This page or section needs more images. There's a whole lotta words here, but not enough pictures. Please fix this.
To do:
Add images in place of the broken image links.
Get better versions of some images that only exist online in less-than-ideal formats, e.g. Post Office exterior, Igloo interior, etc.
Might need to clean up organization; article could read better if separated entirely between games (especially since most changes made in Animal Crossing are retained in e+)
Animal Crossing has had five different versions, with plenty of differences between them:
The logo seen upon startup varies. In Doubutsu no Mori, it was a Nintendo 64 logo which would pop up similarly to a piece of furniture being dropped in a house or digging something up; the logo's color palette would change each time the intro played, beginning with the regular logo each time the game was booted up. In succeeding games, it was the Nintendo logo that would simply fade in. The logo is white in Doubutsu no Mori+, red in Animal Crossing, and blue in Doubutsu no Mori e+. The voices heard when starting up the game are also changed in Animal Crossing to match its western-oriented version of Animalese; this is carried over to e+ as well, despite that game otherwise using the N64 and + versions' voice synthesizer for Animalese.
Title Screen
Differences between the four base versions
Doubutsu no Mori
Doubutsu no Mori+
Animal Crossing
Doubutsu no Mori e+
Differences between region in Animal Crossing
America
Europe
Australia
In addition to the differences between the main four versions of the game, there are also slight differences in the title screen of Animal Crossing between the American, European, and Australian releases. Namely, the "Press Start!" message features a different font and is formatted differently in the European version (being written as "press START") and the copyright information features the same font as in e+ and a different range of years in the European and Australian versions (2001-2004 for Europe, 2001-2003 for Australia), reflecting the different release dates of the game in those regions.
Title Logo Animation
To do: See if it's possible to get good-quality gifs of the title logo animations.
Doubutsu no Mori
Doubutsu no Mori +
Animal Crossing
Doubutsu no Mori e+
The animation for the title logo sees considerable alterations between the different versions of the game. In the Japanese versions, the characters in the logo would rotate into view, with the "+" and "e+" suffixes in their respective versions additionally sliding in from the right to bounce off of it. In the international versions, the logo animation has "Crossing" slide into view from the side, before "Animal" drops down on top of it.
Writing Interface
Doubutsu no Mori
Doubutsu no Mori+, Doubutsu no Mori e+
Animal Crossing
The Japanese versions use a dial-based typing system. The Control Stick selects a letter, A types the letter, and pressing Down on the Control Stick switches the dial to a different set of characters (ABCDE to FGHIJ, etc.). In Animal Crossing, a keyboard system is used instead.
Clock Interface
Differences between the four base versions
Doubutsu no Mori
Doubutsu no Mori+
Animal Crossing
Doubutsu no Mori e+
Differences between region in Animal Crossing
North America
Europe
The European release utilizes a 24-hour clock and a month/day dating system, rather than a 12-hour clock and a day/month dating system. Dialogue in-game is altered to reflect this. The screenshots above depict December 27 and May 12, respectively, and the latter is taken from the Italian release.
Video Quality
Like most Japanese and North American Nintendo 64 games, Doubutsu no Mori is displayed in 240p, a form of low-resolution video consisting of 320 pixels by 240, spread out to only occupy odd-numbered scanlines. The GameCube versions, meanwhile, are re-rendered in 480i, allowing for double the resolution but alternating between even-numbered and odd-numbered scanlines on a frame-by-frame basis at 60 frames per second. This video quality was standard for most consumer televisions prior to the late 2000's, as well as for sixth generation game consoles like the GameCube. Like most GameCube games, however, Doubutsu no Mori + and its various re-releases are also capable of being displayed at 480p, a higher-quality form of standard definition video that displays all 525 scanlines simultaneously. In Europe and Australia, Animal Crossing is officially playable solely in 576i, the only common video resolution for these regions at the time; progressive scan support had to be hidden or removed on European and Australian GameCube games according to Nintendo's standards.
On modern progressive displays, the difference in video quality boils down to 240p appearing more "pixellated" than 480i/480p/576i at the same size due to the lower amount of visual data making up the image, while 480i and 576i appear to have a "combing" effect on moving parts of the image without any deinterlacing software active.
Other Differences
To do:
Isolate textures for sprite-based gameplay assets changed across versions (e.g. the typing layout, in-game clock, ink meter).
Released fish in the N64 version bounce along the ground once before diving into the water. In later versions, they dive straight into the water to conserve time.
Doubutsu no Mori, Doubutsu no Mori+
Animal Crossing, Doubutsu no Mori e+
During the Cherry Blossom Festival, villagers have picnics from Bento boxes on tatami mats in the N64 and + versions. In the US and e+ versions, they use tables similar to the ones seen in the Harvest Festival and have various fruits, cake and sandwiches instead.
Doubutsu no Mori, Doubutsu no Mori +
Animal Crossing, Doubutsu no Mori e+
Likewise, the music for the festival was changed in the American version. An acoustic guitar arrangement of the Japanese theme would later be featured in Doubutsu no Mori e+ as a track played whenever the player requests an invalid song from K.K. Slider, before becoming an obtainable aircheck in its own right as "Spring Blossoms" from Animal Crossing: City Folk onward.
Doubutsu no Mori, Doubutsu no Mori +
Animal Crossing, Doubutsu no Mori e+
The design of Redd's booth at the Fireworks Festival is changed to a western-based design in Animal Crossing and e+, in addition to the aforementioned alteration to Redd's uniform.
In the Japanese versions, igloos contain woks with slowly bubbling blocks of tofu. In the US version, it is replaced with a cauldron full of chowder. The latter design is reused in all versions of New Leaf.
Doubutsu no Mori
Doubutsu no Mori+
Animal Crossing
Doubutsu no Mori e+
The notes on the Town Tune board are represented with katakana in the Japanese versions and Latin characters in Animal Crossing.
Shadow sizes of certain fish vary between versions.
Doubutsu no Mori, +, Animal Crossing
Doubutsu no Mori e+
Diaries dropped on the floor in the N64, +, and US versions appear as objects stuffed inside a brown paper bag with Tom Nook's symbol printed on it; this symbol is also used for saplings. In e+, diaries appear as manila envelopes.
Items that do not act as furniture when placed indoors vary in how they are displayed if present in a building. In the N64 version, they appear as sprites, while in the GameCube versions, they have 3D models.
Nintendo 64
GameCube
In the N64 version, many items dropped on the ground appear as either toolboxes or chests; toolboxes represent tools, and chests represent almost everything else. In the GameCube versions, each category of item is given its own overworld sprite: tools and stationary use their N64 indoors sprites, clothes use a folded-up shirt with white and magenta stripes, and umbrellas use a red umbrella with yellow polka-dots. All categories of items not mentioned have their own overworld sprites in all versions. Wild World would revert back to the toolboxes and chests, City Folk would feature unique sprites, and New Leaf and New Horizons would only feature toolboxes (with non-tool items having unique sprites).
The ink meter (seen when writing letters, diary entries, or bulletin board posts) is absent in e+.
Doubutsu no Mori, +, Animal Crossing
Doubutsu no Mori e+
The font in e+ is reworked to take advantage of the game's better video quality compared to the N64 version (GameCube games typically output video in a display resolution of 640x480, compared to the 320x240 output of most N64 games); the result is crisper and bolder than in previous versions. Additionally, because e+ incorporates kanji (with the N64 version and + only using hiragana, katakana, and Latin), the total amount of characters in e+ is much larger than in previous versions.
The American release uses commas as digit separators (e.g. 1,000 for one thousand). In the European release, this is changed to periods (e.g. 1.000 for one thousand).
The European release supports French, German, Italian, and Spanish in addition to English; which language the game uses is dependent on the language setting in the GameCube's main menu. This is actually accomplished by having five different versions of the game on the disc, each of which is stored in a .tgc file and loaded depending on the GameCube system's selected language.
Animalese in all of its variants sounds deeper in Animal Crossing compared to its Japanese counterparts and is better tuned to fit western languages.
Gameplay Differences
In the N64 version, insects aren't restricted to Acres yet are restricted from flying out to sea. With the exception of bees, these limits are reversed in the GameCube versions.
Upon being awoken, Gulliver will give the player a random furniture item in the N64 version. In the GameCube versions, he gives the player a rare furniture item from the "Gulliver's Treasury" set.
Wendell will only eat fish in the N64 version; in the GameCube versions, he will accept any and all edible items.
The "Handhelds" section in the catalog is restricted to umbrellas in the N64 version.
In the N64 version, only one item can be stored in storage compartments and only one song can be stored in a radio. In the GameCube versions, three items can be stored in each storage compartment and all 55 songs in the game can be stored in radios.
In the N64 version, stationery is bought one sheet at a time instead of in packs of four (as is the case in the GameCube versions).
House debts are slightly different in e+.
In Animal Crossing, Gyroids inside a house will begin to move the minute the player enters the room they are in. In e+, Gyroids in a neighbor's house will pause for a moment before they all begin at the same time, while Gyroids in the player's home can be set to be synced with each other or a song playing in the room, and will stay synced even when the player goes out and comes back.
In the N64 version, travelling between towns required two Controller Paks: one to save travel data, and one to access the town being visited. In the GameCube versions, travelling requires two memory cards for the same purposes. However, in the GameCube versions the player has two options for how to perform this process: they can either travel to a town saved on a memory card in Slot B on the same console as the card in Slot A, or they can travel to a memory card in Slot A on a second GameCube.
In the GameCube versions, once the player has entered their town, it is possible to eject the game disc without interrupting gameplay. This is because the amount of additional content in +, Animal Crossing, and e+, while plentiful, only takes up a marginal amount of additional data; all of the data in the N64 version takes up only around 16.8 megabytes, while the GameCube has 24 megabytes of memory. As a result, even with the added data, the GameCube versions' ROMs are small enough to be loaded into the console's RAM in their entirety.
