Animal Crossing Wild World is build on good vibes!

If you enjoy this post and would like to share some of your own memories of wild world or the new(ish) pocket camp please go to the contact page and send me an email with your memory and a name or nickname you're happy to be published here. If I receive enough I'd love to do a second animal crossing post.

My brain thinks of AC in the same terms it thinks of lounging in a hammock all day... those of you who've played will probably understand what I mean.

I really want to record my memories of Wild World somewhere that other people who played it as kids can read and reminisce with me. I thought I was just sentimental but as it turns out there is a community of AC kids, now facing the real Tom Nooks of adult life and looking back with fond hearts on a simpler time when we could wile away the hours on a Nintendo.

This blog post was actually prompted by a browse through the Youtube comment section attached to the Wild World soundtrack. There were all these super cute stories! reading them left me watery eyed and filled me with this bittersweet nostalgia. The main vibe I was getting is that all of us, really, just want to wallow in the past, trade some tales and... sit in a hammock all day.

Dust off your butterfly net and get ready to whack a neighbour in the head with it! Mentally prepare yourself for THE TERROR THAT IS RESETTI in case you carelessly turned your power off without saving all those years ago, when you last played. It's high time we went back to our beloved animal village!

Below are the Youtube comments that resonated most with me! I'll add my own memories at the end (oh and fyi, I like the 6am music best!)

L I s t e n h e r e

"When I was 12 as soon as I came home I would run up to my room to play and I would always be hearing the 5 p.m. song. And I would also actually wake up at 6 a.m. to play this game for one last time before going to school. ^.^ ... I would take it to the tennis club my parents both used to go, playing this game with my friends playing there sitting on the grass on the open night. We would order toasts from the bar and while watching our parents play tennis, we would also play DS. I would freak out when I saw an UFO. I would look for Pascal all the time. I would spend my hours collecting bugs and fishes. I would go look for scorpions in the summer and let them bite me just for the fun of it :D (btw I never managed to catch those bees which fall from the trees) I would fill my pockets with shells just so that I could hear all of my fav K.K. songs in one night... I would also meet up with my best friend and we would visit each other's villages... Now I'm 18 and 3 years ago we had a really big fight, with that friend of mine. I really miss her and our memories, including AC sleepover nights. That tennis club is shut down. My parents got a divorce. My sisters pink DS doesn't work anymore, it is in some drawer she never uses. But my blue DS is the very first model, it still works perfectly. (Even my GameBoy Advance and Pokémon: Blue games are working)... things have changes so much. My life is okay, but... I usually get really nostalgic. I don't really want life to get serious. Sometimes, I just want to play DS with my friend, watch anime, go to that tennis club for the rest of my life. Of course we can't do that but... it's just a wish. :) I think we all wish don't we? :) we all miss those times, otherwise, why would we be here? :)" ~ Written by Almie

"I think for the most of us "Animal Crossing" was more than just a random game... I connect this game with an

unforgettable childhood!" ~ Written by Mausklick.de

"I remember my favourite characters, Moe, Mitzi and Rosie as my best friends in the game. I remember staying up until 3am just to get rare beetles." ~ Written by Megan Scott

"Wild World was actually my very first Animal Crossing game, well actually it was my sister's. We were much younger (and dumber) at the time, so we never read and had no idea what to do... even though we didn't really know what we were doing we loved it. I bought my own game eventually. We thought we couldn't play the game together until we filled the museum (quite a damn tall order! lol) Eventually I figured out what to do with the power of reading, and we finally played. And did we ever. We played into the depths of the night, and even now, this song reminds me of the good old days of Animal Crossing." ~ Written by Satoshi Mochida

"I never did get the throne...

I never did...

Bees flashback" ~ Written by Dankus Memus

"Oh man this brings back bittersweet memories, when I was in 3rd grade I would play this game all of the time... my town was overflowing with weeds and random items I had dropped on the ground, but the one thing I'll never forget is the times I had my two best friends over to play Animal Crossing Wild World together. We all hung out at my town, and they helped me pull out my weeds, and we talked and laughed. Eventually, my friend moved away and I hadn't played the game nearly as much. My villagers were all distressed, and once more it was filled with weeds. Then I moved away from the other friend. I had completely forgotten about the game. Then two months ago I finally managed to pick up the game again. I squished all of the cockroaches, pulled the weeds, and sold all my unwanted stuff. I cried a bit when I sent there and saw that my favourite villager, Lucky was still there." ~ Written by TreeckoDoll

"Whenever I would hear the 10PM music I felt like I was staying up so late playing my game!" ~ Written by Henry Kingston

"I remember having Biskit and Goldie, two dogs, and I used to pretend they were dating. I also had Ruby and Pippy, two rabbit, and I used to pretend they were cousins <3" ~ Written by BlackVeilBerries

"Counting down the days until the fishing tourney... paying off your mortgage whenever you got to 99999 bells... touring the museum to admire your donations... talking to all the villagers... getting ripped off by Crazy Redd... being absolutely terrified of Resetti

I wish I could go back to those days :'{" ~ Written by MF6R

"I remember playing this ages ago, we were in a train station and i found it lying on a train seat and played it for hours on end, i used to nag my friends and once they finally got the game we would play it for hours on end all the time! I miss this game so much...." ~ Written by OutlawGaming

"Listening to this music fills me up with so much nostalgia. Like visiting my Grandma, or driving down the highway while the sun sets, or remembering your old house." ~ Written by The Sundrian Steam Engine 1974

"This is a thousand, no a MILLION stories in one, 45 minute in length. I know so many people from my childhood who played this game, From my cousins, to my friends, to my aunt, to even some random people at McDonald's I met once... and it's not even just my stories, it's everyone who played this game's stories." ~ Written by Torbjorn Porn

It may not seem like it as, assumedly you've read this in one sitting but I've spent the last few days re-visiting my game, researching and browsing through a fair bit of the AC content on the internet to find everything I wanted to put into this blog post. I was surprised that it made me think about some of the parts of the game that I love that I didn't necessarily consciously notice before. It's been a really lovely few days I'm happy I decided to do this... so... here's my memories...

"I associate Animal Crossing with a specific time in my childhood, when I think about the game by default I also think about that time. For some reason I link it really strongly with this time when me and my tribe of childhood friends from my hometown were playing. We were exploring all over the place, running around on the stone tiles and flat grassy patches, disappearing to an overhang that looked over the top of the park trees and the cobbled lanes that connected our village and across to the wild open moorland.

We met some other kids who we didn’t know that well but they joined in too in that way that kids all club together. There was a little rise that was pretty much child territory and not used by adults with an abandoned ice cream kiosk on. The door had been left open and we were brave enough to venture in to look around. You could fit about two at a time and it was quite dark except for a few rays of light filtering through the gap between the boards on the window. None of us were brave enough to open the freezer because one of my friend’s, older brother pointed out there might be rats. If I remember rightly we did spent a long time trying to work up the courage and psyching each other out.

When we were back inside and content from a good day of imagined adventures, we’d go on our Ds’ and play Animal Crossing. That’s why I relate so strongly to Almie’s comments playing in the open night on the grass, that’s exactly what I think of when I think of Wild World.

I LOVED Pippy, I thought she was absolutely hilarious! She lived up in the apple orchard at the top of my village and it always seemed to me that her house was the prettiest. She was my best friend so I always used to weed around it so it looked nice. I really love how she talked and actually started most sentences with 'WAAAAAH!' (for reasons best known to herself) and ended them with 'Booyah!' like every sentence was part of some team spirit rallying speech. I was completely charmed by her mad bunny antics and pretty much in awe of her and thought everything she did was amazing. There was also a character called Aurora who a penguin, for some reason she reminded me of my sister so I liked her because of that. I was absolutely heartbroken when Pippy moved, it might sound silly but I hope I meet her again someday <3

I think one of the reasons this game means so much to me, is because it made a turbulent time feel stable, even though some really big changes were happening in my life (when my family moved away from my hometown) my AC village stayed the same and ended up being a time capsule for all my memories of my old home and friends, I'd often turn to it for comfort. I'd even send out notes in bottles to my childhood friends when I felt lonely. Even though I played it with the neighbours kids sometimes and occasionally with my best friend, it was really a game that belonged to me and my brother and to our childhood. There are allot of things I miss about being a kid and truly, getting lost in my game and living in animal village with all these crazy colourful animals for neighbours, is a big part of that!

Wild world has such a great sense of humour, I can totally imagine the writers smirks, even the town message board and the letters neighbours send to each other are funny (I got one today that ended in 'One day I'm gonna score a bath mat!') In a weird way it’s also this sense of humour that counteracts questions like ‘well what’s the point? What quests do you do?’ because… it’s actually really difficult to explain why this is such a great game!

Doing stuff?... Animal Crossing just isn't like that...

This is a pretty zen game, if you think about it... it's pretty deep."

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