I received my very first Animal Crossing game from a girl I met last year. We attended the same summer art camp, where we quickly became friends. She was a bit on the quiet side, but incredibly talented. During our time together, I found out little about her as she was a very secretive person. However, one night she did open up to me. She revealed that she was unhappy with her life at home. Her parents were strictly religious and highly controlling; they would not allow her to play computer games, or watch certain TV programs. However, she had been hiding a Nintendo DS from them, and had one game for it which she loved: 'Animal Crossing: Wild World'. She told me a lot about the game, which involved living in a village alongside animals. You could decorate your home and design clothes, as well as treasure hunt, fish, and collect bugs - it sounded really fun.
My friend was a strict vegan and completely obsessed with animals in general; a lot of her artwork portrayed this. Most of the time, she would paint beautiful creatures, roaming freely in their natural habitat. However, she would also, on occasion, create disturbing images of the same beautiful creatures being brutally attacked by mankind. She would paint their fur coats dripping with blood, or their wounded bodies sprawled out on the ground, at the feet of a demonic human killer. She never openly spoke to me and my friends about this particular topic - and we did not push her to do so - but she would avoid us at lunch time and shut herself away in her dorm. I found this a little strange, but people at art camp don’t tend to be run-of-the-mill. Above all, I admired her for being so passionate about her beliefs.
When we parted ways, we exchanged gifts. I had made each of my friends a small wooden animal carving during the last month of the camp. I handed her one; it was her favourite animal – an elephant. She was incredibly pleased with it, but what she gave me in return seemed beyond generous. She ran into her dorm and returned with the Animal Crossing DS game cartridge, which she eagerly handed to me. I was reluctant to accept the gift, wondering if she had just taken it out of her own DS, purely so she had something to give me in return for the elephant. She insisted however, and told me that her parents were bound to discover her DS at some point, so she was planning on selling it soon anyway. She thought that I would really love this game, and said that she had actually decided to give it to me some time ago. Eventually, I accepted; I told her that when we were older and had our own houses, I would return the game to her so that she could play it without worry. She smiled, and we said our goodbyes.
Heart-warming, right?
I returned home late that afternoon. I immediately ran upstairs and inserted the cart into my own DS, excited to start playing. I switched on the power, but, to my great disappointment, the words “There is no DS game inserted” appeared in the top box on the menu screen.
My DS is the older version and hadn't been played in quite some time, so I thought perhaps it was a fault of the console itself. I removed the game cart, blew lightly on it, re-inserted it, and started up the console.
“There is no DS game inserted.”
It took three attempts, but finally the game appeared on my menu screen. I was relieved and eager to begin playing. My friend from art camp had already created a town, and named it 'Liberty'. I thought it would be nice to move my character into the same town, instead of starting a new one from scratch. As the game began, I found myself in a Taxi on the way to Liberty Town. The driver was asking me questions, and allowing me to enter my name. Upon arriving, I saw my character for the first time. She was really cute, with large brown eyes and long eyelashes. She had a cheerful smile, and her hair was styled into small ponytails on top of her head.
My character automatically walked into the town hall, and I was told where my home was located, by the pelican lady inside. She informed me that I would be sharing the house with my friend. I found the house immediately, thanks to the map on the menu screen. It looked perfectly normal, with a red roof and a mail box near the door. Excited, I went inside.
To my surprise, the room was empty aside from a wooden cabinet in the bottom right corner. My friend had told me that decorating your home is supposed to be a major part of an Animal Crossing game. I had no idea how it was done, but I questioned why she had not added any furniture to the house. I thought that maybe she just hadn’t gotten around to it. Or perhaps she had emptied the room before passing the game on to me, so that I had the freedom to decorate it from scratch - she was considerate like that.
I approached the cabinet wondering if you could actually open it. Sure enough, you could. There was one item inside – a portrait in a red frame. I moved my cursor to select it, and it showed the head of a white elephant character; clearly one of the animals in the game. It looked cute, and made me smile a little – my friend probably had to do something special to get this item; she really did love elephants. However, the text box below the image was blank; there was no description for the portrait whatsoever. Being a newcomer to this game, I was unsure of whether or not there should be one, but the empty text box looked odd.
I soon shrugged this off and headed upstairs, where I found my friend's villager asleep in the bed to the left of my own, looking very peaceful. Her hair and skin were similar to mine, but her clothing was plain white rather than a particular pattern or colour. This confused me more-so than the empty house, as my own newly created villager wore a randomly generated green and black shirt.
After exploring my home, I was met at the door by Tom Nook; the owner of the local store. He was a well-known raccoon character. He wore a white apron around the lower half of his body, and had a laid-back facial expression with half-shut, dozy blue eyes. It was then that I played through the games tutorial. This is where Tom Nook asks you to perform a few tasks, to get you used to the game. One of these tasks was to meet the neighbours – the other animal villagers living in your town - so off I went to introduce myself.
As I was exploring the town, the edges of my screen became incredibly dark. It was nearly night-time however, so perhaps this wasn’t so peculiar. The game's music was very faint and slow, I had to turn the volume up in order to hear it. Even then it was still pretty quiet, but again maybe this was supposed to occur at night time? After running around a little I also noticed that there was a severe lack of trees in the game, and an awful lot of stumps. It was as though someone had been cutting them down for some reason.
The animals in my town seemed normal: Vesta the sheep, Octavian the Squid, Snake the Bunny, and Chevre the Goat. I found them all walking around not too far from their houses. They introduced themselves to my character each in their own unique way. I found it cute how the animals made little mumbling noises with every word they said.
There were no other villagers outside, but in the far corner of the town was another house. I tried to enter but the words “No one is home.” appeared, and it did not allow me inside. I went over to read the sign, which said "Margie’s house", leading me to believe that I had missed a villager. I searched all over town for this 'Margie' but she was nowhere to be found. I returned to the store and Tom Nook acted oblivious to the empty house. He gave me a few more tasks such as planting flowers around the shop, and then I was able to play the game my own way.
My first intent was to make some money. As there were hardly any fruit trees around, I resorted to picking the flowers I had planted earlier, before returning to Nook's store to sell them. However, when I walked through the door, things were very, very different from before.
Nook stood in his usual place, but his body was frozen and lifeless. His eyes were wide open, opposed to being partially covered by his eyelids as they were before. He did not greet me or try to encourage me to buy something... he just stood there.
On top of this, there was another oddity; there were almost no items for sale in the shop - just 'Sold Out' signs in place of them. The only tool for sale was on display in the very middle of the store - an axe.
I approached it, but nothing happened. I tried speaking to Tom Nook, but he too remained unresponsive.
I was confused; surely this was not normal. I believed that the items being ‘sold’ could be due to my friend having purchased them all; the game must count us as one player (even though during the games tutorial, there were lots of items on display) but Nook’s body being frozen made no sense. This is the first time I felt that there was actually something wrong with the game cartridge... or was it my DS?
My friend had said that she played Animal Crossing almost every day; surely she would have noticed if the game wasn't working properly?
I went home to save and reload the file, hopefully eliminating the weird store bug. You could only save the game by clicking on your bed, and then the game would turn itself off afterwards.
Upon returning home, I ran through the empty room and up the stairs. I expected to find my friend's character still asleep in the bed on the left, but to my great surprise, the bed was empty.
This confused me further. I hadn’t played this game before, but surely someone’s character shouldn't just disappear like that? Was this another glitch? I was a little disturbed, but also excited, wondering if there were any other bugs I could discover. So rather than letting my character sleep, I continued playing.
As I mentioned earlier, my plan to gather fruit to sell for money had been thwarted by the lack of trees. So I headed to the beach to collect some shells instead, and it was there I came across Vesta.
Perhaps it was the night-time atmosphere which made me notice that Vesta was actually quite a creepy character. She was a dark faced sheep with glowing eyes and a disturbing smile. She seemed to be walking away from me, but I caught up and pressed A to interact with her. At that moment the screen froze. The music stopped completely and I could do nothing but watch and wait, hoping it wasn’t permanent. To my relief, after around 10 seconds, Vesta’s speech bubble appeared.
However, my heart sank when her dialogue was far from expected:
She said, “Every meal of meat is the result of death, Baaaffo.”
“…What?” I had to look twice to be sure I’d read that correctly.
Vesta said nothing else, and once I clicked ‘A’ the speech bubble closed and she continued to walk away from me. I was a little afraid, but I summoned my courage and spoke to her again.
“Every meal of meat is the result of death, Baaaffo.”
It appeared that this freaky sheep character had only been programmed with one line of dialogue.
This was very over the top for a game which was supposed to be child friendly. I watched as Vesta walked slowly in a straight line to the left and exited the screen. I decided to ignore the sheep from that moment on, in hopes that she would move out of the town soon as a result. I had heard that animals can move out of your town if you don't pay enough attention to them. Then again, this game did not seem normal, so there was no guarantee that anything would work as it should.
There weren’t many shells along the shore after all, but I gathered four in total. I was still a little shaken, and didn’t want to play for very much longer that night. On my way back to Nook’s store, I saw the Able Sisters Design shop. It was then I remembered my artistic friend. She had told me a lot about this part of the game. This was where players could purchase clothes and umbrellas, or design their own and put them on display. She seemed excited when she informed me that you could draw whatever you like using the stylus, and then wear the clothes you had created. I decided to go inside, wondering if my friend had created any designs herself, and whether or not I would be able to recognise her handiwork. This thought made me relax a little, but not for long...
I entered the store. My eyes were instantly drawn to the eight shirt designs which were on display. They were almost identical; white with horrible red splodges over them. The shade of red varied between each one, from pink-ish to a dark crimson colour – the shirts looked as though they were covered in blood. One of the Able Sisters – Mabel - turned incredibly slowly to face me as I walked through the door, whilst her sister - Sable - sat at her desk sewing. Mable was an indigo hedgehog with large cheeks, and eyebrows which gave her a slight frown. Her overall appearance was visually pleasant, but her actions were far from it.
There was a long pause, as though the game was struggling to display Mabel’s dialogue. It finally appeared:
“Welcome to the Able Siste….” Pause.
The game froze yet again, for a second or two, and then the dialogue box closed without finishing the sentence. It reappeared shortly after, with the phrase.
“Skinned alive.”
There was no mumbled animal-talking as this short sentence appeared, and it was shown all at once, rather than letter by letter. Mabel’s body then froze, similar to Tom Nook's. I moved my character around tapping 'A' trying to interact with the hedgehog, but she was unresponsive. I gazed at the screen, still pressing buttons, then noticed the hedgehogs head was slowly dropping. It tilted to the right, as though it was too heavy for her body to support, and then stopped in an awkward position. Mabel looked like a doll, with her empty black eyes and her expressionless face. Sable however, continued sewing at her desk - but I was too afraid to approach her. I just wanted to sell my items, then save and leave the game alone until daylight tomorrow. Taking a last glance at the blood splattered clothes, I left the building and headed toward Tom Nook's store.
To my despair, circumstances were even worse than they were before. Nook was no-where to be found. On top of that, the axe which was for sale earlier had gone, and been replaced by an “Out of Stock” sign. I immediately left and ran in the direction of my house - forget the money, I was going just to save and turn off.
The music was now completely gone and replaced by nothing but a cold, unfriendly silence. It was also getting late, so the game was a lot darker than it was when I had started playing. It seemed to be taking a lot longer to reach the house this time, but how was this possible? I was going the same way as I had before. My character ran for a good few minutes until the red roof finally appeared on the screen. As I approached the door, I relaxed a little, thinking that this frightening experience was almost over. However, when I clicked to go inside, to my utter horror, the words “No one’s home.” appeared at the bottom of the screen. What? It was MY house!
As I repeatedly tried to get my character to open the door, I was suddenly distracted by a faint tapping noise. At least, I thought it sounded like tapping at first. However, as the noise became a little louder, it sounded more like a ‘chop, chop, chop’ sound. Was one of my neighbours nearby cutting down trees? Could the animals do that in this game?
I could not enter the house, and therefore saving the game to record my progress so was impossible. I began to wonder if perhaps that wasn’t such a bad thing; perhaps I should just turn the game off and never go back to it.
Just then, I noticed a letter icon above my mail box – I had mail, but dare I read it?
I hesitated for a moment, but came to the conclusion that it was only a letter - it couldn’t hurt me. So I dragged the letter from the mailbox into my inventory, and then opened up the menu to select it.
It said:
“An eye for an eye. A limb for a limb.”
Love,
Margie
What? Margie? Until now I had completely forgotten about the empty house, and the animal who was supposed to be living there.
It was then I noticed Vesta slowly approaching my character. She was almost robotic, once again walking in a single straight line. Out of curiosity, I let her get close, and then tapped A to interact, going against my prior decision to ignore the sheep completely. I wondered if her dialogue would be the same as earlier. Again the screen paused for a moment. I still found Vesta’s face really creepy. Those demonic glowing eyes, that soulless smile; I instantly regretted my decision to chat. This time, when the dialogue box eventually appeared, Vesta said two words which were even more terrifying than her last:
“Blood purge.”
The game froze once again, and then all of a sudden the screen started flashing erratically.
I panicked. I had no idea what to do. My mind was racing as I ran around the village with the screen still flashing. The now unmistakable sound of chopping also continued. I was contemplating whether to just switch off the game, but as my character ran further north, Margie’s empty house could be seen at the top of my screen. My finger was hovering over the power button, ready to turn off the console if things got too terrifying.
I jumped when I noticed another character appear on the screen from the left. It was Chevre the Goat, who - unlike Vesta - came skipping over to me very quickly. Chevre was a pale happy-looking character, with kind eyes and a few freckles upon her face. Her appearance was far from threatening, but for some reason she gave me goose bumps nonetheless. I did not acknowledge her; in fact I tried to run in the opposite direction, but Chevre caught up and spoke to me regardless. After a pause, the goat slowly tilted her head and smiled at my character, and then she said a single sentence:
“I’m heading to the slaughter.”
This time, the game did not pause. The dialogue box closed the moment I tapped “A”, almost as though this was supposed to happen. Chevre remained in place with her head still tilted, her pose resembling Mabel's and her twisted smile still beaming at my character.
I was terrified. My heart was pounding. I was really contemplating switching the game off... but I had made it this far. My curiosity got the better of me; I took a deep breath and decided to press on. I approached the empty house and clicked on the door.
This time, I was able to open the door without a problem, and my character went inside. The moment the door closed behind me, the screen was black for a while. It felt as though the game was warning me that I had made a terrible mistake.
After several seconds passed, I was beginning to think that it was all over. Perhaps the house wasn’t supposed to be there at all, and my character entering had stopped the game from working.
Just as I was starting to relax and gather my thoughts, a text box appeared at the bottom of the screen. The text appeared suddenly and silently. It said:
“Fresh meat.”
The sound of chopping returned, growing louder and louder. The screen flashed twice. The flash seemed to contain an image, but all I could make of it during the split second it was shown, was a black figure upon a white background.
Then the screen changed to a pure bright red colour, and froze completely.
