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The Player's Birthday Throughout The Games

Shawna

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Similar to the moving thread I made yesterday, I though I would make a birthday ranking thread, since my birthday is tomorrow. This will be how well I think AC handles specifically the player's birthday through the games, and will again, be from best to worst. I will also attach my final predictions of who will be at my doors through the games <33333

Animal Crossing: New Horizons
Probably the game that does birthdays the best so far. I only played my birthday in NH one other time in 2020, so I do not have a really clear picture of which villager will come, but I have read some promising stuff online. So far, this game probably celebrates birthdays the most in-depth out of all the games. Like in New Leaf, you get thrown a surprise party. It doesn't have the birthday wish, but you do whack a piñata (which is so fuuuun), in which you get cupcakes to give to the villagers for stuff in return, which is cuuuuutee. I cannot wait to whack that piñata tomorrow. It's gonna be so FUUUUUUN ^_^

Animal Crossing: New Leaf
The game where parties debuted. I also love how NL handles them. I also love the wish aspect. I already know what my wish will be. <3333 My only complaint is that you only get a birthday-themed gift if you are like BEST friends with one of the villagers (and I restarted my NL town less than a month ago), but it is still a lot better than nothing. I've recently seen people get cards (with presents?) from other villagers too, which is NOICE. Hasn't happened to me....rip.

Animal Crossing: Wild World
Birthdays in earlier games are less in-depth, but they are still very heartwarming, at least in WW and CF. I feel like they can be a bit mid in GC, which I will be getting into. But anyway, you DO get a cake from a villager. I have had the privilege of getting the cake from my favorite villagers both times I celebrated my birthday. Static in 2012, Kabuki in 2013. I also find it interesting how they ask if you are happy. You also can get letters...with PRESENTS in the mail, which is arguably easier to achieve than in City Folk. Even if WW is mid-tier on this list, in my opinion, I still think it executes the player's birthday pretty well. ^.^

Animal Crossing: City Folk
Unlike in other games, this game does require some effort for you to get more out of your birthday than just the bare minimum: Rover wishing you a happy birthday, and a letter from mom. Though, I have to say, getting 5,000 bells from your mom is nothing to sneeze at. ^_^
But yeah, there are various things that could get in the way of you even getting a birthday cake from a villager such as not high enough friendship, villager sickness, villager moving out, etc. Still, if things work out, birthdays in this game can be very heartwarming. Even though birthdays usually work out quite well in this game if you at least have a close villager, I had to place this in the second worst spot due to the aforementioned reasons and because you do not get presents from the other villagers like in WW. With that being said, I celebrated my birthday three times so far in CF, and all have been wonderful! <3333
Goes to show even the "second worst" birthday system is still good. <3333

Animal Crossing: Game Cube
I am sad to say that the GC version handled birthdays the worst. It may seem nitpicky, but I was very disappointed to find out that who ever gives you the NES games and sends you letters is randomized. I just value seeing the ones I make an effort to befriend to be a part of things things. Friendship measurements are NOT considered for birthdays in this game. I learned this the hard way when I celebrated my birthday in this game in 2012. According to a comment I got in yesterday's topic, friendship measurements don't even exist in GC.
Sure, it can be argued that birthdays are more celebratory in this game than they are in WW and CF, but the randomness of who gives you a NES game and sends letters does automatically push this into the bottom tier.

. . .

Now, since this is a birthday thread, I figured I would give my final predictions of who will give me a NES game/cake/party.

And here are my predictions, these are not necessarily my hopes; I will talk about THAT after June 9th is over.

Game Cube: Sally. I am talking about the Sally that is now know as Cally, not the Sally that used to be Hazel. However, since I am referring to the GC version, I am putting "Cally's" old name. I have almost nothing to go off of due to the randomness and lack of friendship measurement, but I did see a video where former Sally/now Cally was the one to give the NES game.

Wild World: Victoria. I would have said Kody since he has been with me the longest, but then I get Victoria, which I saw a video on YouTube where she was the one to give a birthday cake in WW.

City Folk: Bob. He seems to be a very popular villager in terms of being the one to deliver the cake in City Folk...lazy villagers in general seem to usually be the ones to.

New Leaf: Apollo. I wanted to try and make this prediction list non-biased, but I couldn't help myself. ;-;
There are many factors I look for in terms of thinking up my predictions for which villagers will be the ones to celebrate my birthdays throughout the games: Two of them being which ones I have seen celebrate other people's birthdays, and which ones I have befriended the most. Apollo falls under both categories.

New Horizons: Apollo. Again, I hate to be biased...I was really trying to make more sense of another villager being the host for this one, especially since I already put Apollo for NL. But similar to the points I made in New Leaf, I couldn't help but put Apollo.......again. >___<

I will be doing a post-review on the night of my birthday/when my birthday is almost over. <333

Anyway yeah, I figured another ranking thread would be fun. Feel free to make your own, or give an opinion on mine <333
 
Thankfully, I have far less to say in relation to this particular topic than the last one. I might have a few things to say about the OP, but I'll mix the responses with my own thoughts on how each game celebrates PC birthdays.

New Horizons could be the best. I don't mind cupcake-filled-piñata-whacking and giving said cupcakes to my islanders. I just hate that I'm forced into the former. I also don't understand why wishes are absent, as they were optional in the previous main entry. I still think it's dumb for villagers to wear formal clothing to a casually-themed party... on a deserted island. I remember making a stink about this in the "ACNH Pet Peeves and Petty Complaints Thread", and got a couple replies from other members that they, in fact, do the same thing in real life. Whatever floats your boat, I guess. Another pet peeve involves something New Leaf replaced, so I'll be discussing that game next.

New Leaf isn't too far from NH. It's a bit less jubilant, but I don't mind. In fact, I find that to be preferable. Just want to eat my cake, receive my gifts, and be done with it. I made a wish once, but that was a one-time thing, I believe. I have four characters; two in my NA town, and two in my Japanese one. I think it makes sense for a Player-centered party to have a high friendship requirement. I feel it makes more sense than villagers planning a surprise party for someone who they barely interacted with. It could just me setting unreasonable strict standards, though. My only issue my guess ties back in the NH, and what I mentioned in the link above. I hate the villager fanfare introduced in this game, because it's just a bunch of obnoxious notes garbled into your town/island tune, rather than the generic, but more pleasant jingle from CF and prior.

City Folk... it's the same as WW, but they somehow made THAT worse.
Animal Crossing: City Folk
Even though birthdays usually work out quite well in this game if you at least have a close villager, I had to place this in the second worst spot due to the aforementioned reasons and because you do not get presents from the other villagers like in WW.
I supposed I shouldn't be surprised about this, but it just solidifies my point that CF is the worst out of five mainline Animal Crossing games. I had to make sure if this was true — hoping it was false, because it'd just be another example of how incompetently made the game was, but I didn't have any video footage of birthdays of either of my characters (videos are liable of being deleted because of computer viruses). So, I saw a couple of videos, and it proved to be the case. If this topic included villager birthdays, I would've tore more into the game than I'm already doing now.

Not much to say about Wild World. It's nice receiving gifts from villagers, but why in the world would Nintendo suddenly decide NOT to have them do so in the next game over? I have to wonder what goes on in the heads of these developers. Are they actively on mushrooms during the development phase, or what?

The N64 original and its GameCube ports don't do much in terms of birthdays, and it's weird going back to a time when villager birthdays weren't even acknowledged. I supposed this is the most accurate representation of the birthdays I typically get. Getting older... closer to death.

That's about it. Almost every character I created has a different birthday from mine. These characters aren't me, so I felt they should all have birthdays different from each other. It'd be hard to keep track of all of them across five games, especially since I have more than one in three of these games (or four if you count the two versions of NL that I own — eight characters covering four games).

Happy Birthday, by the way, @Shawna.
 
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Oh, happy birthday @Shawna ! May you continue to spread tons of kindness here on TBT.


I'll cheat and say that I haven't experienced a birthday in any of the games other than New Leaf and New Horizons. Nonetheless, I've read about what the birthdays are like in each game, and here's my opinion best to worst:
  1. New Horizons - I've heard of players actually crying happy tears about how much they liked having the villagers recognize and celebrate their birthday. I actually sort of teared up too, as none other than Bob hosted my first birthday in this game. The gifts may have been good for only a year, but I like how the entire island would join in with the gift-giving if you gave them cupcakes, alongside a few special characters (K.K. giving a concert, select characters during his performance, Brewster making a comment if you get coffee). They took the mechanic in New Leaf and made it even better, so kudos to Nintendo for making it worth playing on your birthday.
  2. New Leaf - Player parties made their debut here, and they're handled pretty similarly to New Horizons, but not as grandiose, let's say. Only one good gift would be given by your bestie, but it's better than nothing. This is also the first game where you could actually figure out when a villager's birthday would be coming up without resorting to the internet or game guides (via amiibo cards).
  3. Wild World - This is ranked higher than the bottom two because the villager interactions made you feel good about yourself. You also got cake, which is pretty cool.
  4. GameCube - The playable NES games are cool to get, assuming that you got what you wanted. The friendship mechanic wasn't fully implemented in the series yet, which is why it feels more random than the later games.
  5. City Folk - Birthdays in general aren't really all that spectacular in City Folk. You got birthday wishes, bells from Mom, and that's pretty much it. You also needed to build up friendship to receive any form of birthday wish from villagers, which sort of annoyed me as a message automatically gets posted on the town board for "everyone to read". The game could have handled birthdays much better IMO.
 
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