Developers Foresight / Animal Crossing

The Animal Crossing series may be simple simulation games, but there's a lot of little touches that make it clear that the developers really cared.

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From Multiple Games

• If you start a new town very early or very late at night, characters will comment on it as they meet you for the first time.
• Tools being used or broken can scare away nearby insects.
• You can wake up Gulliver, and Gullivarrr in New Horizons, not only by repeatedly talking to them but also by hitting them with the net. If the action that fully wakes either of them up is a net swing, their dialogue is slightly different and reflects that. In New Leaf, you can also wake Gulliver up instantly by calling his name with the megaphone item.
• Talking with neighbors after getting stung by wasps will usually net you some unique dialogue. New Leaf with the amiibo update, as well as New Horizons, wearing anything that would obscure your eyes from view (sunglasses, non-medical masks, etc.) will instead have them talk to you as normal.

Animal Crossing (GCN)

• In the original game, there's a unique set of dialogue for the Post Office when trying to send letters.
  • If you send a letter to a player with a full mailbox, you'll be told the player's mailbox is already full, returning the letter.
  • If you attempt to send letters more than the recipient player's mailbox can take (e.g. recipient has one slot, sender attempts to mail two), you'll be told the recipient's mailbox is "practically full" and the previous letter is the last one they can receive.
  • If you have a letter to a neighbor that has long moved out, you'll be told there's nobody named that and return the letter back if you try to send it.
• One of Resetti's rants includes him making you type out a written apology exactly as he dictates it. If you get it wrong, he simply makes you try again. Type in something rude or offensive however, and he'll get furious.
• When creating a new character, any items in the housing acre will be transported to the police station, preventing them from picking up any bell bags that would allow Sequence Breaking past having to admit they only brought 1,000 bells to pay for their house.
• Most of the work the player does for Tom Nook is delivering items to villagers. In this version, it's possible for a villager to move out before you can give them their order, although this requires either extraordinarily bad luck or deliberate sabotage. If the customer does leave, Nook has a special reaction where he reprimands the player and takes back the undelivered item, freeing up an inventory slot and allowing the player to continue the tutorial.

Wild World

• In Animal Crossing: Wild World, the only way to unlock Nookington's (The final upgrade in Tom Nook's store chain) is to have a friend buy something from Nookway, which can cause problems to players who do not have any friends that own a copy of Wild World.^note It doesn't help that Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection shut down on May 20, 2014, either. When the game was re-released on the Wii U eShop's Virtual Console, because DS games on the Virtual Console do not support local or online play, the friend requirement towards unlocking Nookington's has been completely removed, thus allowing Nookington's to be unlocked in the Virtual Console version.

New Leaf

• If you bring Katie to a friend's town which already happens to have another Katie there, she'll miss the train but give you your present through the mail.
• Scorpion stings and tarantula bites aren't the only things that cause the player character to get knocked unconscious and wake up in front of their house. In New Leaf, the programmers made the same thing happen if the player ends up on a structure players aren't supposed to be on top of (such as a building or Public Works Project) to prevent them from getting stuck there. For example, using the "net glitch" from pre-Welcome amiibo versions of the game to get on top of a building and choosing the "save and continue" option will cause this to happen. This also happens if players end up on a Public Works Project that was hacked to be in a location it shouldn't be in (such as in front of a door or in the ocean), which is common in hacked towns.
• In the welcome amiibo update minigame Animal Crossing Puzzle League, Isabelle is the second-to-last opponent in Story Mode with her non-work outfit on. Should the player use Isabelle’s amiibo and get to that point, because two Isabelles cannot show up, she will instead pull a Face–Heel Turn and leave the player’s side until they beat her (though they can still use her power), and she can be in her winter or summer outfit, depending on the Isabelle amiibo figure used.
• If the player character shares the same birthday with another villager in their town, this will be remarked upon in game by said villager and others. Likewise if the player character's birthday takes place on the same day as a major holiday (i.e., Halloween or Toy Day), Isabelle and other villagers will have special lines acknowledging it. Villagers will even take note if the player character’s birthday is on a day and month with the same number (e.g. 10th of October or 3rd of March), remarking that it must be easy to remember.
• Using amiibo cards on a villager you've already had at your town will have said villager comment on finding your town familiar when they move in.
• If you write a letter to a villager who has moved in on the very first day and send it, you will eventually get a counter-correspondence letter from that villager, commenting on getting the letter when they just moved in.
• Sending a villager a birthday letter the day before their birthday, on the day of their birthday, when 9am strikes, that villager will send a unique reply.
• Since amiibo are region-free, all of the information for amiibo-exclusive characters was fully localized in every region, even when said amiibo weren't available worldwide. Aside from benefiting importers, this can also be seen as a form of Late Export for You future-proofing. This includes the Sanrio villagers (which were released in America in 2021 after their initial Japan and Europe-exclusive release in 2016), as well as Felyne from Monster Hunter: Stories (which didn't have amiibo outside of Japan until 2021). In the South Korean version, the Splatoon amiibo characters were also fully localized, despite the game's amiibo not being released there until 2019.
• Related to the above, the Welcome amiibo collaboration characters Holden (for glue company Fueki) and Filly (for 7-Eleven) were also fully localized, despite neither character being distributed outside of Japan. In Filly's case, she had already appeared in Happy Home Designer without her 7-Eleven branding, which is retained here. The associated furniture items from these were fully translated as well, likely to account for cross-region trading.
• Donating more than one of the same item to the Museum (such as two Barber Steed fish in one donation) will lead to Blathers mentioning that they only need one specimen.

New Horizons

• If you start a new file with your language set to Japanese but your region isn't set to Japan, the Nook brothers will remark that your Japanese is pretty good for a foreigner.
• Sometimes a villager may call you out to give you something like a piece of furniture or clothing. If you receive the latter and start wearing it the same day you got it, the giving villager will recognize it when you talk to them.
• If you give a villager a piece of clothing they're already wearing (with identical colors) they will point this out.
• Similarly, the villagers now know when you're re-gifting them something, acknowledging this fact through speech or in letter form if you mail them a re-gifted item. This can be a pain, however, when a player is attempting to fix replaced furniture in a villager's home if an unwanted item is displayed. If the item that's being gifted technically isn't the one that they gave you earlier, but an identical-looking one from a different source, they'll still have the reaction—this is realistic, though, since they won't be able to tell at a glance whether the item was the one they had before or a new one.
• As this clip shows, setting off a party popper while being chased by wasps will scare them away. Similarly, it's possible to get the wasps stuck on something like your plaza's bulletin board, and if they linger long enough, they'll give up and fly away.
• Desk fans invoke localized wind physics when they're on, so loose clothing and some plant types will sway in front of it, unless they're too far from the fan to be affected. Said objects also won't move if an oscillating fan turns away from it.
• Normally, showing off a bug will elicit a congratulatory reaction from your neighbors. Showing off an insect next to Blathers will upset him.
• Some walls have functional windows on the side walls that can be interacted with to open and close the shades. The windows aren't for show, either; it affects the indoor lighting when they're open or shut, and are affected by outside weather, such as raindrops during rainfall. Certain other wall types will remove the windows as well, such as the "heavy-curtain wall", which covers up the windows completely like actual curtains.
• If you do an opening ceremony for a building that was built in a position that cuts off most of the space in front of it, (such as right behind another building), then the NPCs are re-positioned so they can still all fit, the camera is placed overhead, and Tom Nook gets a special line at the start of the ceremony.
• When you're being chased by wasps, the only things you're likely to consider doing are attempting to scoop them up in your net, or trying to duck inside the nearest building. If you inexplicably talk to one of your neighbors as the wasps close in on you, you'll get unique reactions from them, one of which is "Sorry, I want no part of this. You're on your own."
• If you enter a villager's house and walk right back out without talking to them—likely because you only wanted to see if they were crafting something—they will (usually) do the "curiosity" Emote Animation to express their confusion. Sometimes they will have a unique reaction when you walk back in and talk to them.
• Sometimes, villagers may be busy admiring an item at the back row of Nook's Cranny. If you purchase said item while they are admiring it (which results in it being replaced by a "sold" sign), they will have a "surprised" reaction.
• If a villager calls you by a custom nickname, and randomly tries to give you a new one; if you hear out what they offer, reject it, and get to type in your own, they'll have a unique comment if you type in what they were already calling you.
• Villagers who have moved out of your island to another player's island have special lines if you invite them back to your island. Of course, this needs to be the exact villager who previously stayed on your island.
• There are special lines for every variant of the initial villager dialogue if the first time you meet a villager coincides with them being chosen for a "sick villager" sidequest.
• If your birthday is on the same day as another villager's, you can't give them a birthday cupcake from your own celebration that day (as they're already busy celebrating their own birthday). But if you talk to them the next day, they'll ask about receiving a cupcake from you, and if you give them a cupcake (either during that conversation or later in the day), you'll receive a birthday-themed gift like the others you received on the big day. The same holds true if a villager is in the process of unpacking on your birthday.
• If a villager visits your house while you have a poster of them put up, they will notice and there is a chance they will comment on it.
• Timmy will have unique dialog if you manage to give him all four 30-stacks of materials he needs to build a shop on the first day he asks (which usually requires either insane luck with Mystery Islands,the aid of another player or hacking); doubly so if you give them all at once. Blathers will have a similar reaction to being given enough specimens on his first day there to open a museum, as will Tom when he makes the announcement a couple days later (though this is easier to do).
• If you already have some sort of painting when Redd first visits the island (which would require hacking or outside help), the dialog where he tries to sell you a painting for 498,000 bells won't happen; instead, when you first talk to him on the island itself, he'll just directly invite you to come check out his wares on the Treasure Trawler.
• The Souvenir Chocolates are designed as a way to bring your island villagers to the vacation island for the chance to build them their own vacation home. However, if you give one to a villager who already has a vacation home, the dialogue option to take them there will not occur.
• amiibo examples:
  • You cannot call an NPC that is currently visiting or living on your island to your campsite via amiibo. (Not that an NPC would be able to visit your campsite either way) Attempting to call them results in a cutscene that shows the requested character politely rejecting the player’s request.
  • Attempting to invite an amiibo character who is in the process of moving to your island (I.E. the plot is sold, but the house is not yet built) will instead get a response from their Answering Machine.
  • The game makes a distinction between the cards and figure of Timmy & Tommy. The cards depict each twin on his own, but if you use the figure (which depicts both characters), the game asks which one of them you want instead of just summoning both of them.
  • If you use an amiibo to call over a villager that was previously on your island to Brewster's café, they'll have unique dialogue referencing their past here.
  • The game will prevent you from inviting sick villagers to The Roost, stating that they're "not feeling well." Curing them and trying again will however, allow the cured villager to visit as usual. You will also be prevented from inviting a villager in the process of moving in or away.
  • If you try to call Wisp to the Roost in the middle of searching for his spirit pieces, it’ll state he’s having an emergency and a special message will be relayed instead.
  • In the Happy Home Paradise DLC, after you unlock the amiibo scanner in the office, you can call up villagers using amiibo cards to work on their vacation homes from there instead of waiting for them to appear on the island. But if you use the amiibo card of a villager that you already have on your island, they will have different dialogue instead.
  • Also in the Happy Home Paradise DLC, using the amiibo card for Lottie, Niko or Wardell will give them unique dialogue during the process of designing their Vacation Home. Lottie for example points out that if you want to talk to her, she's right over there, and when starting her home she notes that she's excited to see you work for the first time.
  • When you use Kapp'n's amiibo to bring him and his family over to The Roost (or if you're just lucky enough), Leila will have a cookie instead of a cup of coffee. The same happens when Daisy Mae visits with Joan. Wisp on the other hand, has nothing due to being a ghost.
  • Your exchanges with Lottie and Niko at the Roost will differ depending on whether or not she hired you; i.e. she will either inform you what her company does, or remind you to get a lot of rest before you return to work.
  • If you try to use the Rescue Service in the Roost while Resetti is there (not that it would work anyway, since it doesn't work indoors), no one will pick up, since Resetti is the Rescue Service's operator.
• If you wear the King Tut mask so you can experience the tripping animation while you're holding a food item like a drink or ice cream, the treat will spill on the ground and be lost.
• If a villager on your main island is ill but has a job on the vacation home island in Happy Home Paradise, then they will "call in sick" and another random villager will fill the role for them until they're given medicine. A similar thing happens on said villager's birthday; they're given the day off and a random villager fills in for them.
• If you speak to Redd for the first time at his stand during Fireworks Season, speaking to him when he arrives in his treasure trawler for the first time will have him remark "Hey! I know you!"
• If you create a new character, and Isabelle being outdoors for a celebration is the first time you talk to her, her dialogue will change to reflect that.
• It’s impossible in normal gameplay, but the developers anticipated modders trying to use hacks to remove the player character’s underwear. If this is done, black bars can be seen covering the naughty areas.
• Try turning on the game for the first time in the day while it's the middle of the night - Isabelle will comment on how late it is and say "I hope I can stay awake through this broadcast."
• Pascal normally swims away while floating on his back if you give him a scallop. If you are near the net that forms the border, he'll dive under the net, surface outside the border and resume his normal swimming animation.
• Gyroid fragments grow into full gyroids when buried and watered in the ground. You're supposed to use a watering can to prompt this, but you can also skip a step and exploit the weather if there's precipitation, which will water the buried fragment automatically.

Spinoffs

• Happy Home Designer:
  • If you contact Isabelle, Digby, or Lyle with the amiibo phone, what they say depends on whether or not they're in the room with you.^note Isabelle will only appear in the room if you have facility projects you haven't done yet. Lyle will always be in the room until you unlock the ability to remodel facilities after expanding the school, at which point Digby replaces him.
  • Kangaroo villagers with joeys mirror their mothers' eye movements, even when sleeping in a bed. Not only is this very easy to miss due to the size of the joey, but also unexpected as Villagers never go in beds when you're in their houses in the mainline games.
  • Whenever you finish a project and return to Nook's Homes, Lottie is at her desk to welcome you back. If you redesign Lottie's own house, she will walk into the office with you and thank you instead of her usual dialogue.
• amiibo Festival: If a player lands on the special space associated with Isabelle and Digby's birthday, and another player is playing as either Isabelle or Digby, the latter player will also get something for it.
• In the Desert Island Escape minigame on both amiibo Festival and New Leaf - Welcome amiibo, characters with the lone wolf ability don't move to the camp location like other characters. However, if the camp is set up at their location, you can occasionally see them wandering around outside of the tent.
• Pocket Camp: There is a special comment on lost items if you find the lost item before being informed. They usually will comment on how they lost said item without realizing it until you found it.