Joy of joys. One of the best things Nintendo does these days is the Iwata Asks interviews, where Nintendo president Satoru Iwata interviews the developers of major Nintendo games. It’s always slightly more enjoyable when Miyamoto is involved too (if only for the number of times you see ‘[laughs]’ transcribed) but the latest one from Animal Crossing is very interesting, particularly as it talks about a couple of features I wasn’t aware of.

For starters, there’s the small matter of ‘animal tracks’, as explained by design director Ryuji Kobayashi:

“Around the town, there is what I suppose you could call undergrowth. There’s green grass, but underneath it, there’s earth. This time, we stuck the grass on so it feels a little like it’s floating on top of the earth. When a player walks on the grass, it wears it away so you can see a little bit of the earth below. As the player walks around, the grass is gradually worn away. We made it so that it starts to grow back after a day has passed. But if, for instance…a player is doing nothing but going fishing, the grass on the path from their house to the seashore or the river will be worn away. And where there’s a bridge which everyone has to walk across, the grass will be completely worn away.”

A nice little touch. What’s perhaps more significant is the use of WiiConnect24. Over to director Hisashi Nogami:

“We used an idea from the Mii Channel, and decided that we would have the data about players’ towns automatically exchanged with their friends. This exchange of information started with the DS version, when you needed to have two separate consoles, each with a Game Card, connected. But this time around, by connecting to WiiConnect24, without one player having to visit the other player, the town data could be exchanged before either player knew it. So then all of a sudden you’d get an animal that’s new in the neighbourhood, who’s just moved from your friend’s town, introducing himself: “Hi! I’ve just moved from so and so town.” And they’ll even tell you gossip about their home town: “This character from so and so town really likes this”, and things like that.”

More to it than meets the eye. But that’s enough from me. Click this here link to read the rest. Fascinating stuff.

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