Three cheers for a game series that consumed three solid months of my college life. Then enter Animal Crossing: Wild World for the Nintendo DS, and I’m right back to playing constantly again… though I tired of it more quickly. Now we’re doing the same thing a third time with marginal changes once again, and I’m beginning to wonder how interested I’ll be in this new version. Regardless, there are some notable differences this time around that will make the game enticing either to newcomers or those who never tired of the older ones.

First off, this time, you can actually leave your town and go to the city, via bus driven by—naturally—The Kapp’n. However, you can only do this in single-player mode, and only if no one is currently in your town (does this dispel the possibility of having your town visited while you are not playing? Not necessarily, say Nintendo). The city is filled with all sorts of stuff that previously was only to be found on special days in Animal Crossing; lots of different shops and other buildings here are run by characters that will be familiar to you if you’re a fan of the series.

Some of these buildings include:

• The Happy Room Academy where you can view highly-ranked rooms (including ones from other people’s towns)

• The Auction House where you can go to bid on various items—this works with friend codes online as well

• Craaaaaazy Redd’s in a back alley behind some boxes

• An emotion training building where you can learn emotion expressions for use in communication with others

• Gracie’s Gallery, where you can purchase items at fantastic deals, such as 20% off a Gracie Bench, making it just $88,000. These fashions change according to the time of year.

• The Able Sisters, where you can create your own designs

• Harriet, where you can get a makeover and sport a new hairstyle

• Fortune Teller Katrina’s, where you can see what your town needs to be ideal

• Mr. Resetti’s command center, where you can witness the magic in action

That’s actually pretty much the extent of the town’s size… but at least it’s a new area to which you can travel. The pre-E3 rumors of different environments (forests, deserts, etc.) don’t seem to have panned out here, and that’s disappointing. But apart from that, the basic gameplay remains the same, quite untouched it seems (which may not necessarily be a good thing), and so if you’re familiar already you should know very well what to expect.

A few other cool features, out of any particular order:

• Copper at the gate gives two options: Go out via Nintendo WFC or "DS Suitcase"—so far no details have been provided for DS Suitcase apart from the fact that it will interact with the DS game (you can probably visit your town or access currencies or items I would imagine)

• Any USB keyboard should theoretically work seamlessly with the game, although the forthcoming Logitech wireless Wii keyboard is simply the cream of the crop (watch for my write-up on that to be posted shortly)

• You can don a mask to make your character look like your Mii

• You can hold fishing or bug catching tournaments with others while they’re visiting your town, timed and scored by the game

Also, last, but certainly not least, City Folk supports full-on Wi-Fi voice chat with your friends (and only your friends; Friend Codes are back—yippee!) using the new Nintendo WiiSpeak accessory. WiiSpeak is an omnidirectional microphone that sits atop your television set. Since you aren’t forced to wear any sort of headset while playing, the conversation is less private and easier to initiate (which were probably Nintendo’s main motives), and it’s a bit more comfortable. It seems to work well enough in louder environments as well as it simply filters all noise below a certain envelope.

Apart from the above-mentioned enhancements, not a whole lot else has changed. The graphics are very similar, although the DS spherical wrap-around effect has been brought back again, which is good. Also, the music, while slightly enhanced it seems, is still equally technologically thin, yet catchy and melodic nonetheless.

I’m not sure what else Nintendo is planning to do with Animal Crossing: City Folk, but I hope for the sake of all fans it’s a little more robust than it seemed today. Either way, I am eager to get my hands on a review copy, and I’m sure the game will manage to be outrageously addicting regardless of how much deeper it is than the previous installments.