Your character and the villagers
• Instead of Tortimer being the mayor of the village, your character will instead fill that role.
• All humans are now taller and all villagers now vary in size depending on their species.
• Villagers will once again grant you a framed picture of themselves once you become their best friend. This feature was last seen in Wild World.
• Villagers can now shop at various stores around your town.
• You can now customize your pants, shoes, socks and skirts.
• Characters now have the ability to swim in the ocean provided they put on a bathing suit.
• Deers, hamsters and woolly mammoth join the species list of different animal villagers.
• There are new hairstyles, hair colors, as well as new eye styles. This is the first time new eyes have been added to any Animal Crossing game.
• Two new villager personalties are confirmed - one new one per gender.
• Some animals like Kapp’n and Gulliver have returned to earlier roles.
• The developers considered what animals would have what items in their homes and included items they thought would match.
• Your pockets seem to be larger, so it looks like you can carry more items!
• You can now hold up to ten patterns at once.
Your town
• The main port of access to other towns is now a train, not a town gate as seen in City Folk and Wild World. The train station is run by Porter the Monkey and is located at the very top of the town.
• The town center houses the “great” tree. Upon arriving at your village, you will plant a sapling in the middle of the town center. As your village ages, your tree will grow bigger and bigger, surpassing the size of the “normal” trees that can be found around the rest of your town.
• The town will now have a large beach surrounding a majority of its lower and side half.
• Cliffs as we know them no longer exist. Instead there is a large cliff dividing the beach from the rest of the town.
• Town decorations, or town “furniture” such as lamps, benches and topiaries can now be placed around your village using your mayor status. While in the mayors office, you will have the option to begin a community project in the form of setting up a work site for a specific town decoration. You, or other characters, can pay for the project by speaking to a gyroid who will be positioned at the place you want the town decoration and paying him a set amount of bells. Once the bell amount is reached, the town decoration will be built.
• Villagers not from your town will now temporarily show up in tents during the summer. This is a feature taken from the original Animal Crossing game.
• In addition to trees and flowers, players will now be able to plant bushes using a special seedling. Bushes will grow and create barriers that are useful for decoration or even gardens that you wish to surround with something aesthetic. In the video of the Japanese town, there was also bamboo growing but that could be regional.
• Fruit has evolved tremendously. It is no longer just the old favourites any more. Now, new fruit such as bananas, durians, lemons, mangoes, and persimmons have been seen in the clips for the mini-game on the Island. It's not certain whether all are available to grow in your town. There are also rare versions of each fruit that can be grown. These are thought to be more tasty, and might sell for more bells.
• New flower types, such as lilies and violets, have been added to the game. Flowers now appear in sets of 4 as opposed to sets of 3 and are also seen to have buds. They will also sparkle when they've been watered.
• The town now includes access to an island, similar to the one that existed in the first Animal Crossing game.
• Can make the stores open early, or keep them open late. (yessss)
• Items in the town are paid with donations. The animals will provide some money, but you as the player will end up paying a lot of their own money.
• If you don’t do your job as a mayor ‘properly’ no one will complain at you in the village.
• There is an initial ‘hurdle’ you must complete as mayor early on, but once cleared you’re free to do what you want.
• The tree planting at the beginning of the game - your first act as mayor - was included after Eguchi played the game and didn’t feel like he really was mayor. This was quite late in development.
• The also added a ceremony after building your first bridge to help with this.
• You can chose not to have the ceremony if you’d like.
• They gave the player the ability to include the Reset Management Center as a part of being mayor.
• To begin on community projects you must first acquire 100 community service points. How to achieve these points will be explained by your lovely secretary.
• When picking where to place the community projects your secretary will be pretty picky about where you plan to place it.
• When on the Train with Rover, you'll be able to choose from a selection of three various maps for your town.
• Various gems can come out of broken rocks.
• There seems to be a locker in the Train Station that both you and your visiting guests can use to store and share items.
• Fertilizer can be used to help grow hybrids and delicious fruit trees.
Town Buildings
As mayor, you have the option to build new buildings in the town. Gone are the days where the Museum, Nooks, Able Sisters, and the Town Hall make up your town. Now, you can choose to build certain stores/buildings. Below is a list of all the known buildings that will or can exist in your town.
• R Parkers - Recycle Shop: This is run by two alpacas - Lisa and Kaizo. You can sell items from your inventory to Lisa and she will also deal with putting items up for sale - a replacement for the Auction House in City Folk. Unlike the auction house though, items can be offered and bought as you wish rather than on specific dates. You and other villagers may purchase items on display and if a villager is in the store, you can sometimes influence them into making a purchase.
The second part of the store is run by Kaizo, who will customise furniture for you. For example, you can substitute the fabric of a couch by choosing from a selected range offered by Kaizo or from a pattern you created. You can also change the color and style of the furniture.
• The Police Station: Run by Booker, you can come here to check through the lost and found.
• Coffee Shop: Brewster now has his very own Coffee Shop and you no longer have to drink it on the premises. Yes, ''coffee to go'' has found it's way to the game. There is also the option to work for Brewster. Whether or not this involves just delivering or is something more in depth is currently unknown. The coffee shop is open twenty-four hours a day, but you can only work for Brewster during certain hours of the day. Coffee is again 200 bells.
• The Mayor's Office: Here is where you will do all of your mayoral duties. Hisho, your assistant, will ask you what you wish to do upon sitting in the mayor's chair. One of the options is to build town decorations. The mayor's office will resemble the town hall from CF and WW at first, but can be changed later on.
The Shop Center
Directly above the train tracks lies the shop center. The Shop center contains many stores, some new and some old. Some of the stores will expand, and some will not open until you have done some sort of community project as mayor. Shops and buildings in this area are:
• Able Sisters: The Able sisters will return to the game in a new shop sell pants and skirts as well as shirts and what looks like dresses. They no longer sell accessories. Open from 10am to 9pm at the beginning of the game.
• Labelle's: Labelle now runs her own store and takes over the job of selling accessories. Her part of the store is attached to the Able Sister's.
• Post Office: Pelly and Phyllis return to their job as simple post office workers.
• The Museum: The Museum returns, offering its standard exhibits: bugs, fish, fossils and paintings. It now includes a circular tank where a whale shark has been seen.
When you complete a certain community project as mayor you will unlock a NEW portion of the museum - a display area on the second floor. On this floor, you can create your OWN exhibits as well as shop for items that Celeste will put up for sale in the main room. You can freely place objects on display in the same way as your house if you rent a room. Celeste no longer runs the observatory, as constellations are no longer offered in this game to make room for a more realistic looking night sky.
• Shoe Shank: Kicks has moved up in the world, and now owns his very own shop. You can buy shoes and socks from his store.
• Harriets' Salon: This will be located on the second floor of the Able sister's building complex. Apparently there will be new hair styles and colours too. Once one gets their hair done enough times, one can also get their eye color changed from the contact lens machine! You can change eye color to one of these colors: Black, Blue, Blue Gray, Green, and Red Brown. You can change your hair to these colors: Black, Orange, Gray, Yellow, Red, Green, Navy blue, Pale purple, Pink, Light blue, Yellow-green, and White.
• Timmy and Tommy's: Nooks is now run by Timmy and Tommy. The shop will offer new furniture, some of which you can hang on your wall. Their shop will expand, just like Nooks shop did in the previous games, but the expansions themselves are a bit different now. Check out
this picture, which shows the expansions. Timmy and Tommy will both work at the shop, but not on the same days. Open from 8am to 10pm at the beginning of the game. Starting from the third upgrade of the shop, you can buy K.K. songs!
• Real Estate Agency: Nook now operates out of a Real Estate Agency. Lyle joins Nook in the building, presumably working for the HRA as he did in CF. Nook enables you to expand your home as well as customise the exterior. The different exteriors include styles as well as choosing roofing, mailboxes, fences, walls, doors and chimneys. For expanding your home, you may choose what house expansions you want and in which order. Further, when you build an upstairs or downstairs they will NOT automatically be large. They will start off small, and will have to be expanded just as you do with the main room. The rooms available for expansion are: an upstairs, a left room, a right room, a back room and a basement. These are all in addition to the main room and mean that this game offers the largest home ever.
• The Photo Booth: The Photo booth is a booth you can pay to take pictures of your character for your “ID”. This ID is exchanged with other players you streetpass with, and includes your town, character name, your picture, and your “Dream Code”.
• Dream Mansion: The dream mansion is a place you can visit to have fun in a state of lucid dreaming. It allows you to visit other towns in your dream but first, you will need to streetpass people in order to get their “Dream Code”. This code allows you to access their town in a dream and because dreams aren't real, it makes sense that nothing you do in another town will be saved. You can also upload your data to the server and then other people can come visit you easily. This feature doesn’t require friend codes and doesn’t affect the other person’s village. A tapir runs the Dream Emporium because of the Japanese myth of them eating dreams (like the Pokemon Hypno or Munna), but the devs realised only Japan thinks this way. While in a dream town, you can also find Wendell, the starving artist, and he will give you a pattern from that player's town.
• Club 444: Club 444 serves two purposes. In the day time, it is where you can visit Doctor Shrunk to obtain new emotions by giving him presents such as an apple. Apparently you can also interact with Dr. Shrunk during his shows as well. Interestingly, you can now carry ALL the emotions at once and are no longer limited to just four. On some evenings, Club 444 transforms into KK Sliders stage. He will perform songs to you, but afterwards will offer to become “DJ KK”. As a DJ he will play upbeat music with remixes of his own work as well as remixes of music from old NES games. Your players will dance if you keep them still while he is DJ'ing. KK Slider will now have unique album covers for his songs. These can be placed as items in the house or hung on walls.
• Garden Shop: The Garden Shop is run by a sloth. He will sell you flowers, watering cans, saplings, and even shrubs that will grow into hedges. His shop will expand, along with Timmy and Tommy's. Reiji the Lazy Sloth owner of the garden shop was decided because sloths live in the forest and they thought a forest animal would suit that shop. Since the shop owner is so...well, lazy, he might not even be in the store during working hours.
The Streetpass Plaza
• Directly above the shopping area is a brand new part of town that will contain different houses belonging to players that you streetpass with.
• There are three blocks with 16 spaces in them. So you could end up with 48 houses in the Plaza.
• You will also see the characters who own those houses roaming around this area. They will typically be carrying an item such as a pinwheel, a balloon or an ice cream cone. These items can be obtained by speaking with them.
• The StreetPass dog is named Kent, and is your secretary's brother.
The Island and Wifi Games
• The island is a new area which you can visit by speaking to Kapp'n who you can find in his boat at the dock. The dock can be accessed from your beach.
• If you have friends over for Wifi, all of you can visit the island together in order to play games.
• The island contains coconut trees, bugs, and fish. It is not known whether or not there will be fish or bug exclusive to the island.
• Located on the island is the dock building. This building houses three different kappas, two of which sell tropical items and one who will set up wifi games for you.
• Wifi games are brand new for AC:3DS. In the past, it was up to the players to come up with their own games for their friends to play over wifi. Now, the game has some built right in!
• A retired Tortimer is now found on the island, hosting these mini-games.
• The Maze Game: Players will have to dash through a large hedge maze with hibiscus flowers, in search of specific fruits. The first to collect all their fruits and bring them to Tortimer will win.
• The Hammer Game: Players will rush to hit a moving target with hammer. The moving target is Cornimer's acorn head from Wild World and it sits on a remote control car.
• The Island will have a lot more mini-games to choose from other than the two we know about.
• You can play games by yourself, with others over Wifi and also with friends who are visiting your town.
• You can't spend bells on the island. By playing mini-games, you can earn medals which you can then use to buy items from the gift shop on the island.
• The island will always be set in summer time.
• You get your first bathing suit from the island.
• Once you get your bathing suit, you can go swimming and diving. While swimming, you may encounter dark circles that you may dive for in hopes of finding certain sea creatures or treasure that you can't obtain through regular fishing.
• When going to the island you can have Kapp'n sing a song on the way there or not.
• When playing mini-games on the island or leaving the island, you must put all your items in the box next to the counter inside the hut. Otherwise they'll disappear or you can't play the mini-games.
• You can rent things like swim suits, tools, etc.
• It is possible to take the fruits that you get on the different islands that the minigames are placed on.
• You achieve most items on the island by buying them with medals you get from the mini-games.
• There are also fishing and bug-catching mini-games that can be played on the island.
Holidays
• Various items belonging to a particular holiday set are sold at Timmy and Tommy's during the time around that holiday.
• Harvest Festival: Franklin returns for the Harvest Festival as a chef, since Tortimer is now gone. The object of the Harvest Festival is to collect various ingredients for Franklin, which can range from fish to fruit to actual ingredients like wheat. You can get some of the ingredients by trading with the villagers that are dressed up as chefs.
• Christmas Eve: During the month of December, your various villagers will mention about what they want for Christmas. Its up to you to collect this information for future use because it will surely come in handy. Then you'll need to get the Santa outfit (hat, beard, pants, shirt, and boots) ready for Christmas Eve (Dec. 24th). On that day, Jingle is in your town and is looking for help in delivering gifts and picks you since you're dressed for the part! He'll give you a white sack with various gifts. Now you have to go to your villagers and give them what they said earlier in the month on what they wanted. It seems that the villagers will let you know if they like it or not like it. If you do real well helping Jingle, Jingle will send you a Jingle portrait in the mail within the next few days as a gift of thanks. If you don't do too well, you'll get a wreath in the mail, that can be hung on the wall.
• Valentine's Day: You can receive gifts in the mail only if you play on Valentine's Day. You can get letters from Isabelle, Mom, and a villager of the opposite gender. Mom can give you either cocoa or a knit sweater. Males get a brown knit, while girls can get a white knit. Depending on how close you are to the villager, you can get a purple rose, pink rose, or chocolate heart.
• New Year's Eve: There is a countdown at the town tree. There are lights all around and a fieworks show at midnight. Redd sets up a booth and sells New Year hats, which have a different color each year, as well as other things. Apparently at some point you are given "year-crossing" soba noodles, which may only be in the Japanese version of the game.
• New Year's Day: There is a gathering at the town with pose boards. You are given a statue to represent the particular year's Chinese zodiac animal, though that may be regional to Japan.
• Setsubun: This is likely a holiday only in Japan. You can throw beans to celebrate with your villagers, and you'll also get either a red or blue ogre mask.
• Festivale: You have to collect feathers with your net. A shimmery peacock character tells you what color to collect. If you get the wrong colors, villagers will trade feathers with you. There are also There are mini-games: "Charade," "Rock-Paper-Scissors," and "Feather Replacement". You can exchange feathers for pieces of the Pavé series.
Other
• The chimneys of houses will spew out different shaped smoke. Clouds will also occasionally form shapes, such as stars.
• There is a new item called the Megaphone which you can use to shout out an animals name. The villager will hear their name, and will respond with a speech bubble that will give you a clue as to where they are. This is similar to how text bubbles work over wifi in City Folk.
• Items can now be hung on the wall.
• When making patterns, you are still restricted to 16 colours per palette. However, you may choose which 16 colours you want in your palette. This will enable a much greater variety of patterns. Further, QR codes will enable easy pattern sharing.
• Katrina and Redd return as Special Villagers (as opposed to having a permanent store somewhere). Sahara, and Wendell will also return.
• Real world holidays are back, such as Halloween and Christmas.
• Birthday parties are back. These were last seen in Wild World and seem to be a much bigger occasion with a surprise party for your character too.
• Fortune Cookies are sold at the Nooks store run by Timmy and Tommy. You can purchase one for 2 play coins.
• Everyday, there will be a fake rock that appears in your down. If you hit it with a shovel and break it, you will find a crystal.
• Miniature fossil displays appear in the game.
• After a tournament, there is a ceremony for the participants in Chip's tent and this includes a trophy presentation for the top 3 places.
• About 1.5 the amount of furniture found in City Folk. Not just filler, but items people would want to use in their homes. If you’re not good at design, you can easily just repaint/refurbish things in a solid color.
• For online functions, not only can you do stuff with 3DS friends, there is stuff you can only do with those registered as best friends. Best Friends don’t have to be system friends. For people playing on the same cart who don’t want the system code to be shared with people they don’t know. You can exchange chat messages with Best Friends even if they aren’t in your village, but they are online. Great for turnips and fishing tournaments!
• The developers worked with localization teams to create items. Like a plate of 12 grapes for the Spanish New Year. Thus some items are region specific. If you visit a friend’s village in that region during the right time, you can buy these items.
• New DLC is already being released, the first being special 7-Eleven themed items. Currentyl, in Japan, you can now visit a 7-Eleven store and connect to the Nintendo Network, letting you download 7-Eleven themed furniture onto your game. New furniture to the theme will be available each month.
• You can visit Nintendo's town via the Dream Emporium and apparently they have special items you can obtain there.
• Fruit is now stackable, up to nine pieces of fruit per stack. This stack will actually be a basket of fruit that you can drop.
• Storage devices, like dressers and wardrobes are still linked, but there seems to be three separate sections, each with six pages, and ten slots per page.
• Snowflakes can be caught with a net. These snowflakes will sell for 500 bells or can be given to the Snowman in exchange for Snowman furniture.
• You will be charged if you try to sell trash (boots, tires, cans) at R Parker's.
• On your birthday, you will be invited to a villager's house. There you can blow some candles by blowing in the the 3DS microphone.
• Building snowmen has returned to ACNL, but now there are four types of snowmen: mom, dad, older brother, and baby. The type of snowman that you get depends on the size you make the snowman. The SnowMom will accept snowflakes in exchange for ice series furniture. Seems if you make her perfect, it will only take 3 snowflakes per furniture; 5 for not perfect. For SnowDad you can play bingo with for pieces from the ski series. Broman is the Snowman from previous games. If you make him perfectly, he will send you snowman series furniture in the mail. If you make all 4, including the Snow Baby, you will get Snowman Russian nesting dolls in the mail the next day.
• Floating balloon presents can be caught with a net if it is in range on the edge of a cliff.
• There are many brand new furniture series, including a balloon set, an ice set, a bug set, and a fish set.
• A chart of seafood (things you catch from diving) can be found
here.
• You can now send singing postcards to people. They come one-a-pack, and you can start to buy them after the second upgrade of the store. The item looks kinda like a postcard with the frog from the town tune. The song part works the same as the town tune, and you write a message to go with it. When the other person opens it, it plays the song to them as they read it.
• If you have a good eye, you might be able to discern whether Redd's paintings and sculptures are real or fake. There seem to be slight differences.
• If you choose to work for Brewster, you have to ask your customer how they like your coffee and take their clues to make the right blends. Eventually, if you do well, you get a café outfit shirt.
• If you get ahold of a super mushroom, try eating it! You will grow large for a few seconds. Super mushrooms can be found in Nintendo Village. You can actually grow a super mushrooms in your town too. They can occasionally spawn on any special stump of a tree chopped down by a silver or golden axe.
