery as he offers you homes for free for the fair price of all the Bells (the in-game money) in return to finish paying it off, as well as upgrade it. He is quite excited to greet you as the new employee, before he asks Lottie a new addition to Animal Crossing as well as niece of Lyle if she remembers your name and she simply tells him to get it together (you enter your own name). Then he is slowly coaxed by Lottie to remember what your gender is and what you look like. This part of the game was AWESOME, as you actually get to select what your character looks like, this is a first time in Animal Crossing HISTORY! In past Animal Crossing games you had to answer some fairly vague personality questions for the game to generate what you looked like, and most of us realized that there was a key to this so we’d look that up OR just keep restarting until we got it the way we wanted it. Not only do you get to customize without guessing, you can be any skin tone you want! This is also a mark in Animal Crossing history, it changes ALL of your skin…not just your face like it did in New Leaf when you got a tan. After you do that, you walk in and Tom Nook introduces you to the gang of Nook’s Homes! His first introduction is a familiar character named Lyle, who’s catch phrase is “Bang!” and is originally from Animal Crossing: Wild World where he sold you insurance and then later with a step towards his position in this game being Animal Crossing: New Leaf when he worked in the Happy Home Academy. Next he introduces Digby another familiar face in Animal Crossing as the twin brother of Isabelle as well as the dog who was in charge of the Happy Home Showcase in New Leaf, and when he speaks Lottie gets excited with happy hears above her head. This can only be a hint that she has a crush on him, and it’s adorable! And last you are introduced to Lottie, and she is day dreaming about Digby so they have to yell to get her attention! Her job is being an expert at home design, and she will be your guide in this game to what you shall be doing, starting with her own place.                The first thing Lottie has you do is an interior remodel on a client’s home, picking a wallpaper, new carpet and some new furniture. Lottie gives you an official uniform she has you go upstairs to change into first (According to Lottie you will be able to customize an outfit later!). Lottie takes you to the new location, with the little car sitting outside the building. Then she gives you what the client is interested in “All Things Cute” in this case and she requested “a room with a lovely atmosphere”, they highlight the important words for you to recognize. Lottie tells you about the cardboard boxes in the room, and how they can be opened by tapping them on the touch screen, the boxed item is a piece of furniture the client MUST have incorporated into the design. If you remove the original boxed items from the room, the client will not let you finish the room! Lottie explains all the controls and then lets you go wild with the items that have been revealed for you to use, and generally all items marked ‘new’ are ones that fit the theme for the room. The green leaf icon is the furniture catalog, the yellow framed-picture icon is wall decorations, a blue carpet icon for rug selection and a red house icon to change the wallpaper and flooring. Everything that you place you can turn and shift how you like, and you can even pick up and move your character and the animal you are there decorating with! I really love this feature, because it lets me put them in the furniture to see how I think they look. Lottie also mentions later you can change the clothing of your customers, to suit them best, and you can place clothing in their houses like you did in the old A.C. games. After you are done decorating you report to the customer and let them know you are done, if you didn’t remove their prized possessions, they will pretty much accept anything you have done to the room. I have not experimented personally with this feature, but a few people have purposefully made horrible looking rooms and still got enthusiastic responses from the clients, I have a feeling Nintendo did this so children who purchase this game will be satisfied to keep clicking buttons and playing the game, instead of being frustrated with not understanding what the meaning of the theme is, also it is extremely hard to really tell what fits perfectly with the theme just from looks (everyone pictures things differently). You will return promptly to the building of Nook’s Homes, where you will be informed sitting at your desk and writing a daily report will allow you to save your progress for this day, and you do not have to do this immediately, but you have to if you wish to progress to the next day.

               The game quickly follows with the same sort of activities where you decorate client’s houses and try to make them as close as you creatively can to what they want with the items that are unlocked for you. After a few more clients you are given a bigger job, Isabell has come back to town and she has been given the opportunity to open up a school next door to your Nook’s Homes building, and she needs your help to decorate it! I thought this was one of the coolest things, because I get to decorate a building that technically the animals that visit and live in your town will be using! The schoolhouse is about with a guesstimate maybe three times as large as the houses you have been decorating so this is pretty fantastic for those of us that can figure out how to separate spaces with other objects. For those that cannot, this seems really insane, it’s a lot of space! On top of that when you finish, there will be random animals assigned to function in this place and you can place them as whatever position you want, in the school house it can be a student or teacher position. Soon after you are brought to a new client, one that needs their yard done along with their house, this is the core of the game. The entire map of the town is laid out in squares and you choose where the location the clients are placed, and each location has its own uniqueness and the seasons will make it change differently. I also really loved this feature, as much as this is not a traditional Animal Crossing, I hated when the villagers of my town would move into a place I didn’t want them.                Overall I found this game very pleasant and I haven’t even scratched the surface of what the game has to unlock or the other buildings I can access. I really loved the freedom to create the rooms of my dreams as well as the simplicity that the villagers will love whatever you make for them, so no stress over choosing the exact perfect furniture or decorations. The inclusion of decorating and defining what you think a public town building should be decorated as was also another super nice feature to me. I know there are a lot of features I didn’t go over because I want people to actually experience the game for themselves, and discover things on their own, Nintendo really added a lot to this game!                If you love to decorate, and spent a lot of time in the old Animal Crossing games collecting furniture and items from Nook’s shop just to put them in the perfect spot and would love to ditch the waiting game for when the moon will finally be available for purchase, I highly suggest this game! Jokes aside this is an excellent game for all ages, and I feel it is perfect for a pick up and go, but also can be a kick back and relax game if you want to put loads of detail in your favorite villager’s home.

Till next time this is 8BitLove. Never stop being informed!!

New 3DS Slim

So like many Americans when the New Nintendo 3DS was announced which for the sake of this article we’ll call the NN3DS I was a rather underwhelmed. It seemed like not a huge leap from the original other than a slightly better graphics processor and enhanced 3D. I for one wear prescription glasses, so the old system had a habit of causing me headaches and making it hard to take advantage of the 3D feature the company focused so much around. With the NN3DS though I figured at the very least it would fix that part. When they showed off the smaller one though that’s when they truly had me. A system similar to the slim 3DS I already had with all the improvements and customizable plates?! I was hooked, I watched the Nintendo Direct anxiously waiting to see when they would announce this for the West. Like many of you, I was sorely disappointed when they explained that the West only seemed to appreciate the larger systems, and that the NN3DS slim would not be a thing for the West. Cut to this year 2015 and Reggie of Nintendo has been constantly dropping hints that there would a surprise coming to the West since E3. *cue the chorus of angels* The NN3DS slim gets announced in a bundle with Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designers! A game which I happily gave to my girlfriend and fellow writer 8-BitLove, who will be reviewing the game later on to explain it and her feelings on this new off branch for Animal Crossing.

               The NN3DS slim is everything a person loved about the original slim but with what feels like sharper pixels. Like the large one, it has a second circle pad which for me suits my hands better allowing my thumb to always rest on it while still touching the Y and B buttons.  I happen to be an avid Monster Hunter player in which I main bow, so for me as I have large hands, this is a lot more versatile giving me the ability to move my camera and my player at the same time. For those who have never played MH the newest edition is MH4U for the Nintendo Handheld and requires a lot of attention to detail and to fully understand your controls in response to the weapon class you personally choose for yourself. This is also vital to make sure you have a system that works well for you. Now what you must understand for this smaller edition naturally you lose screen real estate which some people might prefer over size. There is nothing wrong with that but in return as mentioned before you also get the ability to customize your covers and allow yourself a more personal feeling systems. Customization always happens to be a big selling point for myself, as well as some others I know personally but does it make the $219.99 pricing worth it? Let’s breakdown the pricing for this.

               The standard NN3DS XL (or LL if you’re from Japan) costs 199.99 USD. This system includes only the system and the AR Cards which despite some speculation by people on various sites is still included in a new box. “But SelectPlayer! You never mentioned a charger!” That’s correct! I did not mention a charger, for people who may not know this from being new to the recent changes in Nintendo they no longer package the system with a charger. In fact, if you have one of the older systems when this first started, and you wanted to trade it in at GameStop, you had to give up your old system’s charger and purchase a new one for the NN3DS. Due to this issue that arose from this though, GameStop no longer requires a charger when it comes to at least trading up to the NN3DS.   Now that we have that out of the way we know that the slim model by itself also costs 199.99 at the moment if it was to be sold separate; with the AC: HHD bundle you get a copy of the Animal Crossing game which alone is $39.99 and an aMiibo card. The average price for all this would normally be $240 on average tax not include since that ranges depending on where you’re from. Now if you have the first run of the NN3DS XLs that came out you can trade that in and get $100 dollars off the system making it 120 instead of 220 which is a pretty good save. For someone who owns the old 3DS or the old 3DS XL the trade in value is $30 for the slim and $40 for the XL. This is a vast difference lowering the price of the NN3DS slim to 190 or 180 respectively according to which you own. In the sense of the slim 3DS I would still think of this as a good idea to upgrade considering the built in aMiibo reader and improved graphic card along with the as mentioned before better 3D. Between the 3DS XL and the NN3DS slim I find the gap less worth it, since its still allowing you a larger screen along with the original value of the system itself. So my dear readers the final say is it’s a great system with wonderful perks to it and lots of value for the upgrade but these are merely my thoughts and information to aid you all to make an informed decision in the end its always in your hands to decide if you want this I only hope I have helped.

 Till next time this is SelectPlayer. Never stop being informed!!