Animal Crossing: City Folk (Release date: Nov. 16, 2008)
The third North American release in the Animal Crossing series really doesn't defer much from the first two. Borrowing Wild World's layout and improving upon the graphics of the first two games a bit, City Folk is mostly more of the same for long-time Animal Crossing fans. However, with the Wii's take on the franchise, there are a few new tweaks.
The biggest of these, obviously, is the new city feature. Hopping on a bus from your town takes you there, where Wild World staples such as Harriett's salon and Gracie's shop have taken up residence. New features like the Happy Room Academy's headquarters and an auction house where you can bid on your friends' items are also part of the new area.
Back in town, there a few new tweaks, too. Holidays return, complete with their trademark characters, and you can now take pictures at any time during the game. Nintendo plans to offer free DLC to City Folk players using WiiConnect24. The biggest addition, though, is WiiSpeak, which is a community mic that will allow you to communicate with other people visiting your town. Unfortunately, this did not appear to be on demo at PAX, so we'll have to see later how this works and how the quality sounds.
Kirby Super Star Ultra (Release date: Sept. 22, 2008)
Everyone's favorite little pink hero is back in what could be best described as a remix of the Super Nintendo classic Kirby Super Star. Featuring the original six games and three mini-games of Super Star, Super Star Ultra adds in three new games and three new touch-sensitive mini games. At PAX, Only the first touch-based game and first game from Super Star, Spring Breeze, were playable. Spring Breeze looks somewhat more polished over its Super Nintendo counterpart, but otherwise, the game play remains exactly the same. I assume that the other five games and the three mini games from Kirby Super Star are also identical to their original counterparts.
Article comments
1 - David
Every time I read about the new Animal Crossing, it just sounds like a huge disappointment. This is THE game I bought the Wii for. However, the relative lack of new features is making me think about just skipping this version completely.