Retro games in Animal Crossing ‘not happening ever again’

Pooh Pooh on Clu Clu Land

When people that don’t really like Animal Crossing talk about what they want in a new Animal Crossing, they often call back to the GameCube title’s inclusion of playable NES games (Legend of Zelda, Super Mario Bros., Punch-Out!!, and Clu Clu Land D to name a few). Though this was the first and last time that a localized Animal Crossing title would feature in-game NES emulation, many still claim that this was the best thing about the series.

According to an interview with Animal Crossing producer Katsuya Eguchi, these disgruntled “fans” won’t become gruntled anytime soon. “Please consider it’s not happening ever again. At the time (of Animal Crossing on the GameCube), we didn’t have a Virtual Console system. We thought that playing games inside of a game is kind of funny, and we wanted to do it. But now there’s a Virtual Console where you can play classic games, so we don’t think we will be doing that in future titles.”

Fair enough. However, there is more that could be done to appease those looking for retro flavor in a new Animal Crossing adventure. A nice compromise would be to include some special 8-bit Animal Crossing-themed games in the next entry in the series. In the GameCube title, Tortimer might give you a fake NES game called Super Tortimer on April 1st. What if Super Tortimer were playable? A little 10-minute-long platformer starring a turtle mayor, and maybe a few other fake-but-fun low-fi NES-on-Animal Crossing mini-games (a rhythm game with Totokeke, a Tapper-type game with Brewster, and a puzzle game about peeling your face off with Tangy immediately come to mind) could be more than enough to satiate the hunger of those who’d rather play a videogame inside the videogame they just bought instead of playing the actual videogame.

No Retro Games in Future Animal Crossings—With One Possible Exception [Kotaku]