How Animal Crossing: Wild World breaks down the housing market
Animal Crossing: Wild World (2006)
Animal Crossing: Wild World (2006)
Almost every bet or prediction I’ve ever made in my life has turned out to be a turkey, you know, which is why I don’t go to betting shops, I don’t play the lotto - I don’t even converse with people about the weather anymore.
But I never know when I’m beat. I’ve been predicting, or perhaps more accurately praying, for a drop in house prices for, oh, almost ten years. But oh no, every force in the housing market is out to get old Burkey, so up those house prices go.
It’s not that I have to work so many hours a day to pay for the house that gets me, even though that’s galling enough. It’s the fact that I’ll have to either work for 35 more years just to stand a chance at paying the mortgage off, or I’ll actually have to try a leg and work harder to get better jobs and promotions. And even if I did the latter, where would my personal and social life be if I took a job with proper rude wages? I’ve got appearances to keep up too, you know, many of them drunken in nature.
Is that enough woe-is-me and self-pity for you? No, but I’m serious here, the house prices are nuts. Gone are the days that one modest income could buy a decent house, and have it paid off in a dozen years, en route to getting up on the high horse and riding off to an early retirement.
Now we’re talking about houses several times your combined salary, if you’re lucky enough to have someone to combine it with, that is. And you absolutely must buy a house, because there is no alternative.
Renting a house? You could try it, by all means, but the prices would make your eyes water. How come property prices never make your mouth water instead? Or make you dry your eyes in pleasant disbelief.
How does at least 1,500 clams per month sound to you? You’ll be getting a badly antiquated house, with several leaks, and floors that are more silverfish than surface. And that’s 1,500 if you’re lucky. Try the guts of two grand if you want a locale that ain’t swimming with teenage pondscum.
You might fancy an apartment instead, because they’re greener, more centralised, and supposedly cheaper. Well they're definitely a bit cheaper than houses, but you’re completely forgoing a front and back garden.
Somewhat tempting I’ll admit, not having to cut the grass. But answer me this, family men: where are your eventual children gonna play? In the piss-soaked stairwell maybe? Or the syringe-littered lift that’s long since given up the ghost?
And what happens if you get stung like Frank Grimes, sandwiched between two bowling alleys and hating life? You can't choose your neighbours, true, but if you’ve got the means then you can at least choose a detached house, and not have to endure the hatchet faced woman in the upstairs apartment doing the Riverdance with her high heels.
I can understand renting an apartment, especially if you have to. But Christ, you should see some of the dives they try to spin out for 1,350 a month or more. And it’s all supply and demand of course, many punters will pay four figures to stay in conditions that would have humbled Stuart Little.
You do see some funny ones being advertised, although funny’s not really the word. I don’t quite know what the exact word is, some combination of squalid, grim and depressing more like. As an example, I’ve borne witness to the most cramped room in Dublin.
The advertisement did not happen to divulge the total square metres. But of course, it featured a dreadfully 1970s carpet as standard. The health and safety was straight from the 1970s as well, a fact that was well illustrated by the single bed. It had to be a single bed, of course - lay down a double bed and the “kitchenette” would have to go. But anyway, in lieu of a headboard, directly behind the bed was an honest-to-God fireplace.
Perhaps you could switch it on and peacefully commit suicide by boiling your head? Or you could enjoy a midnight snack of coal. And what happens at Christmas? I’m just picturing Santa coming down the chimney at speed, only to be headed off at the pass by your screaming face, like Homer Simpson when he was stuck in the waterslide.
There was another one I saw that just sent me into proper belly laughs - one of the few photos they provided showed a toilet, plonked right beside a sliding glass door. All the neighbours and wildlife get to see you pinching one off. How great is that?! Shouldn’t you be the one getting paid for putting on a scat show like that?!
Let’s hope flamboyant faecal fiestas aren’t the order of the day in your Animal Crossing town, although if you want to barge into your fellow villagers’ houses and take a load off on their bogs, you are perfectly free to do so.
This is Animal Crossing: Wild World for DS. You know, I always have the Animal Crossing games down as megasellers, and I suppose they are, but it wasn’t until New Horizons that the series really went stratospheric. Still, the previous entries did their business as well (that’s enough poo jokes), and an Animal Crossing game on the DS was always gonna sell big.
It’s Animal Crossing in portable format, as well as online for the first time. That’s enough to make your mouth water, although what might make you tear up again is the fact that the old Nintendo online is dead, and this game’s claim to portable fame is old news. But what was Wild World like back in the day, when everyone was buying DSes and retro game prices hadn’t gone through the roof, way ahead of inflation?
Well, it’s a bite-sized version of the N64 / GameCube version of the game, but with even more stripped back graphics, if you can believe that. Actually what does annoy me about this game is the teensy-tiny thin font when speaking with whatever ten villagers you’re coerced into living with. But no matter, who talks to the neighbours in the days of internet and Netflix anyway?
You’re better off amusing yourself with those Animal Crossing staples, like a bit of fishing, a spot of bug catching, that sort of thing. It always sounds absolutely mule when written down, but somehow become so compelling when you actually sit down and play for yourself. Generally you’ll be running around your town like a headless chicken, because you’ll always have something to do and somewhere to go, even in the dead of night.
The original Animal Crossing needed a console, a controller, a telly, and some electricity, which is more than some apartments on the market can offer. Wild World meanwhile is the game you can take anywhere with you, or hide underneath your pillow when your mother comes in. Running around in WW can make me nauseous though. I don’t know what it is, but the cylinder world in this game is a bit wild, which must be where the wild world subtitle comes from.
But what it’s all about, in the end, is sourcing enough cash to pay off your mortgage, plus several extensions. Animal Crossing doesn’t have many goals, but this is the main one. It’s up to you whether you’ll find this slavery to the bank of Tom Nook fun or not, but all I can do is sigh and lament the fact of life that you really will never have enough, no matter how many Bells you earn. It’s little wonder the word “mortgage” contains the French word for death.
If I were you, I’d become the worst tenant in the world. Trash the place, make enemies of the neighbours, pay Tom Nook back on the never-never, and generally strike one back on behalf of renters everywhere. God knows we renters and buyers need someone on our sides. Just wait until you get a mortgage of your own though, and see how drastically your societal outlook and voting habits change.
Play your cards right and you could even become a buy-to-let vulture. Pretty grisly stuff though. If the real world of property gets a bit too overwhelming for you, and I know it does for me, then perhaps a trip back to classic, colourful and non-cynical Animal Crossing on your DS will be just the ticket for you.
22 August 2023