Happy birthday to my favorite game series ever – Animal Crossing. On this day in 2001, 24 years ago, Nintendo released Dobutsu no Mori (Animal Forest) on the N64 in Japan, and Tom Nook’s generous housing service took shape.
Though the N64 title didn’t make it out of Japan, it did mark the beginning of a huge franchise, with the GameCube version releasing not too much later in December of 2001.
Dobutsu no Mori was an almost Japan-only game; it then got a tweaked version called Dobutsu no Mori E+ on the GameCube, which then got localized as Animal Crossing across the world. I say ‘almost Japan-only’, as China actually got a version of the N64 title, called Dongwu Senlin. A fun fact for you Animal Crossers.
Dobutsu no Mori on the N64 is, for all intents and purposes, the same as Animal Crossing on the GameCube. There weren’t too many changes between the Japanese and worldwide versions – most changes were location-related, like how writing works in the game to fit different languages, and tweaking some references and items as they pertained to Japanese holidays.
Did you know, though, that any changes had already come during the re-release of Dobutsu no Mori on GameCube in Japan? The original N64 version shockingly had no Blathers or museum, no Able Sisters shop, no Tortimer, and no Kapp’n to take you to an island paradise.
While 24 is a big number, we’re eager to see what could come out of a 25th anniversary next year. After all, EA recently re-released The Sims and The Sims 2 for the franchise’s 25th birthday – maybe Nintendo also took notes.
We know that the Switch 2 has GameCube games as part of the online offerings, so there’s every chance that Animal Crossing: Population Growing could (and should) come to the service. Getting the N64 game on the existing NSO service would also be great to preserve history, but it would likely also be a Japan-exclusive game.
We’ll need to wait a bit to see whether any anniversary announcements come out, such as an Animal Crossing on Nintendo Switch 2 in the future, or maybe another Animal Crossing New Horizons update to mark the game’s birthday.