Boredom-Fueled Blog

In the words of Robert Plant: “It’s been a long time, been a long time, been a long lonely, lonely, lonely, lonely, lonely time.” If I’m not mistaken, when he sang those words he was referring to the ten months he went without playing “Animal Crossing: City Folk.” I too went ten months without playing “Animal Crossing,” but I wouldn’t describe it as “lonely.” Better things came along: “Super Mario Galaxy 2,” my relapses into both “Mario Kart Wii” and “Super Smash Bros. Brawl,” and I’d be lying if I said that the Netflix Wii disc hasn’t spent an awful lot of time in my Nintendo the past three months.
But today, I decided to dust off the ol’ “Animal Crossing” disc, pop it into the ol’ Nintendo Wii, and take a visit down Memory Lane, Coolton, USA.
When last we spoke, I told you how I was trying to “unlock and receive every ‘gift’ from Tom Nook’s Point Tracking System.” I can tell you now, I have, evidently, done this. I must have done it at the end of September 2009, because the second floor of my house was filled with all the junk from the Point Tracking System. Well done, me from 2009!

One cool thing in the game that you can only access by neglecting to play for several months, is… cockroaches! Each floor of your house, minus the bedroom, will have three cockroaches scurrying around. As your avatar steps over them a light crunching sound is heard and a little cockroach ghost rises to heaven. Once you’ve stomped them all, you get a little congratulations:

I made the rounds to greet my neighbors. Many of them were excited to see me, saying they had been worried about me. My old neighbor, “Drake,” accused me of spending the past months sleeping. Others had more drastic accusations…

After about fifteen minutes of running around randomly, I began to wonder how this game had managed to hold my attention for most of 2009. I determined that, after finding all the fossils, catching most of the bugs and fish, and unlocking most of the unlockables there wasn’t much else to do, and that’s why a once-fun game seemed so dull now.
I did, however, find one gleam of incredible, intense, awesome glory while visiting one of my neighbors’ houses: a drinking bird. It’s not even sold at Tom Nook’s store (I checked), but somehow, one of the animals in my town got it. Needless to say, I was very virtually jealous.

So what does the future hold for “Animal Crossing: City Folk” and me? Probably not much; maybe I’ll dust off the disc in ten years and this blog will have a post about how my town has become a post-apocalyptic war-zone for blood-thirsty animals… or maybe I’ll never play it again. As for the future of my Nintendo Wii, that’s looking good: I’m very excited about “Donkey Kong Country Returns,” and if Nintendo ever releases “Tetris Attack” on the Virtual Console, I may never leave my basement.

Nintendo Animal Crossing

If you like nit-picking, you’re in for a treat. What we have hear is my incomplete list of the historical inaccuracies in The Beatles: Rock Band. I know that there was nothing the developers could’ve done about some of the things in this game – you couldn’t have Paul McCartney playing drums and bass on the same song, but I’m gonna go ahead and point out as many mistakes as I can find anyway. Note: I haven’t played this game yet, and I most likely never will. I am making a few assumptions with this list, mainly that every song will by default feature Harrison on lead guitar, Lennon on rhythm guitar, McCartney on bass, and Starr on drums seeing as how that’s how all of the promotional videos have it. If, after I get a better look at the game through YouTube and Wikipedia, any of the below claims prove to be wrong, I’ll update this post. Also, I’m assuming that Wikipedia’s credits of Beatles songs are accurate.
- “And Your Bird Can Sing”: The in-game venue is the Budokan, where the Beatles performed in June and July 1966. The song wasn’t released until August of ’66; the Beatles wouldn’t have, and, for the record, didn’t play the song live before it was released.
- “Back in the U. S. S. R.”: Ringo Starr does not play drums on this track; Paul McCartney does.
- “Birthday”: John Lennon plays lead guitar, George Harrison plays bass and McCartney plays piano. To their credit, the music video for this song does have a weird psychedelic interlude that shows McCartney playing piano.
- “Dear Prudence”: See “Back in the U. S. S. R.”; the same applies for this song.
- “Drive My Car”: Paul McCartney (always the overachieving workaholic) plays both lead guitar and bass on this song, while Harrison plays rhythm and Lennon is confined to “vocals and cowbell.”
- “Get Back”: Harrison plays the rhythm part on this song, while Lennon plays lead guitar. It’s a shame that the game reversed this because this is some of Lennon’s tightest guitar work ever.
- “Good Morning Good Morning”: The “classic” instrument-Beatle configuration applies through most of the song, except during the brief but incredible guitar solo which McCartney, not Harrison, plays.
- “Here Comes the Sun”: Lennon doesn’t play anything on this track, and yet the game shows him playing rhythm guitar.
- “Hey Bulldog”: Lennon plays lead guitar; Harrison plays rhythm guitar.
- “I Am the Walrus”: This is one of my favorite Beatles songs so I’m especially sad about what they’ve done with this one; it’s a great song, but not for a Rock Band game. Lennon plays no type of guitar on this song; he plays piano.
- “I Me Mine”: 1) The in-game venue for this song is the Apple Corps. Rooftop; the Beatles did not play this song at their rooftop concert – personally, I think “One After 909″ would’ve been a better choice all-around instead of this song, but, you can’t win ‘em all. 2) John Lennon does not appear on this track; Harrison plays rhythm and lead guitar. (Lennon was too busy waltzing with Yoko Ono.)
- “I’m Looking Through You”: The credits on this song are a little muddled – It’s possible George Harrison doesn’t even play on this song, and it’s possible that McCartney played bass and lead and rhythm guitars, but there’s only four guys that would know for sure…
- “Revolution”: Lennon plays the bulk of the lead guitar here, but the game would have you believe that it’s played mostly by Harrison.
- “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band”: McCartney plays lead guitar on this track, not Harrison.
- “Something”: Lennon doesn’t play anything on this track (except for some piano); Harrison plays lead and rhythm guitar.
- “Taxman”: See “And Your Bird Can Sing.” The same applies for this song.
- “Ticket to Ride”: Paul McCartney plays bass and some of the lead guitar here.
- “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”: When I first heard this game announced, I was sure they’d put this song in, and I hoped to see a virtual Eric Clapton, but the game neglects him completely, and as a result, it’s all thrown off. In truth, Lennon plays bass, McCartney plays piano and Harrison plays rhythm guitar.
- “Within You Without You/Tomorrow Never Knows”: They’ve combined these two songs, but Lennon gets lost in the combination. Harrison’s sitar and vocals are coupled with McCartney’s bass and Starr’s drums, which leaves out Lennon (except for his spoken into).
Songs I have no beef with: “A Hard Day’s Night,” “Boys,” “Can’t Buy Me Love,” “Come Together,” “Day Tripper,” “Dig A Pony,” “Do You Want to Know a Secret,” “Don’t Let Me Down,” “Eight Days A Week,” “Getting Better,” “Hello Goodbye,” “Helter Skelter,” “I Feel Fine,” “I Saw Her Standing There,” “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” “I Want You (She’s So Heavy),” “I Wanna Be Your Man,” “If I Needed Someone,” “I’ve Got a Feeling,” “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” “Octopus’s Garden,” “Paperback Writer,” “With a Little Help from My Friends,” “The End,” “Twist and Shout,” and “Yellow Submarine.”

Music, Nintendo The Beatles, The Beatles: Rock Band

I mentioned last month that I didn’t know what to do after having donated every fossil to the museum, upgrading my house for the last time, and donating enough bells to my town to build a lighthouse. Shortly after writing that I didn’t know what to do, I decided what to do: unlock and receive every “gift” from Tom Nook’s Point Tracking System. For every 100 bells you spend at Tom Nook’s store he gives you one point. Once you get 10,000 points you will have unlocked every gift. Gifts can be exchanged for points, so if you ask for a gift worth 5,000 points you must 1) have 5,000 points and 2) be willing to give up 5,000 points and work back up to it. So in all, you’ll be required to earn 61,300 points, which means spending about 6,130,000 bells at Tom Nook’s store. To accomplish this I repeatedly bought the most expensive item available – a Nintendo DSi Bench worth over 18,000 bells. You can resell it for about 5,000 bells. It wasn’t long before I unlocked every item, and I’m currently working on racking up enough points to receive every gift; I hope to have every gift by… I dunno, let’s say October. (Cool in-game glitch that you get to see after unlocking the last item: The game programmers forget to/chose not to capitalize “kart.”)

After a long day of fruit-picking and fish-catching, I like to go to The Roost, the coffee shop inside the museum. If you talk to the barista, Brewster, every day for a while, he’ll begin to open up to you, and he’ll tell you about his interest in gyroids – the weird little robotic Animal Crossing collectibles that make percussion-like noises when activated. He’ll offer to store your gyroids for you. It’s basically like a little addition to the museum where you can try to collect all the gyroids.

My birthday was in August, so I received a cake from one of my least favorite animal residents.

Nintendo Animal Crossing