Animal Crossing was originally a lot darker.

Chapter 1: The Find

A lot of people probably remember the classic Animal Crossing game first released for the N64 before later being enhanced slightly for the GameCube. Ever since its initial release in 2001, it's become a widely popular game franchise, spawning spin-offs, sequels, and a lot of merchandise. The series is well known for being relatively family-friendly, but what a lot of people don't know is that the game was originally being designed for the N64, and it was originally planned to be a lot darker than the released version.

You might be wondering how I know this, and likely more than that how you can trust me. While I can tell you how I found out about it, I sadly do not have much more evidence than my word and a few assorted pictures my friend sent me. But, I'm getting ahead of myself. Let me explain to you how with the help of a friend I learned more than I ever needed to know about the early development of Animal Crossing, and why it was rebranded and remade later on in its development. Our story begins last summer, specifically around June of 2021. For a few years now I've dedicated some of my time to collecting older games and consoles as well as learning more about the development of some of my favorite series. Sometimes this can be admittedly really boring, but other times I can find myself sinking down a rabbit hole, one of which seems to get weirder the further down I go. This is one of those times.

My friend, (Who for the sake of anonymity I will refer to as Nick, but keep in mind this isn't really his name) has been living in Japan for the past few years, it's something he's wanted to do for a long time and in about 2018 he was offered a career opportunity he just couldn't pass up. I won't dwell too much on that, but I will say that the move actually turned out to be really beneficial for me and my hobby too. Whenever he got the chance he would explore around, and sometimes find a shop that carried older or rare games. Usually, these were way out of both of our price ranges but, sometimes we'd get lucky and find one for cheap, he'd send me it for my collection and I'd pay him back for it. This went on for a while, but in 2020 due to the ever-present problem that was the pandemic, he found it really difficult to mail anything out of the country. Despite that Nick still kept an eye out for any game that seemed rare or unique.

And that paid off because one day, he did. On July 6th, 2021 He was searching around the usual shops, looking to see if he had missed anything. When in one, he found an old box tucked under one of the tables. It had collected dust over the years, clearly whoever had put it there hadn't moved it since. But, despite that it overall seemed like a normal box, simply filled with stock which the store had yet to put up, or had forgotten to put up. Controllers, empty game boxes, and disks all sat together, seemingly a pile of junk but something about it intrigued Nick, he told me that he just had a weird feeling about it. So, he pulled it out from under the table and lightly dusted it off. There wasn't a price on it or anything but he had to ask, so he took the box to the front and asked the cashier how much they'd take for it. Usually, they wouldn't sell anything that didn't have a price on it but this seemed to be one of those rare instances where they did, they told Nick he could have it for only around ¥500. Roughly around 4 or 5 dollars USD.

At first it seemed kind of weird for the price to be that low, but in retrospect it makes sense, again the box looked like nothing but junk, and the cashier was likely just happy to get rid of it. Either way, Nick was now in possession of this little, dusty, old box filled with various game related items, and he took it home with him planning on sorting through it later. When he got home, he called me and told me about his find, while I was generally uninterested at first, I thought Nick had really just wasted his money on it even if it wasn't much, when he began talking about the contents of the box I started getting a little hopeful that we might've been able to find a hidden gem through all of the junk. And find a hidden gem we did. While we were on the phone, I heard Nick make a noise which told me he was intrigued by something, or at least confused. He told me to hold on for a second, he was going to video-call me. We hung up, and after re-calling me, now with a live video feed on his end, he showed me the box, and what he had been so confused about. At the bottom, underneath all of the other items, there was an N64 cartridge, but it was clearly not a normal one. It was taller than most retail cartridges, and it was colored light green. Part of the cartridge board was even sticking out of the top, and not in the case but it was still clearly attached.

This really intrigued me, because if you've ever seen a picture of a development cartridge for the N64 they look very similar, they aren't as small as the retail cartridges. I asked Nick to take it out and he did, flipping it around to find a white label stuck onto the front of it, with some Japanese writing on it, which could be roughly translated to "Forest Game". That alone didn't give me or Nick any real clue on what it was, but it certainly was exciting. We knew that if this was legitimate, we would have a development copy of an N64 game that, possibly, nobody had seen before. But there was an issue, Nick didn't have an N64 with him, that was my thing and while he helped me collect the games he didn't have the same hobbies as me when it came to collecting retro consoles and such. But, he was just as intrigued at what could be on the cartridge as I was. We both agreed that the next day Nick would go out and try and buy an N64, surely someone sold one. If he found one, we would try and play whatever was on the cartridge.