In the Game Cube version of the game Animal Crossing, I have a question.

I belive you need a GBA for this,,

Unfortunately, you cannot connect a Nintendo DS for this purpose, because the DS only has one external port: the power. It doesn’t have the Gameboy/GBA networking port. So, there’s no multiplayer for GBA games on a DS either.

You’re not missing much. Except for a suntan on the little island, and a villager with a reaaally annoying accent.

You can also use the e-reader with a GBA and scan Animal Crossing trading cards and receive items in the game. Some cards will change the town tune. And some cards are designs.

The GBA can also be used to design designs.

The best reason to use a GBA with the game cube is to get money the easiest way. Take a full pocket load of local fruit to the island and drop it on the ground. Then using the GBA Island make the islander pick up all the fruit. After he picks up 2 of them he starts dropping money for every one he picks up. If you pick enough up he will eventually drop 10,000 bells.

You can also trade islands with another GBA with an island on it. I would say having a GBA and e-reader and Animal Crossing cards completes the game experience and worth getting.

Thanks all, just started playing this a couple weeks ago, quite a fascinating game. I’ll just look for a used GBA cheap somewhere.

@dalepetrie The Gamecube is the best version of the game, in my opinion, because of the excellent included NES games. The DS and Wii version really bring almost nothing new to the table.

I like Animal Crossing, but no game has ever made me feel so guilty when I stopped playing it. I can never play it again, because my town is going to be a weed-infested wasteland, and all my neighbors are probably dead.

@dalepetrie: I bought a used GBA just for this purpose for about 10 bucks on eBay.

@tonedef – We bought our GameCube used on eBay in about 2003, and it had Animal Crossing with it. I really never played it, we played a couple of the GameCube games, but just never got around to that one. Then we got busy and stopped playing the GameCube altogether. Well, now we have a 7 1/2 year old, and all these old videogame systems we bought (XBox, PS2, GameCube) and didn’t play, and our N64 and SuperNES that we did play have taken on a whole new life, our son is just going nuts with the videogames. Well, he finally got to Animal Crossing, and it was so much fun my wife and I each put up a house too, and we have a DS, but not a GBA, so I thought I’d ask because I’ve been reading about all these great things I can do with a GBA.

Anyway, our town was overrun with weeds, but there were TONS of characters still there, a couple have moved away (we have animals asking us to bring things to one character in particular who is no longer in town), but for the most part, everyone knows the character who my son took over (which belonged to the kid who sold us the GameCube), so no worries, your neighbors aren’t dead. In fact, in the 2 weeks that we’ve been playing, about 4 new characters have moved to town.

Anyway, yes, the town was overrun with weeds, but we took care of that. My wife discovered this ghost character called Wisp who comes out between midnight and 4am, and asks you to find 5 spirits. She did this and he offered to pull all the weeds. She saved, I loaded my character, and viola, every weed in town was gone. Yes a couple new ones pop up every day, but we just pull them as we see them now. No biggie.

@electricsky – I will probably do just that.

@dalepetrie Wow! I didn’t know about that spirit! The best thing about Animal Crossing is that it’s surprise after surprise. :)

Great story, though. Speaking of family and animal crossing, this comic is really beautiful, but I have to warn you, I cry whenever I read it.

I’ve heard that, if you’re buying a GBA anyway, Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures is a great multiplayer game. You need one GBA for each player, though. But if you spot a couple cheapo GBAs, this could be a lot of fun.

@tonedef Four swords is great… and if you want another game that’s good with a gba link cable it’s Pac Man Vs. The gba is pac man playing in the standard way… and on the gamecube are 3 of your friends playing as the ghosts!

I would probably buy Four Swords. I’m actually not nearly as much a gamer as my wife…I loved the good ole days with Atari 2600, but the games just kind of got more complex than I had time to deal with. However my wife has played pretty much every Zelda from it’s first incarnations on NES to Super NES to N64 to Game Cube..we don’t have a Wii yet, but the last Zelda game which came out in ‘06, we bought the GC version. And I believe both that game and the one which came before it can be used with the GBA & connector cable. But we’ve had this DS for about a year and really haven’t played it much, just not as big into the hand-helds, so she’s never played any hand-held based Zeldas, and wasn’t sure if she’d enjoy them. Anyway, we may get a cheap GBA, because we all love the game…in fact, just today I went to a pawn shop so I could pick up a $5 memory card so I could create a new town and travel there. As for multiplayer action, we’re all pretty much solo players, but maybe that will change with my son, he might well get us into playing with him. I did like the comic btw, it rings very true. My wife has been sending my son presents here and there, just a mom thing, though we have no reason to believe she’ll be gone any time soon, fortunately.

Since I have a couple of experts (or at very least, experienced players), let me axe you a question. When you store items w/ your Gyroid Assistant and set a price, do these things EVER sell to other animals? Or is that just there so if you’re playing with other actual people, THEY might buy it? And then, let’s say I put a shirt in my inventory and put a price on it, what’s the way to go with pricing….what Nook sells for (or slightly undercut), or what he’ll pay, somewhere in between, or as some of the animals tell me, put 10,000 on there or something way over market and pull a fast one…I mean, does that work?

I think that only other People players can buy them, like if they’re visiting your town. Your neighbors are much too smart for that! :)

Zelda: 4 Swords is a lot simpler than the newer Zelda games—it’s most like “A link to the past” on the SNES.

Other animals in town do not buy things from your gyroid. Just other players. Write letters to the animals and attach presents to them and often they reply back with other presents.

Cool. One other thing I’ve been wondering. As I’m walking around, some days (but not all), I hear this sound at random intervals, kind of sounds like a harp, but a little off. Trying to figure out if it means anything.

Also noted, I had this period where after the 3 of us had been playing for a week or two, it seemed for a few days there one new character was moving to town per day. But then I bought a new memory card, created a new town, and although 2 characters from THAT town moved to my original town, I’ve lost at least 5 of my original neighbors (and I only had about 10 to begin with) in about 2 or 3 days. I have yet to get the wishing well happy, I’m planting trees left and right, but it seems some areas were almost clear cut….is that the problem, or is it just part of the game that folks will come and go rapidly to keep it interesting?

That tone is probably your town melody. It plays on the hour, I think. You can write a new melody at town hall!

Yeah- when you visit a different town, it usually prompts a few neighbors to swap places. This can cause what seems like an exodus. I didn’t like this, so I kept to myself and didn’t visit friends’ villages often.

Make sure trees are planted everywhere, but not too densely! This can get you that golden axe. This probably does not have anything to do with people coming and going, though. They’re just transient little creatures. If you talk to everyone daily, you can get the scoop on who’s thinking about leaving, and you can persuade them not to, otherwise.

OK, re the talking to everyone and planting trees…on it, I’ve told a couple animals not to leave (though one I told not to still did), I think this mini exodus (I think about 7 characters are gone now out of maybe 10 or 11). As for the town melody…don’t think that’s it…I hear it only certain days/times, not specific days/times though, and not on the hour, but like I might one day turn it on at 11 am, and play for an hour and hear it like 20 times. Then that night I might turn it on at 8 and not hear it at all…or vice versa. Still haven’t figured it all out yet, that’s part of the fun I guess, just afraid I’m missing something big.

Every last damn one of my original people has moved to my new town. Wish I could move to my new town and keep my stuff.

You can not plant too many trees in a single area then it becomes cluttered. You have to space them so you can walk between them. The well will tell you an area and if it is too cluttered or lacking green. Once you get a second town you will start losing animals anyway. Write letters to them in the second town and they may come back.
I have the original Animal Crossing strategy guide somewhere. My daughter has read the thing from back to front. We have 4 different towns and the oldest one is from when the game first came out.

@vulcanjedi – Thanks…if you think of any other tips, I’m all ears. Yes, basically I want to keep the original town that the previous owners set up 7 years ago and which my family discovered about 3 weeks ago because we have all been playing there and have all amassed bigger houses and a lot of stuff, so we don’t want to have to start over completely. Anyway, I think when I started playing we had 9 characters in town, and just before I started the new town, we had 14. Well, now we’re down to 5, all 9 original characters have left, and a couple of non-originals have left with only a couple new ones moving to my town since the new town was started.

So, here’s what I’ve done. First off, any character which told me it was thinking of leaving, I told them not to, and I wrote them a letter, but they still all moved. And when I went to the new town, I wrote everyone who had left a letter. I’ve been trying to plant fruit trees everywhere that seems a little sparse (or where the wishing well tells me to), I have had wisp pull all the weeds and have been shoveling them up as they pop up. And yet, still they leave. Now it seems to be about the same # moving in as out, but ALL of my original characters are gone and I have to visit them in the new town if I want to talk to them. I have also been leaving any trash I catch in the river where I find it rather than bringing it to the dump. I’m not trying to sabotage the new town completely…if I were trying to do that, I’d just clear cut it, but I want to make it marginally less inhabitable than my new village.

Also, I was curious, and my son was going to try this but messed up, I have read that if you get a character to fall in a pitfall and THEN dig holes all around the character, they will send you a goodbye letter and will move, I’m just curious if they’ll just move away where I’ll never see the character again, or if they might move to the other existing town…could it be a tool to get someone back, or would I probably lose them forever?

I guess it’s OK though, turnover makes life interesting. I did however also think of one other thing….something I read said that traveling to another town might result in another character moving there, which is what seems to have happened…I’m wondering if I take the character I created in the other town in order to start the town, if I made that character visit my original town, if some of the villagers there (either ones that just moved there or ones that have been there all along) would move to my village?

Funny, I didn’t even used to be into video games all that much…I lost interest after Atari 2600, they just got too hard…this one though, I’m spending WAY too much time on.

I have my original 6 switch atari 2600 my parents bought my sister in 1981. Plus 4 or 5 other assorted versions. Not to mention about 120 carts for it :)
And a Coleco, Intellivision, Vectrex, Atari 7800, Sega Master System, NES, SNES, N64, Turbo Grafx, Sega Genesis, Saturn, Playstation 1, PS2, Dreamcast, Wii, xbox and xbox360 :)