With amiibo still selling strong across the world, Nintendo has announced another way for gamers to get their fix. Instead of having to track down expensive and hard to find figurines, players will soon be able to purchase amiibo Cards in order to access additional content.
Alongside the announcement of amiibo Cards, Nintendo also unveiled Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer, a spinoff of the popular village simulator. The title will be the first to make full use of the upcoming cards, which will unlock additional villagers for your neighborhood.
Unlike previous entries in the series, Happy Home Designer is not your traditional Animal Crossing release. Gone are menial tasks such as gardening and bug catching. Instead, the title focuses specifically on the player furnishing and decorating assorted villagers homes. Despite the open-ended nature of the franchise, players will have to design each home to the specifications of the villager, lest they incur their wrath.
Both Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer and amiibo Cards will make full use of the recently released New Nintendo 3DS XL’s NFC reader. However, owners of the Nintendo 3DS, 3DS XL, and 2DS won’t be left out in the cold by Nintendo. The company has announced plans to release a NFC reader/writer peripheral for the consoles later this year.
While I still haven’t fully gotten on the amiibo bandwagon yet, I am a pretty big fan of Animal Crossing, so consider me interested in this new release. Even if this iteration strips away the main draw, open-ended gaming, in favor of a more traditional style of play, there is just something about the series that speaks to me.
No official release date has been set for Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer or amiibo Cards, but both are expected to launch sometime this fall. We will continue to update you on both over the coming months.
