Why is it that every time I try to tell someone why Animal Crossing is so addictive and fun to play they look at me like I’m some kind of drug-addled idiot? I suppose it has something to do with the anthropomorphized animals inhabiting a town, fishing, bug catching, fossil hunting, fruit gathering and furniture collecting and arranging. But that doesn’t matter right now. Right now the game that can take over your home life has become the game that can take over your away-from-home life too. Nintendo has released Animal Crossing: Wild World for their DS handheld, and the results are not going to be pretty for those who want a life.

The first time you boot Animal Crossing: Wild World you will be prompted to set up you character and name a town – all while on the cab ride to the town. The driver, Kapp’n (Cube Animal Crossing fans will remember Kapp’n as the parrot that rowed them out to the island. "Ever spend any time in a Hyrulian prison?"), will ask a series of questions that the player answers in the affirmative or negative or types an answer with the stylus on the virtual keyboard. By the time the ride is over, your town is ready and you are dropped off in the strange world built for you.

In Animal Crossing you are a human among animals. But other than the look of their heads, these animals pretty much live like you and me. They have homes and go about the daily routines of their lives. They will interact with you by simply talking, giving tips about things they have "discovered", and every now and then challenging you to a contest. They are a chatty bunch. The town has a general store, clothing shop, town hall and museum. There are fruit trees, fish in the rivers and ocean, and plenty of insects buzzing about the trees. The town is also over some kind of fossil bed since the bones of extinct creatures keep breaking through the surface.

Your first contact in town is with Nook, a raccoon that runs the general store. Nook has a house for you to buy and all it will cost you is a little under 20,000 Bells (the currency of Animal Crossing), which you can pay off by becoming his indentured servent in the store. This sounds worse than it is. The time working with Nook the Crook becomes your tutorial as you learn the basics of living in your town. You’ll meet all the residents and get the hang of things as you do Nook’s fetch and carry jobs. Once you are through the tutorial, Nook unceremoniously lays you off with the admonishment that you still owe him money. Who says this isn’t like real life? (I suppose being a raccoon, Nook could send Sly Cooper over to muss you up if you didn’t pay.)

Luckily there are all kinds of ways to earn money in the town. Nook will pretty much buy anything you bring to him. You can shake the trees and collect the fruit that is dislodged. Angling yields numerous varieties of fish that vary widely in price. Insects can be netted and fossils dug from the ground. Taken to Nook it all yields bells for the mortgage and anything you need to buy like a fishing pole, shovel, axe, slingshot and a wide variety of household goods, which you’ll collect to furnish your house in a pleasing manner.

Up to this point there is little difference between Animal Crossing: Wild World and the original 2002 GameCube version. But, as you move into the game further, the play experience changes a bit. In Animal Crossing every town is unique. Different towns have different items to collect, and visiting another town might be the only way you’ll ever complete a collection you’ve been working on. In the Cube version you could visit towns other than your own by having your town memory card in slot #1and another town memory card in slot #2 of the console. It was not uncommon for hardcore (read "severely obsessed") players to have three and more towns going at once on separate memory cards to have the best opportunity to collect items.

Luckily that is a thing of the past. Now, through the miracle of WiFi, you can visit other Animal Crossing towns from across the room or around the world and never even leave your seat. Nintendo’s WiFi support makes it possible to invite friends to visit your town or visit their town by exchanging Friend Codes and then arranging for a time to meet. Then you can wander the new town and pick up anything that may not be offered in your own domicile. There is even limited chat through the virtual keyboard on the touch screen. There is no doubt the WiFi support is going to change the economies and playing experience of the average Animal Crossing player. It is also the single best reason I can think of to add a wireless router to your home computer if you do not already have one.

The other major change is one I am less enamored with: the way multiple players are handled. In the original Animal Crossing up to four humans could take turns playing in a town. Each had his own house in a special suburb within the town. This left the individual free to make all the decisions about his house. In Wild World things are a little different: all the human players share one house. This means the space is shared and one peckerhead can louse things up for everyone. That of course would be me since my sense of style is the only one that counts. Space is limited in the house and I want my stuff where I put it and no little dip moving it about while I’m asleep.

Animal Crossing is only a video game in the loosest sense of the term. It is best simply classified as interactive entertainment. Like The Sims, there is no win or lose in Animal Crossing. It is simply life. Within that life there can be small victories and a sense of accomplishment or even failure and missed opportunities. And while to some gamers it may sound bazaar and even downright boring, there is a special quality about experiencing life in an Animal Crossing town. After a day of stress, meet the dog that lives just over the bridge to engage in a friendly fishing contest. Or perhaps chat up the feline that lives a little north of your house. It is all very relaxing and you’ll find hours slipping away before you know it.

At its core, Animal Crossing: Wild World has not strayed far from the gameplay conventions that made the original such a critically-acclaimed hit. The fact that now your Animal Crossing town can go anywhere with you makes this one a no-brainer for purchase by anyone who loved the GameCube original. It would get an "A" score from me if portability was the only new thing in the game. The addition of WiFi support adds immensely to the game and should have the Animal Crossing faithful exchanging codes and visiting friends all over the world. The only problem now is to know when to stop playing. Animal Crossing tends to take over your imagination and you start wondering what is happening in your town at all hours of the day and night, because life never stops in Animal Crossing. Be warned, it can become an obsession.