pseydtonne | Save yourself, don't save that game!

I'm not here to discuss that I took the "Which OS are you?" test and came up OS/2 Warp, although I'll note I felt a little better that changing one answer turned me into Amiga OS 3.5. Instead, I'd like to warn about Japan's plans to destroy our Western will to live.

"What sort of insolent, racist twaddle are you typing?" you may ask. Do not fear. I am still of the opinion that all humans are cousins, even if we wind up estranged. I merely speak of the Nintendo game Animal Crossing. This game, which my coworker Devon of Monkeyshire warned me about, is the game

chaggalagirl decided we should rent during a 2-for-$10 sale at a certain video store with a blue and yellow logo. I figured I'd have a "chick game" on my hands -- the game will have no decent story, she'll dig it and scream about me needing to buy a copy, and I'll stall about it until three months pass. Ah, what a dim male I can be.

We get the game home and it immediately starts making demands on us. A puppy pretending to be a blues musician informs us "Animal Crossing needs 57 spaces on a memory card; the card you have is not large enough." So I unwrap the 251-space card I bought the day I bought the GameCube but had not needed until now. If you're not familiar with game consoles: a typical saved game will take one to four of the spaces on a memory card, and cards either have 59 or 251 spaces.

Maggie starts playing and gets addicted immediately. I start watching over her shoulder. I try to ignore it but I sooooo want to follow along. Soon enough I'm trying to steer.

The next night, I'm hooked. I'm obsessed with paying off the mortgage we have on this shack, selling every cherry I find to the shop owner, and stuffing fossils into envelopes for the Museum. I start playing with the GameCube's clock so that I'm not playing at night.

I hit the reset button at one point and learned how obnoxious this game can be. I open the saved game and get through the usual annoyances when a mole named Resetti pops out of the ground. He proceeds to give me a five-minute lecture about not using the reset button with this game ever again. THis computer-generated script has the balls to tell "You may think 'This is my GameCube and I'll do what I want!", but this is Animal Crossing so be lucky I only gave you a warning this time." Five minutes of this gibberish led me to conclude the designer of this game had some serious abandonment issues.

Soon I realize the game is not getting any more enjoyable. Some random committee sends me a letter to say my hut has been judged for its style and lost points for being a mess. I have four items in the hut, one of which was a sea shell. The shell sits on the floor, because that's the only surface area remaining. Bah.

You get a radio in your apartment, but it "has no tunes". I have to buy them, but I have no idea where. Ah... so the RIAA got to Nintendo first. Since it's a single-speaker boom box, shouldn't it at least have an AM station?

The other critters in town yell at you about not sending them letters. You can dig up random money, but you still end up in debt. They whine about keeping the town nice, but they all expect you to do the work. You do odd favors, but you wind up wishing you'd stayed home.

This is when I realized what the game really wanted. You are expected to conform in very superficial, needling ways. You write letters TO A COMPUTER GAME using a joystick (s. o. space. t. y. p. i. n. g. space. a. space. s. i. g. backspace. n. g. l. e. space. s. e. n. t. e. n. c. e. space... takes several minutes.), and it will judge your grammar. You shell out money for things you don't want, but travel is free.

Japan. This game wants you to be Japanese -- obedient, neurotic, trembling. You have to develop all the skills a diplomat would need but you're still underemployed for the rest of your life. I put up with enough of that during and after college, so I don't see why I should be doing any more servitude in front of my home entertainment system.

I bought a GameCube to take out frustrations from the real world. Games allow you to wrap your head in their worlds and forget you have a car in need of a tune-up. They shouldn't be microcosms of the crappy parts of real life.

Do not buy this game, unless you really feel a need to unload a dumptruck fill of sand with only an eye dropper. Be happy to be weird. I'll stick with the car-chase and first-person shooter games, or the puzzle games.

-I see the Sam & Max/Day of the Tentacle combo CD is on eBay, Dante