Animal Crossing Sticker Book Impressions

I recently got my hands on the Animal Crossing sticker book that was released earlier this year. This post covers my impressions and thoughts about the book.

Animal Crossing Sticker Book cover

The Stickers

Of course, the main attraction here is the stickers…and there are a lot of them. Over 800, in fact. There generally seems to be one sticker of each New Leaf villager, including the RV villagers that were featured on cards from the Welcome Amiibo update. I should note that I didn’t check for every specific villager, but it’s likely that they’re all included. Except, of course, villagers from other game series that were unlocked with Amiibo figures. So there are no stickers of W. Link, Epona, Viché, Cece, Ganon, or Inkwell, for example.

This is one of 16 pages full of stickers.

Aside from the villagers, there are also stickers of fish, bugs, flowers, fruit, balloons, music notes, stars, tools, PWPs (public works projects), seashells, Nook’s leaf icons, trees, furniture, and NPCs (non-playable characters such as Isabelle and Tom Nook).

Not An Album

One thing that should be pointed out: This is a sticker book, not a sticker album. The pages are not glossy, and you will probably not have much success if you try to move a sticker after you’ve already placed it in the book.

Activities

The book itself is basically an activity book for children. You’ll find some word searches, mazes, connect the dots, and pages where you’re asked to unscramble words or count the objects on a page.

The more interesting parts of the book are the ones that encourage creativity. One page shows a town tree and lots of green, open space. You’re asked to use stickers to add trees, a fountain, flowers, and more to improve the look of your town. Another page asks you to design a fun scene for each season (with backdrops of winter, spring, summer, and autumn).

A page from the Animal Crossing sticker book called Map Time! Design your town map.
Design your town.

Some other pages ask you to design the layout of your house, or even make a pattern to use as wallpaper. Another page shows comic strip style scenes with various characters and an empty speech bubble. You’re asked to write in the bubbles to complete the comic strip.

An Appealing Book

While some of the activities are clearly designed for very young children, other activities will appeal to all ages. And of course, everyone loves stickers! If it sounds good, you can buy the sticker book at Amazon. I bought one to give as a gift and another one for myself. 😀

If you have any questions about the book, just leave a comment below.

Animal Crossing 2016 Calendar

As you probably know, I’m a pretty big Animal Crossing fan. And when I heard that there was an Animal Crossing 2016 wall calendar, I decideac-calendard to pick it up. So I’ll share my thoughts on it and show you what it looks like.

Each month has a large Animal Crossing character displayed, although each one is unfortunately just a simple character model displayed on very basic backgrounds (stripes, grass, triangles, etc.). It’s a simplistic look, so you’re not going to be blown away by any of the art.

The calendar isn’t just based on U.S. holidays; it also lists holidays for Canada, Mexico, the U.K., Ireland, and Australia. The only downside is that it doesn’t include the dates of Animal Crossing events! But it’s made to function as a regular, real-life calendar…not a game guide.

Here’s a look at which character appears for each month:

  • January – Sableac-calendar-months
  • February – Phyllis
  • March – Pete
  • April – Copper
  • May – Leilani
  • June – Nat
  • July – Timmy & Tommy
  • August – Brewster
  • September – Lyle
  • October – Jack
  • November – Blathers
  • December – Jingle

Jack and Jingle (in October and December, respectively) make perfect sense; they are characters from holidays in those months. Nat in June also fits, since he hosts the Bug-Off. Maaaaaybe you could say Lyle looks like a teacher for back-to-school in September. But I’m not so sure about the others. Why not Pavé for Festivale in February? Why not Zipper for Bunny Day in March? Why not Franklin for the harvest festival in November?

There is one other cool feature about thisac-calendar-stickers calendar: It comes with stickers! It has a sheet of over 50 stickers featuring animal villagers, human villagers, special characters, fruit, and trees. You can stick them to dates on the calendar or use them for anything else. But for some reason, roughly one-third of the stickers are pictures of fruit. I think most Animal Crossing fans would rather have more of the characters that they love, rather than fruit and trees. Still, the stickers are a nice bonus.

The calendar may not be perfect, but it would make a good gift for any Animal Crossing fans this holiday season. Check your local stores for it or you can buy it from Amazon.com.

If you have any theories as to why certain animals were shown for certain months, please share them in the comments!

New 3DS XL

If you follow me on Twitter or read my New Leaf blog, you probably know that my 3DS XL has been falling apart and I was in need of a new system. Even though I was tempted to get another 3DS XL, I decided to upgrade to the New 3DS XL instead. This way, I won’t have to buy the separate NFC Reader for the Amiibo cards in Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer. Also, I’ll be ready for any future games that will only work on the New 3DS.

I got a red one, and it’s a nice, shiny red. (The picture below doesn’t do the shininess justice). The bad thing is that fingerprints show up on it quite easily. The system has improved 3D abilities, although I rarely use the 3D functions anyway. Some of the buttons have been moved to different locations, as have the volume slider, cartridge slot, and stylus slot. I think I’m going to be reaching for things that aren’t there, for a while at least. The stylus itself is shorter and thicker than the previous one, and I don’t care for the change. I think I may continue using my old stylus most of the time, at least when I’m at home.

Red New 3DS XLWhile it may be a temporary inconvenience to have buttons in different places, some things are gone completely–such as the wireless switch. It allowed you to immediately cut off all wireless communication to save battery power when you’re not playing online or going out for StreetPasses. It was also helpful in games like Animal Crossing: New Leaf: If someone was causing damage to your town or stealing items from you, you could cut the connection to preserve your town/items by reverting to the previous save.

Another change is that you need to use a tiny screwdriver to remove the MicroSD card. And then you’ll likely need an adapter to use the MicroSD card in a regular SD card slot on your computer. But fortunately, there is a way to move files wirelessly. It took me a little while to get it set up correctly, but I did figure it out.

Red New 3DS XLI’m hoping this New 3DS XL proves to be more durable than my regular 3DS XL, but I’m going to try being extra careful with it regardless. Portable or not, a video game system should not need to be replaced after 2.5 years. While I’ll still take this system out to get StreetPasses, I may skip taking it to amusement parks. It has the potential to take more abuse there, even though that was one of my best places to actually get StreetPass hits.

I performed my system transfer wirelessly yesterday, and it took about 2.5 hours. There is a faster option that lets you move files from your SD card to your computer, and then to your microSD card, but unfortunately, I couldn’t find a MicroSD card adapter. I think I have one somewhere, but I’m not sure where it is. But everything transferred over smoothly, with all of my data intact, so I’m happy about that.

I am enjoying my new New 3DS XL, and it’s nice to play games without having to literally hold up the top screen. I was a bit surprised that the New 3DS didn’t come with any new apps or anything fun to play around with, but it’s a big relief just to have a fully working system once again.