YMMV / Animal Crossing (2001)

• Awesome Music: The game in general is noted for having a fantastically-done soundtrack that still holds up excellently, especially given its more ambient electronic vibe compared to later games' focus on mimicking live instruments (and New Horizons actually using live instruments). The hourly themes are a particular point of acclaim among fans, with how well they invoke very particular moods relevant to a given hour in ways most listeners wouldn't initially expect. In particular, the 9 PM music is a relaxing song, perfect after a long day.
• Broken Base: People either love getting constantly insulted by the villagers for little to no reason, or think it's tasteless and annoying.
  • One side argues it gives the game character as the Cranky and Snooty types behave more similarly to what Westerns expect than the more faithful translations of, say, New Leaf— a frequent target of criticism whenever this discussion starts. Another point is that the rudeness "isn't as bad as it's made out to be" and consider it to be teasing rather than outright bullying, and people are just "too sensitive" to handle a more brusque, crude tone when it comes to NPC interaction in the series.
  • The other half, even if they find some of it hilarious, don't particularly like having the same snarky, insulting, passive-aggressive comments heralded towards them on a constant basis. ^note And contrary to popular belief, no, they don't get any nicer, no matter how much you help them. People of this camp find that this isn't teasing, but needlessly cruel and unwarranted hostility, and feel that the moodiness of the villagers gives the game a more sour atmosphere which juxtaposes what was previously advertised (in Japan, at least) as a light-hearted escapism to another world. This camp also argue that this type of behavior is too offensive for a game designed for young (5-12 years of age, give or take) players to enjoy; kids, understandably, probably wouldn't like how their virtual neighbors treat them, especially if they have to put up with said treatment during school. This extends to the idea of rather or not this sort of localized dialogue should return in future games.
• Common Knowledge: Everyone knows that the villagers in the first game are much more rude and snarky to the player than in later installments^note Though Wild World does come dangerously close, and even eclipse it on seldom occasions., in which they became much more polite. This is only partially true, as the villagers treating the player so harshly only applies to the various overseas localizations. The villagers are much nicer to the player in the original Japanese version. In fact, later installments in the series are much more loyal to their Japanese counterparts than the GameCube game.
• Fan Nickname:
  • This game, the only one in the series with no official subtitle, is often given the unofficial subtitle of Population: Growing! (often abbreviated to "PG"), from the box art. Others abbreviate it to "ACGC", for "Animal Crossing GameCube". The Japan-exclusive Nintendo 64 original version is occasionally designated "Animal Forest" to distinguish it from the GameCube Updated Re-release that did get a localization; this only really works in the international fanbase since this is just a direct translation of "Doubutsu no Mori", which in Japan is the name of the whole franchise.
  • The four Dummied Out NES games in the GameCube version^note Ice Climber, Mario Bros., Super Mario Bros., and The Legend of Zelda are often called "The Forbidden Four" by fans (it was originally the Forbidden Five, but a code to obtain Punch-Out!! without any hacking was eventually discovered, making that one no longer "forbidden"). Of note is that while these four games are generally considered to be "unused", Ice Climber and Mario Bros. are legitimately accessible via special e-Reader cards (which seems to indicate that Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda were meant to be accessed in the same manner, only for this plan to be shelved when the e-Reader flopped in North America) and Punch-Out!! was able to be legitimately obtained via codes provided by Nintendo of America to winners of special giveaways.
  • When an unused squirrel NPC was found through datamining the GameCube games, they were given the fanon name "Blazel" because their appearance had similarities to Bliss^note renamed Caroline, her Japanese name, from the English localization of Wild World onwards and Hazel^note likewise renamed Sally, with a different squirrel with the same name being renamed Cally in Wild World and a new squirrel named Hazel debuting in New Leaf, two other squirrel characters. Further datamining eventually concluded that Blazel's intended name was Shaki, which quickly supplanted the Blazel nickname upon discovery^note her original name was initially reported as "Chesnut," but this turned out to be a mistranslation; a more accurate translation is "Crispy," but it sees less use than "Shaki" thanks to it sounding comparatively awkward. Shaki's Verbal Tic is "Torya~". Although she resembles and was first believed to be a Normal villager, some code surrounding her suggests she might have been a special character, specifically a travelling doctor, presumably healing bee stings akin to medicine in Doubutsu no Mori e+ and beyond.
  • Fans describe the hats as a "viking hat" (male) and a "princess hat" (female).
• Game-Breaker: Item codes were meant to be specific to the person/town combination you "sent" an item to — which left the obvious exploit of picking a very common name and copying other people's codes. "Project Hyrule" was a semi-organized effort at this, collecting codes for players named "Link" in towns named "Hyrule", but this became redundant with the discovery of codes that work for everyone. Just about every item in the game has such a code, including a number of items that couldn't normally be traded through codes. One code even exists for 30,000 bells. If you need 90,000 bells to pay off Nook, you just need to enter the code three^note Three is the maximum amount of codes you can give Nook per session; save and reload to enter codes more times than that times. Or, depending on the day's prices, you could make even more Bells by entering the code for 100 turnips. Just check the day's turnip prices and when Nook is offering a high price, enter the code and sell the turnips for enough bells to easily cleave off a large chunk of your house payment.
• Goddamn Bats: Peppy Villagers could steal your rare items for no reason, and there was nothing you could do about it except quit without saving and face the wrath of Resetti. Cranky and Normal villagers were potentially this too, due to Cranky villagers being much nastier and Normals going to bed at the rather early time of 9:00 PM. Thankfully, all of these problems were fixed in later versions.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: While it has since become standard for the series, the GameCube versions upping the storage limit for stereos from one K.K. Slider song to every K.K. Slider song at once becomes amusing to see with the rise of digitally downloaded music and streaming services, which allowed for the creation of music players that really can seemingly store every song you can imagine, consequently making the Anti-Frustration Feature go from an acceptable break from reality to actual reality.
• Memetic Mutation: Asshole villagers/I want to be verbally abused by my villagers^Explanation The English release became notorious in later years for its surprisingly aggressive dialogue, with villagers and even some special characters casually deploying anything from petty snarks to outright belittling. However, the fact that the dialogue Took a Level in Kindness with each new installment led to some fans criticizing the results as overly saccharine by the time of Animal Crossing: New Leaf and Animal Crossing: New Horizons. Consequently, "asshole villagers" became a popular phrase for both referencing this game's World of Jerkass characterization and clamoring for it to make a return.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • In Animal Crossing, it was possible for villagers to (with no explanation on how they do it) paint the roof of your house a random color with no warning ^note Peppy villagers were the only villager type, it seems, to at least ask you if you wanted it painted. For the record, this was the biggest way you could customize the exterior of your house and this is the only way to change your roof's color other than expanding your house, talking to Wisp at midnight or early in the mornings, or buying paint directly from Tom Nook, which only offers one color a day. If you had a color you liked, you'd have to just hope that nobody would get the idea to paint your roof again after you had repainted it yourself.
  • Villagers could scam you of either money and/or items for no particular reason. It's typically unsafe to ask the middle option (just to make conversation) when speaking to villagers for this very reason (if you happen to have a hefty wallet, or something valuable), along with the aforementioned sudden roof paint jobs.
  • If you visit another town, one of your own villagers will forcibly move away to the town you visit. Pray it's not someone you've grown attached (a lot harder to do than in later games, to be sure) to or else you'll be scrambling to get them back.
  • The fact that a Game Boy Advance and Link Cable are needed to access numerous in-game features, including the private island, have been met with increasing contention as time goes on, due to it resulting in players having to shell out more real-world money than is reasonably necessary just to be able to access everything in the game. Some fans who bought the game back in the day but lacked a Game Boy Advance noted the irritation of spending indefinite lengths of time being unable to access the island in particular, especially with how the game repeatedly teases at it.
  • Precipitation lasts the entire day rather than having the chance to appear and disappear at varying hours. While it's beneficial for fishing, since the Coelacanth only appears during rain and snow (N64 only), it severely reduces which bugs are able to spawn, putting a dent in any plans to complete the Museum and legitimately obtain the golden net (assuming that the affected bugs still have yet to be caught and donated).
  • Bizarrely, the Coelacanth can only appear once per play session in e+; as a result, any e+ players who accidentally scared the Coelacanth off will have to save and quit or reset the system until it spawns again. Even then, the fish's rarity means that it isn't guaranteed to spawn next time.
• Sequel Displacement: Outside the context of being the very first release of Animal Crossing, the original Nintendo 64 Animal Forest is predominantly remembered, especially outside of Japan, as being a collector's item. It being extremely bare-bones compared to the GameCube re-releases and later installments doesn't help, as many who jump in after having already familiarized themselves with its successors find that the N64 game is painfully restrictive.
• Suspiciously Similar Song:
  • In the original N64 version, the intro to the live version of "DJ K.K." ("Eurobeat" in Japanese) sounds almost identical to a riff from the Eurodance song "Get Ready for This". It was changed in all subsequent localizations and sequels, probably for copyright reasons.
  • The main riff in both the 9 AM theme and 6 PM theme bears a remarkable resemblance to the main synth riff of "Simoon" by Yellow Magic Orchestra. The similarity is highlighted by this SiIvaGunner parody of the latter, which is simply a flat-out Cover Version of "Simoon" in the game's soundfont (with K.K. Slider doing vocals in place of Tyrone Hashimoto, who provided guest vocals on the original song).
• That One Sidequest:
  • Getting Gracie-brand clothing: You earn this by cleaning Gracie's car. To do this, you rapidly tap the "A" button as fast as you can. The game's is pretty strict with how quick you need to be with your fingers and how much time you have to do it. Considering Gracie is one of the visitors that appears at random, and you can only have one turn per character to try again, you're guaranteed to hate Gracie as much as Crankies do, as she throws a politely-disguised insult, even if you did "okay". Anyone who has played through Canary Mary's races in Banjo-Tooie are in for a rude awakening if they haven't already experience this button-mashing madness.
  • Getting a ball to a villager. The balls are notoriously hard to get across bridges and up hills, and can easily fall into bodies of water where they will never get out.
  • Finding fruit for a villager. Unless you have multiple memory cards, a friend with the fruit, got it from a flying present, or just happen to have a tree for that fruit, it can be impossible to get them. That is, assuming you're not using universal item codes.
• Values Dissonance:
  • In the Japanese version, Gracie is depicted as a stock okama character, being a highly effeminate and deep-voiced man whose real name is "Nabenosuke" (which both means "saucy woman" and incorporates an anagram of "onabe", a slur for butch lesbians). In the international versions, she's instead a female whose real name is simply "Gretchen Grunch", lacking the Japanese version's anti-LGBT undertones. Later installments would give Gracie a female, Snooty voice throughout regions, but the Japanese and Korean releases keep her male.
  • Two of the villagers in this game, a chicken named Leigh and an eagle named Quetzal, resemble Native Americans. Neither of them have reappeared in any subsequent games in the series, likely because some people may find them to be an offensive representation of Native Americans.
  • In the original Japanese version a gorilla villager named Jane has white fur, brown skin, tired eyes and large lips. Due to this being too similar to a Blackface-Style Caricature, the overseas versions redesigned her completely, giving her purple fur, pink skin, irritated eyes, and smaller lips. Jane's design would revert to her original one in the e+ version, but just like Leigh and Quetzal, she hasn't made any more appearances in the series since then.
  • Chip originally had slanted eyes and glasses, which wouldn't raise any eyebrows in Japan, but bore so much of a resemblance to racist Asian caricatures in the West (especially in combination with his buck teeth, being a beaver and all) that the international and e+ versions redesigned him to remove the glasses and change his eyes to more conventional round ones.
  • Some of the Snooty villagers' lines when insulting the player involve calling them a "freak mental case" or sarcastically asking if they were "the mental runt of the litter." Given the obviously ableist nature of these lines, players would certainly bat an eye if the game was released today.
• Watch It for the Meme: The most likely reason modern-day gamers give this game a try is usually to live the experience of being verbally abused by Funny Animals.

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