Why Nintendo won't ever release Animal Crossing for the Gamecube on NSO
I was just discussing with a few people on Discord why the original Animal Crossing for the Gamecube might never get released on NSO.
First of all, they're probably working on the sixth mainline entry in the series as we speak. They'd be dumb not to.
Second, the original Animal Crossing was a bit of a mess. I have researched this a million times and I'm still not sure that I got it memorized: There was the N64 release in Japan first, followed by the Japanese GCN port, then the American GCN release (which was basically an entirely new game with the amount of new content that they added), and then the Japanese release based on the American one. Somewhere in between, the game also got released in Europe (mostly based on the American release), and then China for the extremely iQue (which was a N64 console).
So, not only would they have to choose one of the releases (or create some kind of patchwork), but they'd also have to patch a bunch of features that are pretty central to the gameplay, such as the Island, the train, and the user profiles (just to name a few).
It doesn't seem worth the hassle for a game that has a very niche community. Wild World and New Leaf were vastly more popular. In fact, Wild World even got released on the WiiU.
This saddens me, because I really crave the villager interactions in the GCN entry. Every game since that one has watered them down more and more, to the point that New Horizons is basically just a town-decoration game (which I don't really care for). I still like to play it, but I also don't feel as drawn to it. Believe it or not, but the multiplayer isn't what I like about the game either. I like the feeling of slowing building a "relationship" with the villagers. The original game made that a big and involved part of the gameplay.
Whatever they do with the sixth mainline entry in the series, not only do I hope that they send us back to a town, but also that they employ some proper writers and give the villagers a lot of personality.