Joystiq has published a few Animal Crossing-related tidbits coming from series creator Katsuya Eguchi and New Leaf director Aya Kyogoku. You can find them rounded up below.
– With the original N64 game, Eguchi’s team was focused on making a second place to live rather than a game
– With so many different perspectives of life existing in the world, it’s difficult to build a universally welcoming foundation for everyone to find their second home
– The team kept this challenge in mind when starting on New Leaf
– This resulted in the game’s development team encompassing members from different age groups and walks of life
– Staff could submit clothing and furniture ideas to asset designers no matter their role on the team
– Animal Crossing is built on the foundations of knowing that most of life’s highlights stem from interacting with other people
– Items offered through StreetPass are meant to encourage that sense of sharing from other players
– If many people head to a store in search of an item, Kyogoku hopes that they’ll StreetPass with one another during their visit
– Eguchi views StreetPass as an incentive for players to take Animal Crossing with them in their daily lives in case they cross paths with other StreetPass-savvy players outside of their primary homes
– Eguchi said that maintaining the calendar’s influence is part of why the series has stayed away from implementing microtransactions
– Special items are more about rewarding event attendance and less about filling out a checklist
– In the future, Eguchi hopes to reach regions he feels are untapped like Australia
– He also wants to use the quirks supplied in Nintendo’s hardware to show off new elements of life in Animal Crossing’s world
Nintendo will release Rusty’s Real Deal Baseball on the North American 3DS eShop next week, a notice on the store’s announcement bar appears to confirm. A general April launch had been previously announced.
While the announcement bar mentions next week’s arrival, the Rusty’s Real Deal Baseball page still simply lists “April”. In any case, it does look like the game is coming out next week. We’ll try to officially confirm things with Nintendo.
Rusty’s Real Deal Baseball – assuming the announcement bar is correct – will be available on April 3 as a free-to-play title.
Last year’s Watch Dogs delay allowed the team to pack in extra content. Moreover, many ideas that may have been scrapped or saved for a sequel made their way into the game.
In an interview with CVG, VP of creative Lionel Raynaud said:
“There are always things that you have to keep for the next game. In this case, the extra time allowed us to put a lot of our ideas into the game, so we are happy with that.”
Keep in mind that Ubisoft definitely has extra ideas in store for a potential sequel. Raynaud teased:
“Yes, we have ideas [for a sequel]. Some ideas that we weren’t able to get into the game would not have made a difference, while other, bigger ideas that naturally emerged during development were so different that we felt they would have changed the experience.”
“The consistency that we have achieved with the characters, structure and narrative would have been difficult to maintain if we put in the other ideas that we had. So where we are now is keeping these ideas safe for the next game.”
