Mobile Homes, New Villagers Coming

Nintendo posted a new Nintendo Direct video this morning, and it had some new tidbits of Animal Crossing information. For one thing, Nintendo will be releasing 50 new Amiibo cards…all of which are villagers who were not previously in New Leaf! The examples shown are Hopkins the bunny, Ellie the elephant, and Boyd the gorilla. Scan their cards and you can enter their mobile homes!

Mobile homes in the New Leaf update coming autumn 2016.The mobile homes will be decorated with furniture that you can order, including some new items. In Hopkins’ mobile home, you can find some Nintendo store items (including a Game Boy TV) that we saw as DLC in Happy Home Designer. And of course, you’ll be able to ask these villagers to move into your town. The cards will be released on December 2nd.

Hopkins' mobile home (in the updated New Leaf version) includes a Game Boy and Nintendo items seen as DLC in Happy Home Designer.

Even though the update is free, Nintendo is also publishing a new version of the game that has the update pre-installed. It will be called Animal Crossing: New Leaf: Welcome Amiibo, and it will come with one free card from the new series. It will be released this holiday season.

There’s more to the update, but Nintendo isn’t spilling all of the beans just yet. They have a mini-Nintendo Direct video coming later this fall to discuss the update (and likely the Animal Crossing app) in more detail. The Japanese version of the Nintendo Direct is reportedly coming on November 2nd. It’s likely that America’s Direct will be around the same time.

My Thoughts

I’m really curious to see who the 50 new/returning villagers will be. I would really love to see Hank and Emerald return. They are two of my favorite villagers from the GameCube game that haven’t returned since. But there are other old villagers I’d like to see too, such as Chico (I used to dance to K.K. Faire in his house on GameCube) and Hornsby, who had the memorable catchphrase of schnozzle. So I can’t wait to see the full list.

The fact that they’re adding dozens of new characters, and other features we don’t even know about yet, indicates that it is going to be a significant update. And I have mixed feelings about that. Yes, I am looking forward to trying out what’s new. And it will likely re-ignite interest in the 3+ year old game.

But if they’re putting all this effort into an update, it’s looking even less likely that a new Animal Crossing is coming anytime soon. As cool as the update will be, I’d rather see them working on a new game for NX. Of course it’s possible they could be working on that too, but that might not be realistic.

Back in Forest

Yesterday, Bob asked me for a new catchphrase. I told him to say “on my paws.” He hasn’t made any particularly funny statements using it just yet, but I’m sure it’s just a matter of time.

Bob: "On my paws," huh? I like the sound of it... From now on, it's all on my paws all the time!
Does that mean you’re going to walk on all fours?

Julian was talking about the flower clock and how it smells like real flowers. Even more interesting, he said that the short hand tells the minutes, and the long hand tells the hours…of his love! I’m afraid to ask what that means.

Julian: The short hand tells the minutes of the day, and the long hand...tells the hours of my love!Daisy asked me for a river fish when I was standing right by the river, so it was no trouble to catch something for her. That something turned out to be an eel. It was a bit amusing seeing her holding it as it wriggled around. She enjoyed it, and she rewarded me with an office desk.

Daisy: Is this eel for me? It's so neat!I visited Julian again tonight, and he was telling me about customized furniture. He suggested that I get a silver throne just for him to sit in when he visits.

Julian: For example...a silver throne suited for whenever I visit!Bob told me he was going to move out of town on September 6th, but of course, I changed his mind for him.

How do you all feel about the update? Excited for the new villagers and mobile homes? Who are you hoping to see make a return?

Master Angler Badge

The final fireworks festival of the year occurred last night, and Beth invited me over to her town Acorn to watch them. Isabelle gave me a heart bopper, so I put it on as I enjoyed the show.

Watching fireworks with Beth in her town of Acorn.The fireworks ended pretty soon after I arrived, so we headed over to Forest to watch them there for a few minutes. Bob joined us in the Egyptian part of town, as the fireworks almost made the pyramid look like a big Christmas tree.

Me and watch as the fireworks appear near the top of the pyramid, making it resemble a Christmas tree with a star on top. Bob and my Sphinx can be seen in the background.I soon ended the session. I later found out that Tom had also invited me to his town for fireworks, but I got the message too late.

Later on, I chatted with Bob after the fireworks festival was over. He enjoyed the show, and he thought they went out with a bang.

Bob: Those were the last fireworks of the year! They definitely went out with a bang!And Crazy Redd looked about as depressed as I’ve ever seen him. Maybe he enjoys selling cookies more than he enjoys tricking people into buying forged pieces of art.

Redd: Sorry, friend! We're closed already!In case you can’t tell by the fishing rod in my hands in those last two pictures, I’ve been doing a lot of fishing. I’ve been desperately trying to earn that Master Angler badge. Every fish I see, I try to catch. I was getting so sick of fishing that it was about to drive me crazy. Reel crazy.

But my fishing fatigue turned to euphoria when I spotted Phineas tonight. Since I noticed that the time was 6:59 p.m., I pushed him over to my modern clock (which lights up at the top of each hour) for a good picture. I spoke to Phineas, and indeed, he gave me the Master Angler badge for catching 5,000 fish. This is what I’ve been waiting for!

Receiving the Master Angler badge from Phineas as the illuminated clock lights up in the background.Now I don’t need to catch every fish I see! Now I can ignore these shadows in the river everywhere I go! The croaking of frogs won’t send me running to the pond with my rod out. I don’t need to use my fishing rod at all now, unless I see a shark or something. After all the fishing I’ve been doing lately, it’s such a big relief to be a master angler at last! 😉

Saharah was also in town tonight, and she put in this backgammon wall and old board floor. I promptly sold them both at Re-Tail.

A backgammon wall and old board floor that Saharah installed in my house.Luna told me my recent dream visitors have been Victor from Spectre and Melody from Hiraeth.

Badge Talk

Here’s an updated look at my current badges, including my new Master Angler that had me hooked for so long:

My badge collection as of August 29th, 2016.I have six more gold badges to go. I’m going to talk about them briefly, listing them in the order I expect to receive them:

Tycoon Bell Saver: This one requires 100 million bells in your bank account. I currently have over 79 million bells. It may take me a few months, but this will likely be my next badge.

Master Shopper: I have no real way of knowing how close I am to this badge, but I do know that once I have the Tycoon Bell Saver, I’ll be able to spend that money in my bank account. And spending should help me earn this badge fairly quickly after getting the saving badge.

Mr. Sandman: This one requires visiting 500 dream towns. Aside from the saving badge, this is the only other badge that I know my exact progress: I’ve been keeping track of dreams visited since I earned the silver badge. I’ve currently visited 264 dreams, so I have 236 to go. Once I finish going through my backlog of suggested dreams (which is now down to 72 after being around 150 at one point), I may just visit random towns to speed up the process.

Space Traveler: This one requires me to make 500 visits to space other towns. I actually don’t travel a whole lot, maybe just a couple visits to Acorn and/or Arrested each week. Depending on how close I am, it could take me a good while.

Weed Menace: This one requires you to pull a total of 5,000 weeds. I know I’ve already pulled over 2,000 of them, but only a few weeds appear in Forest each week. Beth has been saving the weeds in Arrested for me too, but this is likely to take me years.

StreetPass Master: There is a very good chance that I will never earn this badge, and I’m okay with that. I don’t get a lot of StreetPass hits, and those that I do get, rarely have a New Leaf house. Maybe in 8-10 years I’ll get it…but by then, I’m sure everyone will have moved on to NX or another future system and won’t be carrying their 3DS around any more. So I’ll be surprised if I ever get this one.

Even though I enjoy working towards badges in New Leaf, it becomes quite a tedious process after a while. At least now I can take a break from the endless fishing! See you all next time!

Hamlet’s Pic

Poor Hamlet has still been sick lately. In fact, he said it feels like he has gerbil gymnasts in his tummy! That’s never a good sign.

Hamlet: Oh, man... Something's not right. It's like I have dumbbells in my face and gerbil gymnasts in my tummy!I believe I’ve given him medicine three times now, including last night.

Hamlet flips as he takes his cold medicine.Pashmina pinged me last night, and for a very good cause! She suggested the wisteria trellis public works project (PWP)!

Pashmina: They totally had what was maybe the coolest wisteria trellis I have ever seen!This is what it looks like:

Wisteria trellis PWP: 124,000 bells.Even though I’m not necessarily planning to put one into Forest, it is a cool project. But more importantly, I have now received all of the uchi PWP suggestions! Now I may let Pashmina move out the next time she asks. And once she is gone, I should try to get a snooty villager; I still need several snooty PWP suggestions.

Tonight, I found Aurora sitting on the yellow bench in my southwest park.

Aurora sits on a yellow bench in the park, near the street lamp. A geyser is visible in the distance.She asked me to join her, so I did. Our shirts are the same, except hers is black and mine is white.

Sitting on the bench with Aurora in the park.I went up to Club LOL to catch a Saturday night performance from K.K. Slider. I didn’t even realize it was 11:59 p.m. until K.K. told me I just made it in time!

K.K.: You just made it! ...I'm psyched you came down this late. That's how the real music fans do it.I asked for a sad song, and he played K.K. Milonga for me.

Checking on Hamlet

I was about to wrap up my night, when I remembered that I didn’t check on Hamlet today. He wasn’t home, so I used my megaphone to find him. Thankfully, he’s feeling much better now.

Hamlet: Ta-da! I'm back to my old self!To my surprise, I was rewarded with Hamlet’s pic! Thanks, little guy!

Hamlet: Speaking of which, I got you a gift... Hamlet's pic. Enjoy it! You earned it!I took Hamlet’s pic home to get a good look at it. Apparently, his favorite quote is “The ear’s the thing.” That’s one of the oddest villager quotes I’ve heard. But I’m certainly glad to have the pic regardless.

Quote on Hamlet's pic: The ear's the thing.

My recent dream visitors have been Gamer from Wii and Mayounna from Amy Rose. Thank you for visiting! And remember that tomorrow is the final fireworks festival of the year! You may want to check it out if you’ve missed the others.