As I do with most new releases, I enjoy the hunt to try and get a game before it's release and Animal Crossing City Folk is no different. To get a game before release you usually have to hound down employees of different stores or just be lucky enough to walk in before they are pulled from the shelf. But there's one store that I can always count on...My local mom and pop shop Videogame and Music Exchange (www.vgmx.com). I often times buy my new games from there because they price all of their new games $5 below retail.

After playing it for a few hours I had a few thoughts on it. This is coming from only playing the GC version.

The game does not stray far from it's roots. You create a character, become Tom Nook's personal assistant, pay off your house, and become the lonely supplier to the towns museuem.

The visual aspect of the game is very much the same as it's gamecube counterpart. The only major difference is in the menu's and inventory interfaces.

While most WiiMakes same game with added extra waggle controls, City Folk does not. The only times you have to point at the screen is while selecting inventory and when typing.

Some of the major improvements over the GC version are:

Stores that are open 24/7
You can finally pick which house you move in to from various places on the map.
Since you can play the game with just the remote, you can play it one handed with a cigarette in the other.
It allows you to take screenshots in the game and save them to an SD card.

It's a familiar life here in Animal Crossing. It's the same game for some reason I can't stop living in this virtual world. I'll continue to fish, farm fruit, and pull weeds til the cows come home...Or atleast until Nook's Shop is out of items for the day.