The Besties - The Besties 62 - All Animal Crossing, all the time

Episode Date: June 28, 2013

Welcome to the end of days. It's rare that all four Besties find themselves smitten by a single game, let alone one for weeks on end. And yet, that's just what has happened with Animal Crossing: New Leaf on 3DS. It has taken the quartet by storm, sucking up every day with talk of turnip prices and furniture sets. And it seems they're not alone. There have been more than a few requests for an all-Animal Crossing episode, and now we're delivering. Brace yourselves. 3:30 - Best example that Justin is a masochist 13:00 - Best heart-pounding moment of E3 19:00 - Halftime! 23:54 - Best boat ride 30:15- Best narrative in a video game ever Theme song by Ian Dorsch Get the show: Download MP3" Subscribe to the podcast (RSS) Subscribe on iTunes Get the full list of games (and other stuff) discussed at www.besties.fan. Want more episodes? Join us at patreon.com/thebesties for three bonus episodes each month!

Does anybody know where Brian went on vacation? Hairstville. Some beach in New Hampshire, I think. With hair like that, he's got to get some waves. With hair like that! When I think beaches, I think New Hampshire. Maybe they have great beaches. It feels like a trip through his past.

I'm enjoying his Twitter because everything's like, 58 years ago, I went through this Halloween tunnel. Now it's still here. In the town it never changes. You guys remember the Texaco Star Theater? Brian's my favorite Bradbury character.

He's gonna peel off his face and reveal he was a Martian all along. He is the closest we have to Mork. It got too mean. That was the meanness threshold. Calling him Mork? Yeah, you crossed it.

Who wouldn't want to be Mork? He was born out of an egg. Yeah. I don't think he was born out. I think that was his means of transport, not how he was birthed into the world. No, they come out of eggs. John Winters was born out of an egg, too.

Well, that was real life. You learned about that in his biography. My name is Justin McElroy, and I know the best thing in Animal Crossing of the week. My name is Griffin McElroy, and we just showed our hand a little bit. My name is Chris Plant, and IElroy. We just showed our hand a little bit. My name is Chris Plant and I'm here. My name is Russ Frushtick and I know the best game of the week.

That's so central. I've got to do the whole show with interruption. It's like those YouTube videos with the pleasure whispers that they do to put people to sleep. Pleasure. Pleasure. This is the besties where we compare the latest and greatest in games tech movies dance animal crossing animal crossing

this week we're gonna really drill down on animal crossing and just talk about animal crossing listen i know a lot of you guys are like what about the last of us that's an important groundbreaking game that you guys need to discuss given your um your sort of combative history with it we'll get there we'll get to it yeah but not this week not this week we thought we'd give you a bit more time to finish it so finish it but for this week we're going to talk about uh animal crossing um now animal crossing is a game that it... Well, I use that in the loosest sense of the word. We reviewed it on Polygon

and we don't do that for not games. Well, we've also discussed it on the show. Animal Crossing has had time on Besties before. Has it had enough time, though, is the question. It has had... So far, it has had less time than Neverwinter. Therefore, we thought we'd

give it a chance to surpass the only game griffin ever brings in um so animal crossing uh let's just like get deep into this um my best thing about animal crossing is the uh best example that I'm a masochist. And here it is. When I was in Animal Crossing, and I'm assuming if you haven't played Animal Crossing, you're not going to listen to this. They're definitely gone.

Okay. So I'm the Ellen Page of this podcast. You have to explain everything. Russ Froschek is angry that they stole his likeness for, for the character of the pelican who delivers your mail. Oh, I thought you meant Snowden. Because I look like Snowden.

You do look like that. Yeah, you do kind of. In Animal Crossing you have to, you're the mayor, but before you can start making big sweeping changes, you have to win over the populace, right? So you pull some weeds, post some dope shit on the message boards. Can we pause real quick?

I actually want to talk about the mayor thing because before we get too deep into it. It seems weird to me that you're riding this train, right? You're going into the village. Right. And some cat walks up to you and is like, hey, where are you going? And you're like, oh, I'm going to this village. I've never been there before. And the cat's like, hey, guess what?

You're the mayor now. Well, the cat doesn't doesn't do that no he just wants to know your name yeah who declares that you're mayor you you get off the train roll up yeah yeah and everybody's like welcome mayor because they're confused because the mayor didn't get on that train which begs because they're they're fucking animals yeah okay but is it like hud sucker proxyxy where they want you to tank the town so they can then sell it for cheap? Yeah, so they can burn it. Wow, thanks for spoiling Hudsucker Proxy.

I was gonna get to it. It's on my Netflix queue. I was gonna get to it this weekend. Everybody thought they only had to worry about Animal Crossing spoilers, and then this asshole rolled into town on the train. Comes ruining them. So once you become the mayor by winning over your populace

by giving them gifts and writing notes to them and emailing them, you are given the ability to make sweeping changes to your town that you're the mayor of. So when I made my very first thing, the very first thing that I could do once I became full in-control mayor of Neo-Tokyo was to build,

the first thing I did was I decided to rebuild the Resetti Center. The Resetti Surveillance Center, which has kind of a creepy Prism-esque quality to it. If you don't know Resetti, he's a mole that watches you play Animal Crossing forever, and that's his life sentence. And if Resetti sees you turn off Animal Crossing

without saving it, he comes for you. He is not happy. He's very, very upset. But for some reason, with an economic downturn before Animal Crossing New Leaf, Resetti has been, he's lost his job, basically, and just working on a volunteer basis. But you, in your power as mayor, can

rebuild him. You can put Resetti back in his tyrannical position as the overwatcher of your town. Or the underwatcher. The underwatcher of your town. He is... His center is the

absolute most expensive thing that you can do. That's not true. That I had the option to do. I have a question. And the only purpose that I know that it serves is that he will yell at me if I turn it off. That's it. Well, you can chill with him.

Yeah, you can get his photograph. Well, you can chill with him. Yeah, you can get his photograph. Guys, don't you think it's a mistake to have a mole running your surveillance center? Right. No. Think about that. He's leaking all of it back to Fils-Aimé.

No, he's your mole. Yeah, no, he's Fils-Aimé's mole. How do you think Fils-Aimé can have that money for those sweet bedsheets he's got? He's got nice bedsheets. Both in real life and in the game, I imagine. I imagine. I imagine he's got some hotel quality shit. We should note that Mr. Rossetti has been in every Animal Crossing game before New Leaf.

And as Justin mentioned, he is an optional aspect of New Leaf in the sense that he'll only appear after the first time if you build his house for him. His underground cave. His bunker. It's basically what you get for the 368,000 bells that you have to spend to rebuild this guy's center. What you get is a manhole. Yeah. There's a manhole. Well, and then you can go in and hang out with him and his uncle. It only opens up, as far as I can tell, on clear weather days when it rained yesterday for a very brief period of time after 8 p.m.

And then it opens up like the fucking hatch at the end of season one of Lost. Like a golden light, a mysterious light shoots forth from the ground and you're left to explore his info dungeon where he keeps all the data that's what i want to know is is he watching everybody in town too that's important to me i need that information to govern so interestingly enough uh there's been interviews with the creator of new leaf and they said that

the reason that he was made optional is because he really upset many children in previous games who didn't save and then were yelled at. He's the second scariest creature that occupies the Animal Crossing village, the first being Dr. Shrunk, the comedian nightclub owner, Axe Odle. And he yells and he screams and he gives you a tirade. He was actually very, I've only done it once. He was very forgiving.

Cause he was like, Hey dog, just real quick. Just wanted to stop in and just check and see what happened. Cause you just kind of vanished. And I just wanted to know what's up. And I was like, I'm sorry, Mr. Rosetti, my battery died. And he's like, totally cool. Totally cool. Totally cool.

Like I get it. Batteries don't last as long as they used to just be careful about it. And like, I took that to heart. But really it was out of fear of, like, how he was going to come back at me if I did it a second time. And he will. And he will. With a vengeance. Can we talk about how this game is kind of based on racial stereotypes? In what way?

Mr. Rossetti is obviously the New York Italian super who's like, hey, you're making too much noise. I get it. It's your birthday. You know, that's funny. It doesn't really sound like an Italian super to me, Plan. I think you could try a little harder. What? Who does it sound like?

I'm just saying the way you're delivering these lines doesn't sound very believable. No, no. I'm not going to do a patented Russ Frustik offend everyone voice. I'm just saying. You want to throw your weight into it. In previous Animal Crossing games, there was... Resetti would get so angry at you that he would actually, like, have... Force you to type in a text apology to him on your controller.

Which... Word for word, you would type exactly, exactly what you wanted him to say. And it was always like, I'm scum. I am a worm, and I'm so sorry, because moles eat worms. Yeah, and the fact of the matter is, he is by far the most convincing reason

I've ever seen in any game ever to save your progress. There's never been another game where I'm like, oh any game ever to save your progress. Like there's never been another game where I'm like, oh shit, I better save my progress or else. And he brings that to the table with his fury. Well, there's also the, um, fact that if you, if you, if your game turns off before you save all the shit that you did is done. So like during E3, that's when my battery died. I lost literally literally 20 flowers 20 of my flowers just died right on the spot right on the table well that's mr rossetti mr rossetti kind of a weird way to start talking about this it's sort of a weird intro point for a deep dive i did want

to say on my deep dive though i found this youtube clip when i was thinking about mr rossetti and i want and this was the last thing that Mr. Rossetti says to you. Like, the last dialogue he'll have with you. This is from the GameCube version, of course. And he says, Hey you idiot! I thought I made it clear to look at me when I'm talking to you. I said look at me! Now! And then you look at him and it zooms in real close and he says, I never noticed before, but you got some nice eyes. Yeah, real hypnotic.

Let me tell you something. This isn't about you personally, but more about the world in general. People see something they don't want to see and for whatever reason, they pretend they don't see nothing. People see a problem they don't want to deal with, they pretend they're too busy to be bothered. This sort of

tendency is spreading like a disease It's real tragic to say But that's the world we live in Doesn't that seem sort of all messed up to you? It's because of Mr. Rossetti That Domo was struck down in Supreme Court today Thank you Mr. Rossetti Thank you Mr. Rossetti for being the spark

Of activism That Wendy Davis needed To stand up and deliver the filibuster that she delivered I'm not saying that's 100% of the reason why Davis needed to stand up and deliver the film to us so that she delivered. I'm not saying that's 100% of the reason why she did it. I want to talk about Cap'n. Who's Cap'n? Can we talk about something a little bit more mechanical instead of just how much we like these different characters?

Oh, okay. No, I would love to talk about something boring. We could talk about something mechanical that I experienced. Biggest cap in, come on, who cares? Let's get to cap in, but I'm saying let's just take a quick mechanical. Yeah, we'll take a breather. So we were all at E3. We all know that E3 is a bit of a stressful time.

I maybe had about a half hour free each day during E3. Maybe a little less. And in that time, I'd check my email. I'd make some phone calls I needed to make. And then one day, I had about six minutes left. There was a shoot going on at noon. It was 11.54. And I casually go, and I'm like,

hey, I've got a bunch of turnips that I bought at the beginning of the week. What are the prices at? You bought turnips knowing that you were in for the busiest week of the year, thinking like, oh, I'll have ample time to exchange. Money never sleeps. Didn't you see that movie?

Money does sleep during E3. Money takes a hefty week-long hibernation nap. Nope, definitely not. Well, anyway, I bought a crap about 5,000 turnips before E3. So it's six minutes to noon, and I check my turnip prices just casually. I'm like, well, whatever. I just want to see what it's trending towards. And it's at like $2.88.

Ooh. And I don't know how many listeners out there know, but the turnip prices actually change once a day at noon. So they'll be different in the morning and different in the afternoon. Also, I don't know how much of our listeners know that $2.88 is a hefty, a princely sum. Hella good. That's essentially like almost three times return on your money. So essentially, I was on the clock both editorially because I had to produce a show

in about six minutes and also if six minutes elapsed without me making a mad sprint through my Animal Crossing town I would lose out on this massive bail sum that I was hoping to gain literally the most intense six minutes of E3 was me sprinting. Did you do any...

I saw you look hurried and rushed in the meat space, in the physical zone. If you thought I looked hurried and rushed there, you did not understand the internal turmoil that I was going through as I sprinted with all my might through my town. The flowers that were just crushed. The flowers were just dashed. You just ran right through them, just fuck it. my might through my town. The flowers were just crushed. You just ran right through them. Just fuck it. I'll buy fucking 60 flowers

with the billions of bells I'm going to make. It was literal. And I had a curse that day. I don't know if you know. Oh yeah, so you're tripping and falling. So I kept tripping. It was straight up. Was the fucking 24 o'clock playing behind you?

Yeah. Chloe was giving me direct access to my cellular phone. I had to open packets. You get to retail, and fucking Tony Almeida blows it up. Yeah. Right in front of you. Cyrus is dead. What?

Cyrus died. Is Cyrus? Oh, the sheep? He's the llama that works he's the llama that works at retail yeah okay uh so so uh it really goes to show uh how intense these turnips can be and i and i think turnips um have become a big part of the social element of the game because invariably as everyone buys turnips uh the only time you can buy them is Sunday mornings. And then throughout the week, I mean, Griffin, you know, Plant, you know, I'm asking people, what are your turnip prices at? What are your turnip prices at?

Now, generally, I only stick to people that I know and trust. Did you find a rando uh no but someone on the podcast uh went on twitter and uh asked if anyone had good turnip prices and uh went and took advantage of a nice reader who had very good turnip prices who was that oh no who was that i think that was chris plant chris plant chris you dipped into you dipped your pin into the company ink? That's not what that means. Somebody may have been very kind and notified me that they had their turn up prices were like

$3.82 or something. Oh my god, yeah, you gotta capitalize on that. And I asked myself, I said, I'm not the type of person who just, you know, who does that sort of thing. Yeah yeah you don't just want it you don't want it and done it on a reader you don't hit it you don't hit it and quit it so to say you gotta be friends with them from now on here's what i did well one i'll i'll be of course

no you won't that's natural uh but two uh i went i i made my first million baby's first million on turnips uh did you then fall on a stool no oh sorry it was million dollar baby yeah thank you um and then i i went outside uh of his uh train station and i left one of each fruit i had and i left a few special uh fortune cookie prizes uh so this is this is important this is worth noting. So Chris Plant made over a million dollars in bells from this poor fraternal person. He made a million bells,

not a million dollars worth of bells because that would be infinity bells. True. But the person was so early in their development that they didn't even have any fruit in their town. And he's like, oh, you don't have any fruit? Here's some fruit. I'm going to just take this millions of bells with me did you

enjoy them off no no no 10 fucking finders i didn't give cash i didn't give a cash because i feel like giving cash is like and it's a little insulting you know it's a little trashy but what i did so you gave him trash no i gave him all those gifts that he needed, and I paid off his first public works project. How? In cash. How did you know how much it was? Because it told me when I went there, and I paid it off. Because Lloyd the Gyro will tell you that shit.

It was like $90,000. Wow, $90,000. $90,000 bells. Oh, my gosh. Yeah, it's happening. It's happened. We have crossed over so thoroughly into this world that its currency has a very real, very fungible place in our real lives.

Guys, can I tell you about something I did for halftime that involves Animal Crossing but also real life? Yeah, that sounds like a perfect plan. Wait, how are they different? So here's the thing. I am feeling really confident about my moves in the stock market. The turnip market. Yeah. So I've begun researching how to trade online,

and I opened my own online trading account thinking that it would be as easy to trade real stock. You're lying. I'm not lying. Wait a second. easy to trade real stock you're lying I'm not lying wait a second you're talking about

a secondary black market for turnips no no no what he's saying to you right now is perhaps more horrifying what he's saying is that he was so emboldened by his turnip trading acumen

he looked at the human stock market and said, ah, fuck, can't be that different. You are fucking kidding me. It's all green, right, baby? All green. You opened up an E-Trade, and that baby, his siren call was undeniable in those commercials, and you thought that, would you get Apple?

Because I guess you know shit about apples and it's like produce here's here's the problem so you know i was i needed to educate myself so first i listened to uh how stuff works on stocks oh my god no that's a good place to start wasn't enough i read i read stuff you should know so So, question though. Are you supposed to buy high? No, see, buy low. But it turns out there are a lot more options than just buying low. Yeah, you can't just search.

Why don't you just search low? It also turns out... You just search for nips. The only companies I know anything about are video game companies, which I can't invest in. No, you're not allowed to do that. So then I thought, you know, like, maybe I could get into, like, I don't know, like, furniture. Wait.

So I started researching. Wait, you literally started picking things from Animal Crossing that you could invest in? I started looking on Amazon for companies that were selling well. I could find them and invest in them. That is the saddest thing I've ever heard. I can't believe that no stock trading professional has ever thought to check before buying stocks to see how well a thing is selling. You are ahead of the fucking game there, Gordon Gekko. Oh, my.

So please tell me you pulled the trigger and bought something no so what i did is i met a person during a civic duty that i cannot talk about meeting anyone during who may or may not be involved in flipping micro transactions of stocks and i'm going to invest with him no that's a horrible idea no it's great that's the whiskiestactions of stocks and I'm going to invest with him. No, that's a horrible idea. No, it's great. That's the riskiest form of stocks. No, it's like flipping a house. It's all profit. Guys, trust me.

It's just like turnips. It's pretty much all like turnips. You could actually probably go on the stock market with an O and buy turnip futures in the way that you could buy frozen concentrated orange juice. Well, I thought about maybe doing that with honey because you know the bees are dying yeah so that's actually

a great idea value yeah right and then i'm gonna also invest in bees so if it works out either way double down yeah double down um it's like going in red and black no that's not how that works and then it just comes out like and honey would go up in value. If the bees were in numerous, then they'd go down in value. But he's saying he buys both sides of it, and then at the very worst, he'll be in the magenta. So the only thing he could buy on the other side of it is no bees.

Well, yeah, sure, I'll just hedge it. Guys, I know what hedge means now. I'm investing in, man, I hate bee stings. No more bees showing up. Bee repell in, man, I hate bee stings. No more bees showing up. Bee repellent. Well, that was an educating. No, bee repellent would be

if there were no bees, then bee repellent market would also go. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I really have to even it out. So maybe bee food? Yeah, do bee food. That'll work out great. Because if worse comes to worse, you can just eat the food. Yeah, that's true.

Plant, tell me about Kapp'n. Oh, God. Okay, so Kapp'n can make it happen. Kapp'n is the man who motors the boat. He drives the boat or steers the boat. What do you... Yeah, you steer a boat. Yeah, generally you steer one.

Sure. It's like an outboard motor. Yeah, from the shores of your town to an island um and the island is nice don't get me wrong and your town is nice don't get me wrong i still haven't been is the island like fresh yeah the island has mad beetles on it has lots of beetles you can make some big money if you want to if you want to break the game and not be a fun person you can cut down all the pine trees and stamp all the flowers and then harvest tons and tons of beetles because it'll only refresh beetles onto the island. I learned that from one of our engineers, unsurprisingly.

That's not the fun part, though. The fun part is the cap'n who sings to you when you take a boat ride from your town to the island. Yep. And the songs are little ukulele numbers and they touch my heart. I... Give us one. Well, I only know the beginning of one where it's like... So

his voice doesn't... It's not actually words, but the words on the bottom of the screen go along with kind of the noise. Sure, that's sort of Animal Crossing standard. It would be crazy if he was like, hey, girl, riding on my boat. But in, like, human English. Yeah, that would be weird. Because he's a turnip.

What is he, a turnip? Yes, he's a turnip. Please, okay, please. Just let me get to the island. You've been trying to sell him for weeks. Just let me get to the island and see clemency. Yeah, I just love him. You know, I can't recreate what he does.

We could, like, cut in the song, but that seems like a lot. No, we're not going to do that. No, it's too much editing. Here's the interesting thing about Kappen is that letting him sing his song takes at least four minutes of time. And it's so worth it. And one of the things about Animal Crossing is that every process that you do takes way, way longer than it should. For example, going to the store and buying a fortune cookie, eating that fortune cookie, reading the fortune inside, and then trading the fortune cookie in for the prize takes about 17 or 18 minutes.

It takes forever. I literally haven't gotten a new item in probably two weeks using that method, but I still do it every day. It is a colossal pain in the ass. And the fact of the matter is, with Kapp'n, it's the one instance where you can actually speed it up. Because as he starts singing, you can jam the B button, with Kapp'n, it's the one instance where you can actually speed it up.

Because as he starts singing, you can jam the B button. And why would you want to? And he'll be like, oh, you don't like my singing? Fuck no, Kapp'n, I want some Beatles. Yeah. And then you get to the island way faster. Especially when you're trying to make, like, several Beatle runs in one night because you're trying to make in those bells. Yeah.

That's gross. Just enjoy the game. Just a mechanical question. How do you guys enjoy the game a mechanical question how do you guys get like rare stuff let's move on to the pro tip section how do you get like rare bugs and oh that's i'm glad you asked justin so there's something called feng shui where you can arrange your house in such a way that'll increase your luck so for example more rare items will show up in the store um when it comes to fish and stuff like that there's no great way to do it uh if you know that a fish shows up in the lake at noon when it's

raining and it's raining and it's noon but he's not showing up sometimes i'll just do save and continue and it'll refresh the world and the fish might show up generally way to play this game generally though the island in general will have more expensive, like just the butterflies that are there and the beetles that are there and the fish in the water. They're typically worth more. You'll make Skrilla on the island. There are also games on the island that award their own currency, and they are not fun.

No, they're awful. But there are certain items that you can get on the island, like a wetsuit or a snorkel. I will say, as the person who reviewed the game for the site i i had it a month before like other people who i could play with had it um and there's an item you can get that lets you play those those mini games with uh with randos that'll do matchmaking so that was like my only form of contact with other animal crossing players is i would do matchmaking

and then sync up with like japanese players of the game who'd been on it for a while and it was very informative i made a lot of friends that way it wasn't like a mobo where they were like yelling at you that you weren't digging up the fossils fast enough yeah i mean i was trying to play it not all random all middle and so like they got they got pretty frustrated with me they said some pretty harsh things about my dps um but uh for the most part, it was a pleasant experience. Would you agree that all of those minigames are the opposite of fun? Some of them are kind of fun. When you play it with multiple people, it's more fun.

By yourself, yeah, it's kind of lame. There's a matching, like a memory game in there that I'm especially good at. Yeah, brought to you by 1983. I should have mentioned this when Plant was talking about his thing, but I did want to admit to you guys something. One of the characters in the game is a duck. I think he's a duck, right?

It washes up on the beach and he forgets where he's going. I think he's a pelican, right? Well, yeah, his name is Gulliver, so it's totally logical to think he's not a seagull. No, he's probably a seagull. So he's a seagull, and he forgot where he is going. He can't remember his destination, so he asks you for help,

and he gives you some geographic clues about where he was trying to get to. I've never missed one because I'm the greatest, but he mentioned one of the the country he was talking about was vietnam which i figured out later but he said they have a sweet uh coffee that is um that is uh you know sort of popular there that mixes uh condensed milk and a strong coffee wow that's actually actually that's fairly esoteric i didn't know about that and afterwards i started researching it i actually bought a fin filter wow justin i can't eat coffee and condensed milk i can't believe that you bought something random on amazon for no good goddamn reason

uh well i wanted to sample this delight that it seemed to enchant gulliver. Yeah. Justin? Yes? The first thing that was available in my recycle was a coconut tree that was, like, growing from the coconut, like a thin stalk growing from the coconut, and then I saw one in the shop right next to my house, and I made it, like, I grabbed it and then stuffed myself. Yeah, because you thought I should not save, I should save my money on this so that I can spend it in the stock market that Animal Crossing

inspired me to join up with. You are gonna lose the shirt off your fucking back, Chris Plant. Do you remember when I trash talked this game? Because I thought I would hate it because it's everything I don't traditionally like in a video game. Yeah, I wish we could cut in Chris Plant being a fucking snob about Animal

Crossing just to like do a little time travel. I'm sorry to give you more work, Griffin, but that would be pretty great. Can I talk about my thing? Yeah. My thing is the greatest narrative anyone's ever included in a video game before. Forget about all your Final Fantasies and your Lasts of Us and your Unch fantasies and your last of us and your uncharted and your bioshocks because this is this is the greatest narrative ever and it was authored by me accidentally it is my um queen of versailles decline into interior decorating madness um

i for a while was sitting pretty not only in terms of my finances which I showed off to everybody at E3 because I was so proud I had like almost 5 mil in the bank I was living large and simultaneously in charge and my neighbors loved me I tried to do at least

one favor for all my neighbors once a day partially because I genuinely care about them but also because I want to do at least one favor for all my neighbors once a day, partially because I, you know, I genuinely care about them. Um, but also because I want to get their pictures for the happy home Academy points that they would reward. Um,

and also because I have a very, uh, very complex road system built into my town. And whenever they move away, it's kind of hard to, to redesign it. Um, at some point during E3,

and I don't want to blame it entirely on russ but it's mostly russ's fault is i got this this um this bug in my butt yeah that my whole life had to be about your happy home academy hra baby which if you wait hhk if you if you don't know if you don't play you get points for how you decorate your house and there are certain things you can do to get those points but the biggest way is to collect full sets of furniture and for literally you know the past two and a half weeks however long it's been since e3 that has been my only ambition I have left my town to ruin and crumble. I have spent literally every dime I had, every bell that was in my bank account. Are weeds now sentient?

Are they, like, strangling people? My town is now run by weeds. No, it's a sorry state of affairs because my house is almost fully maximized. I've almost gotten every home extension. So like it's, it's cavernous. It's this cavernous Xanadu that is also very hollow. There's very little furniture in those places.

I've only completed like two sets and I have like six rooms. So there's, there's just a lot of space and not a lot of joy in those halls. It's kind of like the end of There Will Be Blood. Sure. It's just me. Do you have a bowling alley? It's just me.

No, I do have an arcade, but nobody to fucking play with it because I haven't talked. I've gotten to the point where I'll talk to my neighbors, and if you go too long without talking to one of them, they'll give you like a, oh, hey, I didn't know you were still around. Oh, really? You're still the mayor? Yeah. Really. I thought that you, I thought we were beefing, but I guess we're not.

So that's cool. Anyway, do you need anything? I had that happen today. Some elephant told me, it's been a week since we talked. I thought you were mad at me. Whatever. What's going on? I don't need that from, I don't need that from you.

It used to be like, hey, Griffin. Oh, man, what a great day. Let's cut some butterflies together. And now it's like, you've become so fucking materialistic and it's all that you care about. And I don't know how to talk to you anymore.

And you know what the funny thing is? The only reason that I'm sort of obsessed with that HHA score is because I just want to max it out to get all the unlocks, and then so I don't have to worry about my HHA score anymore so I can design my house however I want. So the fact that I can't just skip to that final step is insane. That's what I did. I just never worry about it. Yeah, I know. But my HHS score is through.

I wish I could be freed. I wish I could be freed from my materialistic shackles. I wish I could just go full Taoist. But I don't think it's going to happen anytime soon because I haven't even hit that 100k mark yet. And I've still got a long road to hoe even once I get to that point. Yeah, it's... i used to be i used to be

fucking mr smith goes to washington and now and now i'm like a total um citizen kane you know like as an expert on both these things i think you should play animal crossing like you play the stock market it's like a long game. I mean, you have a lot of things to see all year long. You don't have to get it all done right now. Kind of let it happen naturally. I mean, there are going to be ups and downs, sure. But, like, eventually cash out when it's high.

Wait, when it's high? How is that even remotely useful for, like, how I socialize with my Digi friends? You want to invest in your friends. Yeah, with talking, and then it pays out in photos of them. Sure. Do you guys play in 3D? No, if that is. The only thing I've noticed is that it's easier to catch bugs it

eats your battery no it doesn't it doesn't eat your battery no it's the same no it needs that it's like a it's like the person who is like no wonder your battery's always dying it's in 3d that sounds like me but no i don't remember saying that it's a great impression but um i i'm still kind of living in fear of the day in which and it's it's kind of the same fear that i accumulated when i was really into world of warcraft which is one of these played one of these days i'm gonna fucking stop playing this game and then it's basically i might as well just throw my 3d might as well throw all of my games down a well at that point because it's like how many hours did i did i give to you yeah well i know what you mean i've been tempted actually to just sort of i'm getting to a point that i actually get to an mmo's a lot where

it's like what am i doing see you think you know you think so fun you think i am fun to talk about but then you wake up one day and they're like guess what guys it's festival day collect feathers and then you fuck is that coming up damn straight it is mark your calendars i don't actually know but that's that's what happens with this game. You know, there's a surprise around every corner. And I would agree it's going to get to a point where I'm just going to have to stop. But the fact that, like, everyone around me is playing it just propels it even more. Just like an MMO.

Like, you feel like you want to stay caught up with people. The only thing that has pulled me away in terms of portable gaming has been hotline miami on vita oh yeah i can't and it's kind of amazing because they both have the same perspective but the transition from playing uh animal crossing the hotline is a little bit uh daunting because you can't help but notice like hey everyone has Oh, wait, but I'm bashing their brains into the ground. When you say perspective, you mean existential perspective. No, I mean, like, isometric. Oh, okay.

Doy. If we were a shitty TV show, this is when we would cut away to, like, a mashup we made. Yeah. Of the two. We are Griffin. That was good. Wow.

Yeah, thank you. Seth MacFarlane in here. Yeah. here yeah thanks guys that's all the celeb voices do you get how much long do you think you guys are going to play animal crossing i want to see all the seasons okay so this is what i this is my my play first of all you're not seeing all the seasons unless you time travel this is what i want to do uh right now my hha score is at like 180 so it's max you're trying to get to what like 250 no i'm trying i need to get all the house expansions and then it unlocks the theme challenge and the theme challenge has you like theming each room and getting a bunch of points for that once i do that i'm going to start worrying about public ordinances and uh works and i'm going to build the shit out of those, and then I'm going to blow my brains out

because I've wasted so much fucking time on this game. What ordinances are you guys rocking right now? I'm at Boomtown. Bell's Ordinance. All about the Bell's Ordinance. Yeah, Bell's. I still got that early bird. I got that early bird.

F that early bird. It's a waste. It's not because I wake up in the morning at 7 a.m., and I play the game for like 30 minutes. Dude, I sell everything for 20% more moolah. Right, but it's really not about the money. Even it's not about the money for me anymore it's all about it's all about the furniture well yeah it is by the way anyone has have any minimalist furniture i need some of that yep uh well i will check on that and uh i hope that you at home will check out Polygon.com.

It's a website we make every day full of video games, news, reviews, previews, the whole kit and caboodle. There's lots of Animal Crossing stuff on there if you want more of that. You can follow us on Twitter at Polygon, Facebook slash Polygon, YouTube slash Polygon. There's lots of other stuff. YouTube slash Polygon. There's lots of other stuff. Also, we should mention, if you're a reader and don't mind being abused by Chris Plant for your turnip prices,

he's fully capable of totally running you off the road for good prices. Yeah, no problem, man. We should also mention that if you're hearing this and you have good prices right now, please let me know, because I've managed to save up a couple hundo thou, and it's literally my last hope.

If my turnips ruin, I'll be ruined. I'll be done. You should play it, that's too risky, you should play it safe like Chris Plant and only play the real stock market. There's very little impact. Thank you so much for

joining us at home. Make sure you join us again next Friday for the Besties, because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best things? Besties!