Animal Crossing director on how Amiibo influenced new games

GamesBeat: Are you able to customize your own character, your avatar, like in other Animal Crossing games, or is that less intensive because most of the focus is on the homes?

Kyogoku: You can definitely customize the player character, as you were able to in New Leaf. You can change the face, the hair. You can make him look exactly like your character in New Leaf. You’ll work for Nook’s Homes. Because Nook’s Homes has a dress code, you’re always in uniform while you’re working. However, in Happy Home Designer, you don’t just make the houses. You can go visit any of the houses you’ve made and take a peek into the animals’ lives. Not only can you just visit, but you can use Amiibo cards to invite other animals. For example, an animal might say, I want a room that’s like a concert hall. I want to hold concerts there. Or they’d want a room that’s really made for birthday parties, because they want to have birthday parties there. So you create the room and you can decide whose birthday party it’s going to be. Who should they invite to the party? Once you have all the animals there, you can join in. Maybe you’ll dress your character up and put a party hat on and enjoy the scenery.

GamesBeat: Is that the Amiibo support? You use the Animal Crossing Amiibos, and those characters will show up in your homes?

Kyogoku: That’s one of the functions of Amiibo, to be able to invite animals and create this scene where you can take a picture of a birthday party or a concert that’s going on. That’s one big aspect of the Amiibo function. To be sure, Happy Home Designer can be played without any Amiibo cards. The animals will hang around in front of Nook’s Homes thinking, oh, I want a house like this. You’ll talk to them and take on their requests and build their houses. But with the cards, you can reach out to animals in particular. You’ll be making a call and saying, hey, would you be interested in building a house with us? For a lot of Animal Crossing fans, it’ll be great to be able to reach out to their favorite animal at will and come to build a house for them. That’s one feature. The second feature is, in the Animal Crossing series, there are two general types of animals. The ones that move into your town, they become residents, they become your neighbor, you develop a relationship with them. Then there are characters like Tom Nook or K.K. Slider who serve a special role in the game, but don’t necessarily live in your town. Using Amiibo cards you’re able to build a house for them as well, which is something new.

GamesBeat: You can build a house for K.K. Slider, and he’ll go throw concerts for you?

Kyogoku: Yes, definitely.

GamesBeat: It seems like with this game and Amiibo Festival on Wii U, Nintendo is branching out [with] the Animal Crossing franchise. It used to be only one thing, but now we’re seeing all these new ideas. Is that a conscious move to expand Animal Crossing?

Kyogoku: This time around, there’s obviously this new thing called Amiibo. The development team for Animal Crossing, we just really wanted Animal Crossing Amiibos. We thought it would be cute. We thought fans would be happy. In the past, Animal Crossing has only been Animal Crossing, but we thought that with the addition of Amiibo — how could we make an Animal Crossing game that would be fun by adding Amiibo features? What resulted was Happy Home Designer on 3DS and Amiibo Festival on the Wii U. This was a way to try different ways of playing Animal Crossing. We kept thinking, this idea might be fun, that idea might be fun. Eventually we ended up with these two different games. Amiibos are really cool figures, but beyond that, the biggest difference is the way they’re linked with gameplay. It’s important that there’s a game to go along with Amiibo. We felt like Amiibo could benefit from an Animal Crossing twist and Animal Crossing could really benefit from Amiibo as well.

GamesBeat: What will be next for the series? Another spin-off, or a full-blown Animal Crossing?

Kyogoku: Obviously, as you said, we’re in full development for Happy Home Designer and Amiibo Festival. We’ve been focusing on that. When we think about Animal Crossing, including the main Animal Crossing series, as a development team we’re always thinking about what to do for the next installment. Whether that’ll be a cutout and an expansion of a certain feature or a full-blown Animal Crossing game, that hasn’t been decided yet, but as a team we’re constantly thinking about what we can do for the series in the future.

GamesBeat: Now I just have to ask because I’m a big Smash Bros. fan. I was wondering how you feel about seeing the Animal Crossing villager punching Mario.

Kyogoku: Naturally, things like that wouldn’t happen in the world of Animal Crossing. But at the same time, Smash Bros. has its own set of rules. In that sense a lot of people have enjoyed it. Along that same line, there was an Animal Crossing course added to Mario Kart 8. The world view and the feel of Animal Crossing was really well-reflected in that course. You see Isabel speeding around on a bike, which you don’t usually see, but it’s still enjoyable. For myself and the fans, I hope we’re able to see these animals not just limited to the world of Animal Crossing, but in other series as well. Seeing that happen makes me happy.