Animal Crossing has a storied history, originally beginning as a Japanese-only Nintendo 64 game called Doubutsu no Mori, or, as it's more commonly known in English, Animal Forest. It wouldn't get a shot at a western release until the next console generation on the Nintendo GameCube, as the game we all know and love today: Animal Crossing. This version of the game added a variety of improvements, including, but not limited to e+ reader support, new villagers, GBA link cable content, and more. Eventually, this game made its way back to Japan, with even more extra content added in. These new changes were numerous, with the most interesting of them being the ability to decorate your town with furniture and structures, similarly to Animal Crossing: New Leaf, making the island a loan reward instead of a bonus for those who owned a GBA and link cable, new fish and bugs to catch, medicine for treating sick villagers and bee stings like in Wild World and further entries, a new birthday event for the player character, and many, many more things.

Regrettably, that version, called Animal Forest e+, never got a chance at a localization. Despite its release almost two decades ago, the game went untranslated, and those in the west only had the option of learning Japanese to experience the new content that the game had to offer. As of today, that's no longer the case. Animal Crossing modder Cuyler has released their first public fan-translation patch for Animal Forest e+. This patch is the culmination of years of work, beginning with a teaser video in 2017, which featured the tutorial section of the game translated to English.

With the release of this patch to the public, Cuyler has translated around 70% of the game's texts and dialogue content. In order to play the game in English, you'll need a legally obtained dump of Doubutsu no Mori e+ in Japanese, to apply the patch to. The fan-translation is expected to be fully completed prior to the release of the upcoming Animal Crossing: New Horizons, for the Nintendo Switch.

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[x65943]

Omg, why do I have to work 14 hours tomorrow ;___;

(I am so excited to try this out)

 

[Sonic Angel Knight]

Apparently, lots of people like this game. Still don't know why. Though I did hear that you can play nes games from it.

 

[x65943]

Apparently, lots of people like this game. Still don't know why. Though I did hear that you can play nes games from it.

Did you ever try it? That's the first step to figuring out why people like it

 

[Sonic Angel Knight]

Did you ever try it? That's the first step to figuring out why people like it

Nope. Never knew about it until nintendo direct started talking about it. That was like for 3DS and switch. So I didn't even know about the gamecube one.

 

[PityOnU]

This is great - I love me some OG Animal Crossing.

That being said, my understanding is that the official English translation team for the original game took a lot of liberties with the source material in order to make it fun/understandable for western cultures. There are a lot of very subtle "in jokes" when it comes to the naming of characters/content of conversations that would 100% be lost in translation.

I am curious as to how the translator here approached all of that.

 

[banjo2]

But does this version have THA FEESHING? If it does, I'm in.

I had no idea that this was a thing though, I thought Doubutsu no Mori and this weren't separate.

 

[osaka35]

This is great - I love me some OG Animal Crossing.

That being said, my understanding is that the official English translation team for the original game took a lot of liberties with the source material in order to make it fun/understandable for western cultures. There are a lot of very subtle "in jokes" when it comes to the naming of characters/content of conversations that would 100% be lost in translation.

I am curious as to how the translator here approached all of that.

animal crossing isn't animal crossing without the puns. tasty, delicious puns.

very much looking forward to the 100% translation.

 

[J-Machine]

the link is already down. that is a shame

 

[Cuyler]

I took the link down as the initial patch had a game crash when you viewed the map. It's fixed. You can find the download in my latest tweet!

 

[Jiehfeng]

This was the game with all the direct and hard hitting sarcastic responses from the villagers, which was toned down in later games. I think this is a big reason why you'd want to play it.

 

[MichaelShawJr]

I took the link down as the initial patch had a game crash when you viewed the map. It's fixed. You can find the download in my latest tweet!

Hey, I just wanted to let you know, at the beginning of the game, it says "This game WOULD be possible WITHOUT all the patreon donators. HaHa

 

[HaloEffect17]

But does it have THA FEESHING (TM) though, @Chary?

 

[x65943]

Let's take a moment to appreciate the fact that the kanji for forest is literally three trees

木 林 森

 

[Keylogger]

Cool i can play it on my switch with retro arch

 

[TamarindoJuice]

Cool i can play it on my switch with retro arch

How do you play gamecube on the retroarch?

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------

At first sight i thought it was the first N64 game that got almost fully translated, i got excited about playing it myself on my Switch/Horizon retroarch.

 

[x65943]

How do you play gamecube on the retroarch?

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------

At first sight i thought it was the first N64 game that got almost fully translated, i got excited about playing it myself on my Switch/Horizon retroarch.

There is an incomplete N64 Animal Forest translation that is pretty far along as well.

Translation stopped years ago but you can still pick it up.

Edit: https://www.romhacking.net/translations/1581/

 

[TamarindoJuice]

There is an incomplete N64 Animal Forest translation that is pretty far along as well.

Translation stopped years ago but you can still pick it up.

Thank you, i'll try it.

 

[CoupureElectrique]

I just started playing the original AC yesterday but I plan trying this and starting over, can’t wait!
But I have no idea how to patch GameCube .iso’s? Can someone send me a link?

 

[Chary]

I just started playing the original AC yesterday but I plan on starting over to try this and starting over, can’t wait!
But I have no idea how to patch GameCube .iso’s? Can someone send me a link?

If I recall correctly, the download comes with a GC iso patcher, and readme instructions on how to patch it easily