
Wild World Guide
A few weeks ago, I started Animal Crossing: Wild World
, a fantastic game for Nintendo DS that was released in 2005 (following up the original GameCube edition) and is now enjoying renewed interest thanks to the recent release of Animal Crossing: City Folk for Wii. Animal Crossing is an incredibly fun, open-ended game in which your character can fish, catch bugs, find fossils and employ other methods to earn “bells” (currency) to buy stuff and pay off the mortgage on a home that can be furnished with the items you purchase. I could go on, but you really have to play it to experience it. It’s on sale for $33.99 on Amazon right now, regularly $39.99.
Anyway, the more I got into it, the more I wanted the Official Nintendo Animal Crossing: Wild World Player’s Guide
. It was offered as a bonus with Nintendo Power magazine subscriptions back in 2005, and then on a limited basis afterward. I checked ebay, where the guides go for $30 to $50. Too rich for my blood. Then I checked Amazon. Sellers were listing the guide for $43 used, all the way up to almost $200 for a new copy! Then I saw a user comment, asking why people don’t just buy it from the Nintendo.com Web site. But that was years ago; there’s no way they’d still have the original Animal Crossing DS strategy guide, right?
Well, it was a little hard navigating through the Nintendo store, but I eventually found the Animal Crossing: Wild World guide, as well as original Nintendo Power guides for New Super Mario Bros., Mario Kart and a lot more. I ordered the Wild World guide for $16.95 plus tax, free shipping. And it’s great! There are lots of great online guides to Animal Crossing, but the full-color guidebook is 160 pages of tips, illustrations, identifications and much more.
I didn’t believe it until the Animal Crossing manual was delivered today and I had it in my hot little hands. Now, your results may vary, but the lesson (for me, at least), is, don’t assume something is impossible to get from the original source unless you check that source first. Also, I suppose I could have bought up a bunch of copies and turned a profit on ebay, but I opted not to. I’d rather just share the news here.