Sunday morning is the day the Sow Joan comes and sells turnips. Turnips for you to buy, and sell on the Stalk Market, hopefully for a huge profit. You may notice that “Sow Joan” sounds like “Dow Jones” and “Stalk” is like “Stock”. This is no coincidence. After searching the whole of Cheese three times, I finally found here. I had enough bells to buy 90 turnips at 104 bells each, which is a bit more than I was hoping …

I completed this many years ago on the Amiga, and thought it was pretty good back then. I’ve just been playing (and completing) it on Capcom Classics Collection on the Xbox, and the arcade version is about ten billion times better. The controls, the animation, the sound – everything. I suppose that’s what you’d expect, but still… Anyway, the final boss was actually one of the easier ones in the game. Three Andores at the same time, with assorted fat …

More fishing and stuff. I’m back up to about 9,000 bells now, which should get me a few turnips if nothing else. Went over to see Richard, and was soon joined by Rev and Satsuma. We waited until 8pm, for K.K. Slider to show up in the café under the museum, but he didn’t. Then the game kicked me out. Luckily, I didn’t lose anything, and back in Cheese K.K. was ready to play for me. He gave me a …

Yes, well. I went back to Classic Mode, and finished it off. The rest of the game was pretty easy – even getting 1,500,000 points on the final “The Triangle” level wasn’t too hard. Nothing as hard as Downhill Jam, anyway. Levels along the way included Los Angeles and Canada (from THPS3) and Boston. It was a bit bizarre playing through all the old levels again.

Fishing and shell collecting again. I’m sure you’ll spot a trend occuring in these posts about Animal Crossing, you know. Bumped into Lyle, a slimey little man in cahoots with dodgy geezer Crazy Redd. Lyle forced me to buy insurance for 3000 bells. I don’t really know what that will mean, now, but I don’t expect to ever get my money back. Also saw Apollo, an eagle who has moved into my town. He’s was “on patrol”, “protecting the innocents …

It seems I wasn’t quite as close to the end of the game as I’d thought. There was actually more to do in Skatopia. Bam had to trigger five sets of giant fireworks by doing assorted tricks on them (the giant roman candle and the stacked boxes being the hardest), and after that I had to skate Tony from the top of the level to the bottom, collecting dogs on the way. Yes, really. And that STILL wasn’t all – …

Fishing, collecting shells, digging up fossils, talking to animals. That’s pretty much all you do in Animal Crossing. Every day. And it is BEST. Today, I planted some more trees with the fruit I’d gained from other towns, and dug up a Tall Gongaloid, or something with an equally stupid name. Didn’t earn much in the way of Bells (AC‘s currency), so I didn’t knock much off my mortgage.

Skatopia done! Almost! Nearly! Probably. I managed to find two more characters, and complete a few more goals that I previously couldn’t do. That gave me enough points to move on to the next bit – fireworks with Bam. Didn’t get time to do that though, but hopefully that is all that is left.

Did a bit more fishing and shell collecting, and had a look in Nook’s to see if there was anything worth buying. There wasn’t. Got a letter from the HRA, but nothing else. Rubbish. Then I visited Rev again, and dug him some holes. He thought they were ACEBEST. Bless. I did bury a few things for him too. After that, it was all round to Richard’s, where I stole some of his cherries and gave him some oranges. And …

No visitors this evening, but I did make a snowman! And it spoke to me! And asked me to make a Snow Lady for him, which I couldn’t do as there were no more snowballs to roll up. Got a couple of letters, including one from Monique in Rev’s town, and another with a gift from Pinky, who obviously likes me again. Fished a bit, and gave the walrus bloke one of them. He gave me a Left Design. Which …

Just went back to Cheese briefly, to see if anyone had sent any letters in my town, or posted anything on the Bulletin Board. Rev had mentioned something about the Gorilla Mafia, but no letters. Sent one myself to Pinky, but then lost her trust when I opened and read a letter addressed to her from Stitches. She hates me now. Rubbish.

And so the life draining exercise of doing absolutely nothing of worth begins again. I spent three months, playing almost daily, on the Gamecube version of Animal Crossing, and this is just the same. Only with more to do, and online play. Firstly, I had the task of moving in, meeting Nook (and selling my soul to him, or something), then he employed me for a short while to meet everyone, deliver things, plant stuff, and that sort of thing. …

Finished off N’orlins, witch involved waking the dead again, and breaking some signs and jumping over rubish and mowing down zombies. And stuff. I then had to do a mini-challenge thing, with acid dropping from a helicopter and transferring over it again later. Luckily, it wasn’t too hard. After that, it was on to “Skatopia” (which is “skate-opia”, before you suggest something else). It’s not easy at all. After an hour, I’d managed 50/1000 points, and I can’t even see …

After Berlin was Australia (note it doesn’t tell you where in Australia), and amongst other things I got to ride a go-kart, set fire to some builders, scares some seagulls, and skate around as a guy with a barbeque stuck to his front and a parasol on his head. Then it was over to New Orleans (pre-flood, it seems) where I had to wake the dead, skate in Hell, and then scoot around as a Papa Lazarou-type character on a …

Gah. It seems that you can jump up and grab the top of the billboard, by holding down the R button, and then you can tag it while you hang there. Tch. I now have enough points to move on to the next city, but I might just try and get a few more here before doing so – I only have one more fag machine to destroy (them evil smoking Germans, eh?) and I’ve just found the “tourist trail” …