Day 1 of Animal Crossing New Leaf!

That's right, Readers, I finally got Animal Crossing New Leaf all thanks to three gift cards that magically appeared in my wallet. The best part of all this is that I probably won't have another 3DS for another month, but at least I got my brother's for now. I'm kinda skeptical about using his since I'm not sure where my town data gets saved, but I'm sure it'll sort itself out when I get my own 3DS. Anyway, as much as I was looking forward to this game, and as much as I enjoyed what I played so far, I'm kind of disappointed with it for now. It's really only because there isn't much to do on your very first day, because even though you become the mayor of the town, the game decides to be a little extreme with how much time it gives you to adjust to all the new Animal Crossing features (which is pretty much the entire day). So when Isabelle ran out of things for me to do, I found myself wandering aimlessly catching bugs and making bells.

In past Animal Crossing games, I would often cheat and time travel, but I decided not to do that with this game. First of all, I'm tired of using Action Replays, and I don't even know if there is an AR for the 3DS, or if it is even reliable if it does exist. And I also value my town and such, so I don't want to ruin anything by time traveling. Unfortunately, that also means I'll have to wait until tomorrow to continue my endeavors, but whatever.

The game starts with the classic train sequence and Rover (is that his name?) coming up to you out of nowhere to talk to you, just like in the good old days of Animal Crossing for the GameCube. I named my town Alsatia, as per tradition, and named myself Axel. I tried to be silly with the options, but the first time I did it my guy looked cross-eyed so I immediately shut off my game. I realized I could've easily gotten any villager I wanted by resetting the game at the end of each train sequence, since Mr. Resetti isn't going to pop out of the train and complain to me like the whiny blowhard he is. Anyway, I kind of liked the new town layout option, but it turned out I picked a town with a section of the beach isolated from all means of getting there. It's no big deal since I can build a bridge later, but I found it weird and silly. Anyway, after getting off the train and being a little disappointed with my funny-looking animal citizens, I spoke to Isabelle and went off with her to start getting things done.

Moving on to my responsibilities as mayonnaise.

Now, I normally would never say this since I think of myself, or like to think of myself, as kind-of-a-feminist, but my god, Isabelle wants the D. I'm kidding, kind of. I mean, she's kind of flirty, which I find funny for a character in a secretarial role, but when I went to check out my... tent... she came right in out of nowhere. If the game had some kind of abrupt method of getting her in my tent, I would've freaked out. Later I go to speak to her, and she starts asking me to take her to the beach and collect sea shells together. It's kind of cute I guess, but since part of me is absolutely terrible, I cracked some stupid jokes about all this. I like building relationships, of whatever kind, with anyone (disclaimer, however: I'm only attracted to women in real world romantic relationships since I'm not a homosexual [which is also unfortunate because, fun fact, gay men have hit on/flirted with me before]), so I went ahead and got a sea she'll for Isabelle. Then, when I gave it to her, she kind of fawned over it and talked about how great it would be to decorate her house with it (sidetrack: where exactly does Isabelle live? Probably somewhere in the Dream Suite). I'm sure that sea shell will be somehow involved in her method of satisfying sexual gratification through self-pleasure, but that's as far as I go with that. Then she talks about decorating her whole house with sea shells and I'm like, dear god.

I'm being kind of wishy-washy with the exact order of how I did things, but whatever. Let's continue that by talking about when I got a house... I mean a tent. So the new thing now in New Leaf is A) Tom Nook is a realtor and not a shopkeeper anymore, B) which also means NO MORE PART TIME WORK, C) you can put a house anywhere you want basically, and D) you don't actually live in a house because Tom Nook is a scandalous money-grabber twirling his little raccoon mustache. I decided to put my house right smack in the middle of town, which I actually did unintentionally as I only wanted to be close to Isabelle... Erh, I mean, um, be closer to the town hall. It was actually the only reasonable spot between the town hall and the beach (for some reason I want to be close to the beach too), and as it turns out it'll be more convenient as I can build a bridge over a river that sections it off from the northern part of town. I already knew about Tom Nook giving you a sleazy little tent, but he then goes on to say that I'll have a real house once I pay him ten thousand bells. For some reason that sounded pretty reasonable to me, I guess I'm just numb to the evil that is charging penniless newcomers thousands of money to live somewhere. It also looks like Tom Nook has become smarter with his real-estate business, because before you could just live in the house and never pay him anything, which always baffled me until I said to myself, "Well, he's just a raccoon..."

Soon I'll actually find that making bells isn't really all that hard in this game. It actually didn't feel too different from when I recently played Wild World. In Wild World, I restarted the game and on my first day, I got a fishing rod and made my money selling fish, sea shells, and fruit. In New Leaf, I nearly did the same sort of thing, only instead of fish I was selling bugs since Nookling's only had a net and a shovel. I don't know what else it is I did different, but somehow I'm making a lot more bells than I did in Wild World, and I know it's not the bugs because fish sell better. So within an hour(?), I made the ten thousand and paid off my house. I could've probably finished it sooner if I wasn't so caught up with Isabelle... I mean *cough,* sorry, getting used to my town and the new game.

So with my house finished and with Isabelle out of ideas for me to do that don't involve forming a relationship with her, I set about on some odds and ends for the day. I don't know if it's just because it's my first day, but talking to villagers feels like a waste of time. Maybe it's because I don't particularly like any of the villagers I got, but they also barely have any quests for me. In Wild World, I was constantly delivering letters and gifts and being asked to catch something and so on. In this game, I only delivered one present and got a peach for it. Like, really? A peach? And mind you, this is my town's native fruit. Isabelle was awesome enough to give me cherries (oh god, more sexual innuendoes), allowing me to plant them and make more money without having to travel to my nonexistent friends' towns! Later I was asked to catch a catfish, in which I was S.O.L. because Nookling's didn't have a fishing rod. I guess this was evened out by a couple of times when I was asked about a bug I caught. And a couple of villagers did give me things, once because she had an extra, another because he wanted to know how he looked in a shirt (this was a bit funny to me). But mind you, this was across the span of about eight hours. In Wild World, I would've been sick of doing all these things already because they don't stop.

I guess that's where the easy money balances things out. I don't quite know what it is that makes this game more generous with bells each time I go and sell nonsense, but I guess it's because I sell everything at Re-Tail. That store is like Nookling's, but happens to be where you can buy items twenty percent cheaper than at that store (I think). I know for sure though that they pay you twenty percent more than what Nookling's pays you for items, and it seems to me that Re-Tail is now the place to sell stuff. In Wild World, you can strangely upgrade Tom Nook's store by selling things to him, further convincing me that Tom Nook is the video game industry's worst business man, but I don't know if that... weirdness works with Nookling's in this game. So anyway, I tried to find something to spend this excess money on, but the neither selection at Nookling's nor at Re-Tail was all that appealing, so I just dumped it into my bank account. I did but a fortune cookie at Nookling's, which actually costs two Play Coins instead of bells. It kind of sucks in my opinion, but the fantastic thing is that doing this will get you all sorts of really cool Nintendo items (forty five of them).

I bought a fortune cookie and managed to get the fire bar from the classic Bowser's lairs out of Super Mario Bros. I hope I can get a Metroid one of these days, and it makes me wonder if you can reset and still have the two Play Coins in case you didn't get what you wanted. My guess however would be that it wouldn't work since a change in Play Coins seems to be associated with a change in the system, in which case wouldn't be affected by what happens in the game. I guess this is to keep people from resetting. The other thing I did was redeem the palm tree lamp off the Internet from Nintendo. I missed the "Rainbow Screen," but it's not that big of a deal to me. I'm excited to be able to get these rare items that seem to have no other means of acquisition in the game, like the mushroom kingdom stuff Nintendo did with Wild World. All these rare things will probably be available to anyone with an AR, but I'm trying not to use one for this game, so I'm glad I got the game now and not years in the future when none of this stuff would be available by any other means.

So that's about it really. The rest of the day was spent catching bugs and selling them, along with other things. Then Re-Tail closed, so I donated stuff to the museum until they already had what I was catching. There didn't seem to be any special events going on that day either. I stumbled upon a tarantula, which is really rare and happened to be Re-Tail's item of the day, but I messed up and scared it off a cliff. I spent a good while trying to find another one, but that never happened. I learned I can now equip tools with the D-Pad, which is really handy for a situation like that. I tried going to the island, but that place hasn't been unlocked yet. Gah! So many places I need to unlock! I wanted to start upgrading Main Street but Isabelle kept kissing my ass to the point where it went from cute to the annoyance of realizing that the game isn't going to let me continue, which was the ultimate gripe I had with it all day. But don't let that confuse you Readers of what I thought of the game so far, I really like what I see and I believe this will be the best Animal Crossing yet. So I gave up on my effort to keep progressing through the game, and instead I saved up about fifty thousand bells, which I'm sure will be plenty for tomorrow.

One cool thing I want to point out is the game's secret QR Code scanner. I'm probably the last person on Earth to know about this, and I highly doubt the couple of people who come across this blog every now and then happen to be, out of all the people who play this game, uninformed of this cool thing, but I'll mention it anyway. So Sable, the quite hedgehog who's been too busy sewing away at something for the past several Animal Crossing games, will give you access to a "sewing machine" that "doubles" as a QR Scanner, which you can then use to scan online codes and download a pattern off the Internet! Finally, I don't have to break my back trying to copy down a design I saw on the Internet! This is pretty cool, and I've already seen some impressive designs on a few tumblrs, even though a majority of them are for female characters. Maybe I'll make one just to wear these designs, I don't know. I did see a still painting of He Man from the I Said Hey "music video," which cracked me up so much that I decided that will be the first thing I get. Unfortunately, this is also another thing you need to unlock, but I think the method is pretty cool at the same time. You have to talk to Sable at least once a day for ten days straight, and then she'll tell you about the secret "sewing machine." Possibly nobody knew about this until the guy who decided to talk to her for ten days found out about it, and I think it's cool that this game comes with its secrets.

This game is great news to me, as I now have a feature for this blog, and features are pretty much what keeps this blog alive, as sad as that sounds haha. I probably won't write every single day I play on Animal Crossing, but I'll be sure to write about the noteworthy. Also, I'll try to get screenshots in next time. As for my computer, still no word, but I'm sure I'll have to have it by at most the middle of next week.

Update: LOL I JUST READ THE ANIMAL CROSSING GOVERNMENT DEFUNDED MR. RESETTI AND RENDERED HIM OUT OF BUSINESS LOL FAREWELL YOU EVIL MOLE.

I could recommission his Surveillance Center, but really the only point of doing that would be to see if I can visit it. Perhaps I can recommission it and then demolish it all over again once I visited it, but why waste the bells?

Update 2: Added a picture.