Animal Crossing Wii

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Further to the plight mentioned in my last bulletin, I made a shout-out on an Animal Crossing networking site that I use fairly regularly. Someone almost immediately replied and said that their Gracie Grace store still had the items I needed!

Via the site, we arranged a time to meet via WiFi; she bought the items in her store and I paid her the bells, so it was a win win situation! This camaraderie is one of the things that I love about Animal Crossing - the online play is in no way competitive, people share items and help one another out.

The other day, in fact, I left my town open for a (real life) friend to look around while I did something else. Another player that I met via a US forum came to my town and left me some fossils that I needed for my museum collection! That friend is back by chance this evening too, requesting a couple of items that I can help find for him.

I was interested to read the other review on Gamepeople which expressed disappointment at the difficulty they had found found in meeting people online. I think you do have to go to a bit of effort to find friends, but once you have found a place where you feel happy chatting to other players online, it really enhances the game play. In fact my experience this weekend just shows that Nintendo have obviously put features into this game which forces you to wifi in order to complete parts of the game.

Most of the forums simply require you to register for a free account. After that you can post on the message boards; these are usually split into different sections, and there is often one specifically for finding wifi friends. Obviously you can title your message request to ask for specific people, for example players in a particular time zone, or 'safe' players, or those with/without Wii Speak. Once you've 'met' people online then you need to exchange friend codes.

Animal Crossing UK and Europe: This site is a networking site similar to facebook in the way that it operates, and has a core of members from the UK/Europe, although there are some US members too. Small at the moment, but very friendly and well worth looking at.

Animal Crossing Community: This site is one of the biggest Animal Crossing forums and a good place to start. Check out the Wifi Lobby to find other players to connect with. Friend codes here are exchanged via a specific Friend Code Request tool in the site, you're not allowed to post them in your messages. This works well, and there is also a ratings section so that you can see that other players are family friendly, etc.

Animal Crossing Forums More forums where you can easily find wifi players, as well as plenty of information about gameplay.

Written by Clare Sharpe

You can support Clare by buying Animal Crossing 09: Useful forums



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Clare Sharpe writes the Eclectic Gamer column.

"I think it's probably true that most of us have grown up with computer games - I have a dark and distant memory of some sort of black box with two controllers that allowed us to play an extremely primitive and pixelated game of tennis."

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