SBC #49 Villager & Animal Crossing: Amiibo Festival

Animal Crossing: Amiibo Festival was released worldwide in November of 2015. That would be one year after Super Smash Bros. 4 and the release of the first Amiibos. It was also two years before the release of the Nintendo Switch. Superstition and the sword ruled. It was a time of darkness, it was a world of fear, it was the age of the WiiU. And if you ever wondered why the WiiU wound up being such a failure for Nintendo, here is Animal Crossing: Amiibo Festival director Aya Kyogoku:

“Honestly, we just wanted Animal Crossing Amiibo. We wanted the company to make Animal Crossing Amiibo, so that’s why we made a game that works with them.”

Ladies and Gentlemen, this is exactly what it looks like when Nintendo makes a videogame exclusively to sell toys.

So, in the interest of immediately identifying the next time Nintendo wants to fleece its customers in the name of pawning off Isabelle figurines, here are the warning signs:

Animal Crossing: Amiibo Festival cannot be played without an Animal Crossing Amiibo

First and foremost: stop thinking of an Animal Crossing Amiibo as anything but a controller. Yes, the grand selling point of Amiibos was that they were supposed to save player data and “remember” things like playstyles or stats. None of that matters here. During gameplay, your Amiibo will be used for the following actions:

1. Press the Amiibo to the WiiU gamepad to roll the dice to advance.

And that’s that. Now, I know what you’re thinking: why can’t you just press a button on that perfectly functional, understandably expensive WiiU gamepad to roll the dice? Well, the answer is shut-up, idiot. This is Amiibo Festival, not Button Festival. In fact, if you are playing with multiple people, you all have to take turns passing around the WiiU gamepad for Amiibo scanning, and cannot simply use the classic WiiU gamepad + Wiimotes configuration. Only Amiibos! And you can play the game with four players sharing one Amiibo, but there must be one Amiibo. No exceptions!

Animal Crossing: Amiibo Festival was never sold digitally

Some eagle-eyed readers that remember 2015 are likely already rushing to the comments: “What are you complaining about, notably handsome blogger Goggle Bob? Animal Crossing: Amiibo Festival was packaged with Amiibos. Two of ‘em! If you have this game, you have at least two compatible Amiibos.” And, yes, that is 100% true. However, it is also true that Gamestop had a viable business model in 2015, and used games were definitely a thing. We also have the other factor of this game being reviewed in 2026, and I am a future man that is here to tell you ain’t nobody got time to find where they stowed their Kapp’n Amiibo. It is hard enough to figure out how long it takes to charge a dormant WiiU gamepad! You want me to find a Tom Nook Amiibo that is older than some third graders?

Animal Crossing: Amiibo Festival was never available digitally. Nintendo did not want to even risk someone playing this game without its attendant Amiibo. You had to march to the then-still-open Toys “R” Us like a medieval peasant. Maybe you could buy some more Amiibos while you were there! Mewtwo came out the same day as Mabel! Make it a set!

Look, we all know Nintendo has to make a buck. But when a company forgoes its own storefront in the hope of pushing more plastic tchotchkes, something has well and truly gone off the rails.

Animal Crossing: Amiibo Festival markets at you before even playing the game

We all miss instruction manuals. Once upon a time, you would get a manual with your brand-new game, and you could read that sucker cover to cover while nursing a juice box as your mom drove your home. Unfortunately, mom never buys me juice boxes anymore, and Nintendo gave up on manuals. Maybe it is because they are expensive to produce. Maybe market research determined that people do not read them anyway. Maybe they got hung up on everything having to be translated into different languages. But whatever the case, they are gone forever. The best you can hope for nowadays is an expensive Special Edition that includes an art book.

But don’t worry! Nintendo took time away from attuning Mario Tennis: Ultra Smash to produce a small booklet for Animal Crossing: Amiibo Festival. Or maybe we should call it a flyer? It does fold, so how about brochure? Your case for Animal Crossing: Amiibo Festival includes one (1) advertisement for every Animal Crossing Amiibo and Amiibo Trading Card currently available. It is even translated across languages, just in case you would like to know Isabelle’s name in Spanish (it translates to Cinnamon!).

There is an instruction manual for Animal Crossing: Amiibo Festival. Considering this is a board game with distinct rules for not only the game, but also how controllers work, it would be convenient to have that on hand when friends arrive. But, nope, you must download that separately online. You do not get a manual. You just get an advertisement for all the Amiibos you could buy. Maybe you should just never pick up the controller, and spend the rest of your day acquiring Amiibos. That choice may make you feel better…

Animal Crossing: Amiibo Festival is just gambling

Trying to find and buy Amiibos in 2015/2016 may be more rewarding than this experience. Every goddamned second of the actual gameplay of Animal Crossing: Amiibo Festival is railroaded. The basic premise here is that this is a digital board game. And that can be fun! Mario Party has famously made a million controller-breaking minigames part of an experience that is still described as “a board game”. WarioWare, Inc.: Mega Party Game$! similarly made the GameCube worth its four controller ports with bonkers minigames. And if you are going for something more analogue, there are global conventions for people that like playing dice-based games on actual boards. You can play Monopoly for hours (whether you like it or not). Board games can be fun!

Animal Crossing: Amiibo Festival is not fun. You roll dice, and then your Amiibo moves around the board. Every space has a random event that either adds or removes money and/or happiness points. The random events are cute and appropriately Animal Crossing-themed. But they are also super random, so a “good” panel can add one hundred or one thousand bells to a player’s tally. Your goal is to collect the most happiness points, and your secondary currency of bells can be exchanged for more happy points at the finale of the game (editor’s note: remember to add obligatory “money buys happiness” joke here). Winning means arbitrarily landing on the most beneficial squares, and hoping those good outcomes are better than your opponents.

Apparently someone noticed there is absolutely nothing to that at all, so they added some extra parts where you can play with extra randomness. There is the Sow Joan stalk market, and you can purchase turnips that can be sold for loss or profit according to what space you land on. It is superfluous gambling in this game that is all gambling. Additionally, there are “event squares”, where you might get extra cards from a roulette wheel, another, different roulette wheel, a number guessing game, or a drawing from a tarot deck. All of these events are random, and, give or take how much you think pressing a button impacts a slot machine, require zero skill. Sometimes there is a shop where you can buy a (random) card!

Oh, but apparently playing the boardgame portion earns you tickets to unlock minigames elsewhere. That could be fun! I bet that’s where…

Animal Crossing: Amiibo Festival includes minigames that are just gambling

Dammit!

Board games are practically synonymous with “rolling the dice”, so we can forgive one that isn’t much more than gambling. Let’s look to the additional minigames included with Animal Crossing: Amiibo Festival. That could be good! See the previous section delineating all the good board game-adjacent minigame collections already on the Nintendo Wii/WiiU. In the minigame plaza, you can unlock new games based on the (relatively) cheaper Animal Crossing Amiibo Cards. And your rewards for believing in the heart of the cards are…

• Balloon Island, which is miraculously not Balloon Trip. It is just a pachinko machine where you “drop” villagers through balloons, and they randomly fall to a different point-value squares.
• Acorn Chase, which has the potential to be Pac-Man, but is really just a randomly generated maze where you have to move forward on a grid and not retrace your steps or be devoured by a lawnmower. It is basically Snake, but as slow as possible.
• Resetti Bop, which is whack-a-mole with Mr. Resetti balloons. You don’t even get to bludgeon the real Mr. Resetti! The balloons have a rock-paper-scissors thing going on, so you need to use your three boppers properly to match the colors.
• Mystery Campers, where you guess the order of four animal critters. Critter order is randomized, and you get ten guesses with oblique hints as to who is in what position.
• Fruit Path, where you want to move forward a random number of spaces, so you use an Amiibo card with that same number to match your space progression. It is… a game for toddlers learning numbers?
• Amiibo Card Battle! Oh man do we get some Pokémon TCG nonsense out of Animal Crossing? Nope! Just put down an Amiibo Card, and hope it is a higher number than your buddy. There is literally nothing here that cannot also be achieved with a deck of traditional playing cards.

There are only two minigames that feel like actual games. One is Quiz Show, which is what it says on the tin, but adds a fun wrinkle of different animal crossers being available for support calls. You have to recognize (or discover) that Isabelle knows her stuff when it comes to villager catch phrases, while the childish Timmy and Tommy know a lot about bugs. It’s not complicated, but there is a game there. And then Desert Island Escape is straight-up Animal Crossing: The Rogue-Like, with three villagers trapped on a desert island, and you must manage food and resources to survive and escape. This actual game was rewarded with being ported to Animal Crossing: New Leaf. The rest? Not so much…

So, with the exception of maybe 10% of this whole experience, all of Animal Crossing: Amiibo Festival is luck-based. If only there were some way to guarantee a win…

Animal Crossing: Amiibo Festival lets you pay to win

Back on that horrid boardgame: there must be good and bad dice rolls. After all, you can look at the board, and, while it is continually changing, you can always determine what will be a beneficial roll for your specific turn. Moving forward four spaces will land you on an extra happiness square, five spaces will bring you to a lose bells spot. You know what you must do… Or would be able to do if dice were not random. But there is a solution! Each real-life Amiibo Card in existence has a number on it, and you can scan that Amiibo Card to move that particular number of spaces. So if you need to move four spaces, use an Amiibo Card with a four on it, and you are good to go. Don’t have an Amiibo Card with that number, because they were all blindboxed? Welp! Better scoot over to Gamestop and buy a new pack. The strongest card in this game is your credit card!

And it must be a coincidence that the one thing in Animal Crossing: Amiibo Festival that can guarantee a better outcome is your completely-not-random purchasing power. There are cards that can help you move a set number of spaces available in the game! The only drawback is they are only available randomly, and you could go entire play sessions without earning a single one. Having cards on hand that let you make advantageous “rolls” and incidentally cost real-world money must be just a coincidence. You know, in this game that was created for the express purpose of getting an Animal Crossing line of Amiibo products out there. It really drives home the only point of this game…

Animal Crossing: Amiibo Festival is an excuse to buy Animal Crossing Amiibo

And I only did that because I have brain problems!

What was everyone else’s excuse? Or was that why this game has been all but forgotten by Nintendo and history? Anywho, I am expecting you to learn from my mistakes, and make better choices in the future. And while y’all get that done, I am going to go order a Virtual Virtual Boy.

SBC #49 Villager & Animal Crossing: Amiibo Festival

Villager in Super Smash Bros Ultimate

• They any Good? Villager is good at camping. Do you suppose that was deliberate? Bro has terrible mobility (even Balloon Fight powers cannot save him), but is surprisingly powerful with various axes and bowling balls on hand. If it weren’t for his pocket-projectile power and gormless expression, he might be treated like a baby Ganondorf. As it is, he is just there to make Animal Crossers happy when they do not want to play as a puppy girl.
• That final smash work? Tom Nook builds a house on yo’ ass. I get that they had to fit Baron Nook into Villager’s moveset somehow, but was an exploding house really the answer? Something more appropriate to Animal Crossing would be some time magic where an opponent realizes 10,000 hours have passed in an instant, and they explode at the realization that they have wasted their life on virtual fishing.
• The background work? Villager lives in Smashville. It’s Final Destination with one (1) moving platform. It is one of my favorite stages. Not because it is any good! But because I used to play this sucker all the time back in the Super Smash Bros. Brawl days while I was collecting song-CD drops. Just hours on this stage smashing around with my friends. So Animal Crossing is responsible for one of my favorite parts of Smash Bros, apparently.
• Classic Mode: Mistake to Underestimate sees Villager set against a series of Smash characters that are not necessarily warriors. Fellow villagers, Ness ‘n Lucas, Wii Fit Trainers, and Isabelle all make sense in this role. Pokémon Trainer and Dr. Mario? Not so much. All they do is fight monsters and viruses (respectively). You have Master Hand at the end, which, sure, he is at least less combative than Ganon or Dracula.
• Smash Trivia: Villager was technically the first new character introduced for Super Smash Bros. 4. Of course, nobody remembers that, as he was announced within a half hour of Mega Man’s premiere, and that definitely caught the audience’s attention.

• Amiibo Corner: So Villager has eight different alternate versions in Smash Bros, stars in a pile of super-popular games going back twenty years, and is featured in an entire game based on Amiibo usage… and there is only one Villager Amiibo as of 2026? Isabelle has three! Bah! Alright, let’s review what we’ve got: Villager has a basic Mii-esque expression, rounded limbs, and the same general outfit as an Earthbound protagonist. Not much to write home about. It makes sense that this was one of the first Amiibos released, as it probably took all of three seconds in production.
• Does Smash Bros Remember Today’s Game? Nope! All the basic Animal Crossing elements can be found in Animal Crossing: Amiibo Festival, so you could make the argument that AC:AF generally influenced Ultimate, but there is nothing only found in AC:AF replicated in Smash Bros. They could have at least given Villager a dice attack…

Villager in Animal Crossing: Amiibo Festival

• System: Nintendo WiiU. Yes, you know the most fun you can have in this world is hooking up your aging WiiU to play some Amiibo Festival.
• Number of players: Four. You can play the board game alone, but since it is so luck-based, it is excruciating. Maybe have something on in the background.
• Fun with Friends: So I invited some friends over to see if this game is better with buddies. I tried it once in a group in 2015, and we moved on to Smash Bros. almost instantly. But we sat through a whole play session last week, and… Well, it was nice laughing at the various event comments and completely bonkers plus/minus events (“Oh, I’m losing to everybody… wait now I’m 10,000 points ahead.”). There is a gentle, cozy vibe that makes it hard to get mad at the proceedings. But after finishing a full game? You realize you could have been having more fun doing literally anything else.
• How did you make it up to your friends for forcing them to play this garbage? I made ‘em steak. I was just going to order a pizza, but replaying the game once before they arrived reminded me that my friends deserve better. I even made biscuits! Consolatory biscuits!
• It do be like that: You are not “out” of the game if you run out of bells (money). You simply lose a few happiness points every turn that you are trapped by your hideous debt. At least Tom Nook doesn’t send some goons to your door…
• But is it Animal Crossing? The most Animal Crossing aspect that influences gameplay is that everything is “date based”, and different days and months have different impacts on the game. In other words, choosing the “December” board offers a separate experience from “July”. On one hand, that is a clever way to implement changes that are immediately understood by any player that has been alive longer than a year. On the other hand, squeezing twelve different themes out of the calendar is a tweak lazy. At least go the Final Fantasy Tactics route and base this mythology on the zodiac!
• Favorite Month: You can collect candy for Halloween! You have absolutely no control over how many spaces you advance, and there are good odds you will not collect enough candy to please the Pumpkin King… but it’s something to do! I guess!
• Favorite Animal Crossing Amiibo: I call K.K. Slider! You losers have to play with the real estate bear.
• Did you know? When I mentioned this game in my annual game roundup ten years ago, I noted that people told me the game gets better after unlocking new features. Turns out they were either only talking about the desert island minigame, or they are confirmed liars.
• Would I play again: Never. Never again. Back in the day, this was on the same system as Super Smash Bros. 4, and had to compete with that for party time. Now it is on a system that is practically inert, requires charging a gamepad, and then fishing out an appropriate number of Amiibo. This is not and has never been worth it.

What’s next? Random ROB has chosen… Once Upon a Katamari! Let’s roll up all of time! Please look forward to it!