03/19/2025, 10:27 AM

MOT'S WILD WORLD MISADVENTURES

(she's not done talking about animal crossing: wild world yet)

alright, alright, i know i already wrote a review of Animal Crossing: Wild World, but this damn game has been taking up all my free time, and i'll be damned if i'm not going to go into more detail about specific things that have happened to me in it. in my review i said that, while limiting, it's still quite fun and enjoyable all the same, sometimes even because of its limitations. take for example, the pattern designer.

this is my lineup of patterns i've made by hand, drawn on the DS touchscreen or using the dpad and buttons. yeah, unlike New Leaf, Wild World actually lets you use the dpad for precision drawing, and it's SO nice. i seriously wish they kept that for New Leaf, the 3DS touch screen can be so finnicky at times. it's how i made the first pattern, which is a recreation of R7038XX's battle sprite from Mother 1. then there's Ocean Prince, which i drew by hand at the request of my roommate. after that is a pattern of Manny Calavera from Grim Fandango, a really awesome point and click adventure that i've always had a soft spot for. one of my shoddiest patterns is next, and it's supposed to be the logo for Flood by They Might Be Giants. it doesn't look... the best, the pentagon gave me a lot of trouble and the "spokes" weren't any easier. still, it was good enough for one of my friends to recognize it without me having to tell her what it was, so that's a win in my book. next is a much better They Might Be Giants pattern, this time based on a specific hoodie i got from one of their shows for their album Book. it was hard to recreate it exactly, so i took some creative liberties. next is a logo that should be familiar if you're looking at this site, which i sure hope you are! after that is some random pattern that just showed up in my inventory one day. i seriously don't know what it is, maybe it's for some dumb youtube show or something, i dunno. finally, the last pattern in my lineup is a random eye i drew one time. i didn't have any other ideas and wanted to make something, and after scrolling through the palettes for a while, that's the idea i concluded on. yeah, unlike New Leaf and New Horizons, Wild World's palettes are preset, and you can't change them in any way. this means you have to get creative with your designs and color choices, which is an aspect i enjoy a lot honestly. that's why the eye looks like that, it was the best i could do with the palettes given, and i think it looks way cooler than if i were to have used "normal" colors. it's also why i did Manny Calavera, because it was the best idea i had with the monochrome palettes i was given. i'd say my main issue with the custom patterns in this game is that... there's no way to save them. the only space you have for patterns is your inventory and the spaces in the Able Sisters' shop, that's it. in basically every other AC game there's some form of pattern storage, usually by talking to Mabel and asking her to save your patterns. not in Wild World though, you got 16 spots MAX. this bugs me a lot, because i really like making patterns in this game! i just wish i didn't have to overwrite all my old ones. now, there is one solution to this, though it's not pretty: each player character has their own pattern inventory, so by making a new character you have 8 new pattern slots to work with! i know people like to make pathways in their towns in these games, so i've heard of stories where people make burner files to store their pathway patterns, so that their main file has open slots for more interesting patterns. it's not graceful, but it is a solution.

well that's enough on my patterns, what is this, the artwork tab? nah, you wanna see the best part of any Animal Crossing game: funny villager conversations! and boy howdy do i have plenty of 'em. earlier AC games have famously... honest villagers, and Wild World is no exception. here's some of my favorite screenshots i've taken while talking with my neighbors.

tabby, i love you, but don't say that please.

this was exactly 5 seconds after Moe called my place a dump, and gave it three stars out of five. then a day later, he moved away forever. for a long time i thought Moe was my best friend, and then he did those two things. never trust anyone, i suppose.

Rowan saw that i had a flea in my inventory, and BEGGED me to sell it to him for a little over 2000 bells. my guy, you are TIGER. are you sure that's a good deal??

for whatever reason, Pippy has filled her home with fish. she used to have a room decorated with lots of outdoorsy stuff like a hammock, a birdhouse, a pool, but she's gone and replaced all of it with... random fish she caught, i guess? what's funny is that a couple of days after taking this picture, she confessed to me that she's not that big of a fan of fishing, so i have no clue what's going on with her.

Monty and Pippy were having an argument about what the better job is, Monty said it was backbreaking construction labor, while Pippy said she'd rather be selling waterfront real estate. i guess that checks out, considering Pippy's love(?) of fish...

hey by the way, if you yourself are a player of Wild World, we can actually play together! that's right, by the power of Wiimmfi, you can get your DS back online! with the death of older online services, such as WiiConnect24, the 3DS and Wii U servers, or Xbox 360 Live, it can feel hopeless playing these older games and seeing the online options sitting there, taunting you. luckily, the fan servers for DS games are exceptionally easy to setup. go into your DS (not 3DS) WiFi settings (which can be accessed on the title screen by going to other settings) setup your connection, and make sure to uncheck "autoobtain dns". then, set the primary dns to "167.235.229.36", and the secondary dns to "1.1.1.1". if you're having trouble getting your DS to connect to your access point, it's probably because it's too new and doesn't support WEP security, which is the most the DS can do. for me personally, i found the easiest (and safest) way to get around this was to activate my hotspot on my phone, disable the password, and connect my DS to that. it's not exactly an elegant solution, but it's what works for me.

this is probably the part of the game that's had me so addicted lately, there's something really fun about comparing catalogs with others and working together to fill in the gaps of what people need, or just taking some time to hang out with some people in their town. i personally love filling out my friend list, so if you wanna play Wild World together, my friend code is 5159-9885-3725! leave yours in the chat on the index page, and perhaps we could somehow play together!

something i've noticed now that i've played a lot more of Wild World is that there's a lot of stuff that is just... WICKED rare. for the past week i've been hunting for the damn Goldfish, it's a river fish that should be available all year, all day, and yet i've struggled to find a single one. what's weird is, i HAVE found one before because it's in the museum, but it was on my other file. the Tuna gave me a ton of trouble as well, but i did eventually snag one. another thing that's been unexpectedly rare is flower hybrids. i'm quite the gardener in every Animal Crossing i play, to the point where you literally couldn't run in my New Leaf town because it was COMPLETELY overrun by flowers. like, every space that could have had a flower did have a flower. i also had to dedicate several hours to digging up excess flowers in my New Horizons town, because i let them get way out of hand. Wild World, however, has proven to put up some resistance to my gardener ways. i mentioned in the review that the flowers don't indicate whether or not you've watered them in any way, no sparkles like in New Leaf or New Horizons. on top of that, the chances for flowers to actually spawn a new flower the next day once you've watered them is pretty low, and THEN you have to hope that that flower is a unique hybrid, and not just another Red, White or Yellow flower. i've been back to regularly playing Wild World again for about two weeks as i write this, and i have gotten a single unique hybrid in that time. not only that, but i only got that hybrid this morning! it was a blue pansy, and it's pretty cool to see all things considered.

one thing that still haunts me to this day is that i saw Gulliver twice, and missed him BOTH TIMES. if you're unaware, Gulliver is a special animal in the Animal Crossing series who is usually a sailor in most of the games. he gets washed up on the beaches of your town, and you have to help him in some way. once you help him out, he gives you a unique item that comes from some far off land, usually famous landmarks such as the Statue of Liberty or the Sphynx. in Wild World and City Folk, however, the guy somehow ended up as a UFO pilot, and in wild world specifically he VERY rarely flies around the skies of your town. the conditions for him to even appear on a day are pretty strict, there can't be any special visitors in town (such as Redd, Katrina, Saharah, etc) and it can't be a Saturday or Sunday, since K.K. Slider and Joan always show up on those days respectively. if no one is scheduled for the current day, then he has a 30% chance to have a chance to appear. that's right, we're getting into stacked dice rolls at this point. if every condition is met, then the game checks to see what time it is. if the last digit on the clock is either a 2 or a 7, Gulliver has a chance to fly over your town in a similar manner to how a balloon present does. you then have to shoot him down with your slingshot, and he crashes in your town. help him out from there, and he gives you one of his rare items. he only has the chance to appear once per week, so if you miss him, don't expect to see him again till next week. one early morning, i was fishing in the sea as i tend to do, and suddenly i see the UFO in the sky. i get super excited, before realizing that i'm down at the sea, and near the border of the town. the border that Gulliver is heading towards. i tried to switch to my slingshot and get to the northern part of town in time, but i was too late. then, two days later, i saw him AGAIN, this time in my roommate's town. (i've been using her save to get more items and fossils per day... it's not cheating, i promise.) i had plenty of time, i near the northern part of town, there was just one issue this time. my roommate's character didn't have a slingshot. ahhh, cruel fate strikes again. what hurt extra bad was that i had considered buying a slingshot for her in the shop just MINUTES before, but was too lazy to and thought it wouldn't matter anyways. someone tell past Mot that she's a real dirt for brains.

here's an image i took out of pure desperation, something i didn't do in my first Gulliver encounter. i swear, the blurriness of the image really makes it look like one of those UFO sighting pictures. if you're having trouble seeing him, his UFO is a little bit down and to the right on the top screen. someday Gulliver, someday i'll find you once more, and on that day i'll be READY for you.