The Time Traveler (Animal Crossing: City Folk)

When I first started playing Animal Crossing: City Folk I easily fell in love the simplicity and charm of the game. The problem with this was that wanting to play did not mean that I honestly had the time for it everyday...all day! I did not have the time to shake a town full of trees and water flowers everyday. I couldn't always buy turnips from Joan every Sunday or find old carpet early enough in the day to give three to Sahara. I quickly went from loving the game to resenting it. I resented that I had to play everyday and all times of the day to do the things I wanted to do or get the items I wanted.

Time travel was an easy solution to my problem. Sure, some people say that time travel is cheating. It would be one thing if I were time traveling in order to amass large amounts of money, but I really am not. I ended up time traveling backwards to Dec. 2007 which I admit seems somewhat random. The reason why I picked this time is because I started playing last Dec. and I did not want to play a month that I had not already played. I also missed a lot of in-game events due to family obligations and I wanted a chance to experience them. Why 2007? I was not sure how the game would react if I ended up playing at a date/time I had already played. Of course, I will eventually catch up to Dec. 2008. At this point I will have to take the time to skip forward at odd times of the day when I would not have already played (like 4am).

An important thing to mention is that in order to time travel I changed my Wii system clock date and time and not the in-game clock. This is very important for several reasons. The reason why this is important is because I routinely do not play the game for days or even a week at a time. This normally would have in-game consiquencies. So, everytime I go to play the game I change my Wii system clock back to the day after the last date I played. As long as you are moving forward from your last save, the game does not know that you have time traveled.

Ever since I have started time traveling I have relearned to love the game. I get to play on my time and not the game's. I do not have to play because "I have too" and I am free to do more important things first and play later. Even if some people feel that this is cheating, I think that it is more important to play a game in a way that makes it enjoyable.

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