Animal Crossing: New Leaf Heads West This June

During this morning’s Nintendo Direct presentation Bill Trinen announced that Animal Crossing: New Leaf will finally be released for the 3DS in North America on June 9th, and across Europe on June 14th.

Trinen also commented a little on the basic structure of New Leaf, and made sure to point out a few new additions that make it the “definitive version of Animal Crossing“. By far, the best change to the game occurs as soon as your character arrives in the new town.

In past AC games the initial start up period required you complete a seemingly endless list of errands for Tom Nook before you could actually play the game. New Leaf ditches that entire set up and has you become Mayor of the town as soon as you move in. The only thing you need to do is to pick a place to build your house and then plant a “memorial tree” in the town plaza. After that you are free to make like Humpty Hump and “Do What Cha Like”.

Who says dreams can’t come true?

Bill Trinen also mentioned that there will be one new feature that is unique to the North American version of the game. Sadly, he did not reveal exactly what that feature is, however, he did seem to hint that it was online-related in some way.

Nintendo released Animal Crossing: New Leaf in Japan (where it is titled Animal Crossing: Jump Out) in November 2012. The game quickly sold out at launch and has since gone on to become the best-selling 3DS game in the country, with life-to-date sales topping 2.5 million copies as of February 10th. So, it’s safe to say that this is going to be one of Nintendo’s flagship titles for the 3DS this year.

Personally, I am both excited for Animal Crossing: New Leaf‘s North American release and dreading the day that it actually hits retail shelves. I’m easily sucked into collect-a-thon type games, and the Animal Crossing series has a history of eating up all my free time as I obsessively search for some random item that I need to complete a set of furniture that I don’t even like. It’s both incredible fun, and down right maddening at the same time!