Origins of the Animal Crossing series?

[Boo Destroyer]

Was it ever explained how the Animal Crossing series was first conceived?

While it started late in the N64's lifetime, have they ever actually explained how they came up with the series? How they came up with the whole idea of it and its characters? Did its prototypes involve the likes of Mario by any chance?

We've heard all the apparent origin stories of other Nintendo franchises, but I don't think we've ever heard about it for this one. Or have we?

[Da Robot]

I remember years ago hearing that some of the TLoZ: LttP team worked on it and was the reason for certain similarites with the two games.

Eg:

- Shovel and Bug catching net tools (bees can be caught that can hurt the player)
- Top down perspective with "large square grid" overworld (When a player walks around the map, and transistions into the next "square" the camera then reorients it's poistion) (Only present in N64/GCN versions before the "rolling log" type world now used in post Wild World versions.

[Boo Destroyer]

Iwata Asks for New Leaf

But they still say nothing about it.



Moreover, why was the first game released only in Japan? I'm sure there has to be a reason for that...

[kirbychu]

Most likely the same reason Pokémon took so long to make it out of Japan... 'cause nobody thought it would sell to westerners.

[nocturnal YL]

Apr 23, 2013 13:42:39 GMT -5 Boo Destroyer said:

Moreover, why was the first game released only in Japan? I'm sure there has to be a reason for that...

Probably because it's too different from being a conventional game, and Nintendo of America is very well known for their conservativeness.

[Boo Destroyer]

Found it.

Katsuya Eguchi talking about the idea behind Animal Crossing: “Animal Crossing features three themes: family, friendship and community. But the reason I wanted to investigate them was a result of being so lonely when I arrived in Kyoto! Chiba is east of Tokyo and quite a distance from Kyoto, and when I moved there I left my family and friends behind. In doing so, I realized that being close to them – being able to spend time with them, talk to them, play with them – was such a great, important thing. I wondered for a long time if there would be a way to recreate that feeling, and that was the impetus behind the original Animal Crossing."

[Leon]

For the technical side, there was a game under development called Cabbage for the N64DD. The game was supposed to be use a clock similar to Animal Crossing which let the creature continue to live even after the game was turned off. This was likely reuse for Animal Crossing later on.

I would also not be too surprised if EAD experimented with using a real time clock for Ocarina of Time. N64 games from EAD are really interesting in how they all seem to build off of each other.