Animal Crossing: New Leaf Is First AAA 3DS Nintendo Game of the Summer

Time to re-enter the always-on digital world of Animal Crossing!

Animal Crossing: New Leaf releases on June 9th in America, June 14th in Europe and June 15th in Australia.

The game is another huge bomb-dropper for the Nintendo 3DS from Nintendo, a game that is sure to sell lots of Nintendo systems, especially given the fact that the game supports Online Play, allowing you to visit the town of any friends in your online friends list. Additionally, you can visit a special location (Tortimer Island) with up to four players online to play mini-games.

Even better, Animal Crossing: New Leaf allows you to visit the house of anyone you’ve come into contact with while walking around your real-world city via the StreetPass feature which is awesome! You can also send letters to people via Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection and can download new home layouts and other goodies via SpotPass whenever you connect online at certain locations with a free wi-fi connection.

Cool stuff.

I never played any of the Animal Crossing games outside of the GameCube original. A game I loved. Read my Animal Crossing GameCube Review to see my opinion on that masterpiece. It’s a game I still pop in from time to time, 11 years later! Of course, the main reason I loved it, or one of the main reasons, was due to the ability to be rewarded with playable NES games!

This feature was taken out of the DS entry in the series, Animal Crossing: Wild World, as well as the third game in the series, Animal Crossing: City Folk for the Wii. This made me sad, and made me less likely to play those titles. Even though I really did want to get the Wii game, but never got around to it.

However Animal Crossing: New Leaf has a lot of new features. Not only do you get to play as the Mayor for example, but you get to customize your character way beyond past games. You can even customize individual parts of furniture, essentially creating all-new furniture! And as the mayor, for the first time, you can actually customize your actual town as well. Very cool stuff.

Nintendo sent me a review copy of Animal Crossing: New Leaf, so expect a review on the site with my thoughts on the game soon!