Nooooooo. This is how they get you. This is exactly how Nintendo gets you to spend money on stuff that might just end up in a landfill in a few years.
For those of you that don’t know: today is the release of Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer, a game where you decorate the homes of your favourite Animal Crossing critters. Like most Nintendo games nowadays, Happy Home Designer has amiibo functionality — except these aren’t figurines. They’re cards! The idea, which is Nintendo as hell, is to get people trading with others in real life. Once you have a card, you can actually import the character on it to your game, and hang out with them. Better, you’ll get a chance to decorate some of their houses. (You can also use some of these cards in other Nintendo games, like Mario Maker or Mario Kart.)
There are 100 cards in all (right now), and you can buy them in packs of six. Each pack contains five regular villagers, and one special character — all randomised. I went ahead and bought a handful of packs to show you guys what you can expect if you purchase these. Here’s what I got.
Each pack comes in a nice little package
When you open one, you’ll get this:
Alright! Here’s what was inside pack one:
Bluebear, Jitters, Samson, Yuka, Annalisa, and Redd. Nobody I’m particularly fond of here, but hey, it’s the first pack.
You’ll note that each card is numbered, gives you a birthday, and also informs you what type of animal the creature is in the top left corner. There are a couple of other symbols that I’m not 100% sure about, but this is what I gather. The symbol under the name looks like a horoscope sign. Each card also shows a side of a die and a picture or Rock, Paper, Scissors — so you could theoretically play games with them too, though there’s no specific ruleset that I know of. Maybe Nintendo wants you to make it up as you go along.
The rare card in this pack is Redd, the shifty fox that sells you rare (or potentially fake) art in the main games. Rare cards look different — they’re shiny! It’s a little hard to make out in a picture, but…
Second pack!
A definite improvement. We’ve got Muffy, Deli, Snake, Harriet, Clyde and Jambette.
Pack three…
Aww, boo. First repeats with Snake, Clyde, and Jambette, but I can’t be too miffed — look, it’s Timmy Nook!! And also a monkey with an awesome name that I’ve never seen in the main games!
Pack four…
Aww yeah. Check out that Resetti. I can’t even get mad about the extra Cyrano. I also really like the look of Octavian and Fauna, two animals I would love to meet in my game. I never get such cool animals in AC games, so in that sense, it’s nice to be able to have some control over who appears in Happy Home Designer.
And finally, pack five!
You mean to tell me there’s a pigeon with a Knight’s helmet in Animal Crossing that I’ve never met before? Wow, this series. I’m kind of bummed about the Kapp’n card here — that’s the same card that was packaged inside of the game for me, but hey. It’s a ‘rare’ card I can presumably trade for another special one.
So, out of 30 different cards, I got 25 unique cards and five repeating ones. Not bad, but not amazing, either. And really, there was only one card that I wanted above all. You know. That sweet lil puppy on the cover of every single pack. My beloved Isabelle:
Sigh. Don’t get me wrong: I knew there was only a small chance I’d get her. She’s probably one of the rarest cards (or at least, I assume so — it’s hard to get a sense of what the ratio of cards out in the wild is right now). Isabelle is likely the card everyone will want. Nintendo is even releasing a special version of her in Japan; it looks like this:
Ughhhhh. Too adorable. Make it stoooop.
I already have another set of five packs on the way from Amazon; here’s hoping one of them contains my cheerful pup.
You’re probably wondering to yourself: should I bother with these cards? I’d suggest playing Happy Home Designer for an hour or two, seeing how you like it, and go from there. The games come with one card, so you can see how it works first-hand and decide whether or not you think that’s worth an extra investment. I also think that this Animal Crossing game will be somewhat divisive, in that not everyone will be as into the whole ‘decorating houses’ thing — I find it plenty fulfilling, but I know some people will miss being able to do normal stuff, like fishing or making money. Happy Home Designer is more about creativity and being self-directed, and that won’t be everyone’s bag. So I really wouldn’t buy a ton of cards before knowing you like the game first.
I assume hardcore Animal Crossing fans are in the bag already, as the cards provide an easy way of getting to see your old friends once more.
The cards might also be worth it if you’re interested in using Animal Crossing characters in other games, too (like Mario Kart or Mario Maker). Personally, I’m planning a specific course in Mario Maker that requires Isabelle, and I think that’s worth spending money on — but that’s just me. I think you can have a swell time in Happy Home Designer without the cards, and it’s especially a hassle if you’re on the older 3DSes — those require the additional purchase of an attachment that can read the cards. Might not be worth the hassle for some of you.
So then. For those of you that dropped some cash on this stuff, what did you get? And what are you hoping to collect still?
I have my eye set on DJ KK, Tom Nook, Digby, Pascal, Tortimer, Lottie…
Rasher and Tiffany….
Kabuki…
Sterling…
Mint, Bangle, Phil, Monique, and Tutu….
Flurry, Biff, Lionel, Amelia…
Cherry, Eugene, Goose…
Clay…
And Willow:
I’m pretty much doomed, I know. Lord knows how much I’m about to spend on these silly things, all so that I can have some cute animal cards. smh
Comments
13 responses to “I Bought Five Packs Of Animal Crossing Amiibo Cards And Didn’t Fucking Get Isabelle”
Greatest Kotaku headline ever.
Will just end up in a landfill in a few weeks.
Fixed.
Randomised packs are Nintendo’s way of saying “fuck you” to the consumer. Sure, you buy 5 packs, get 25 unique cards and 5 repeats, but what about the next 5 packs, when you get 20 unique cards and 10 repeats, then the next 5 packs, when you get 15 unique cards and 15 repeats…until you are buying pack after pack in the vain hope that you’ll finish your collection, when each pack only has about 6% chance to contain that rare card you need.
To make it even more nonsensical, EU packs contain 3 cards instead of 6, so people in the EU will be getting comparatively more rare card duplicates than the US people when buying the same number of cards.
If anything, I’d encourage people to buy individual cards from re-sellers, at least after getting 30-50% of the collection. Getting duplicates of cards in random packs is basically giving Nintendo free money unless you resell them yourself.
It’s the same story with the Lego mini-figs; want a specific one? Look for the resellers on ebay, etc
it’s the same as any collectible card game, trade cards, sell them whatever.
As a person who’s been bitten by the magic/yu-gi-oh/pokemon cards bug before, this really appeals to me, i don’t even really like the idea for the game, but cool collectible cards that do shit in the game? sure why not.
I should preface that i also buy a shit ton of the smash amiibos because i like the figures, so i guess i’m a sucker for collectibles and the scum that’s killing the games industry, but fuck i needed that lucina amiibo so bad.
Yeah, collectibles are cool and shiny. I can just imagine a lot of less dedicated people falling for this shady practice. I know I did growing up with Magic the Gathering cards.
On the plus side it must annoy scalpers having to buy an entire box. If these were regular Amiibo sold individually the only way to get the good ones would be buying them off eBay.
I dunno, I can totally understand where you’re coming from but it’s just how trading cards work. If they weren’t rare or random they’d just be a deck of cards. Trading cards are a bit of a scam, but kids like them and they do provide some valuable lessons on how money works. The only part that really sucks is that adults collect them and play the games too, which causes the producers to pander to those groups and in turn raise the cost of a pack of cards.
Get over it baby.
Did you never collect any form of cards as a kid? Basketball Cards? Tazos? OddBodz? TMNT? Anything? I assumed any collector type card is always randomised, part of the joy / pain, when you get dupes you take ’em to the playground and make a trade…but unless you are under 11 years old DON’T go to the playground to trade.
Yeah it might be because Nintendo is marketing them to kids who don’t know any better, but it’s reasonable to postulate that Nintendo has no motive other than making more money in randomising these cards. Of course, nothing wrong with that: it’s what the company exists to do. However, it’s hard to feel goodwill towards a company that is using this obvious tactic to screw more purchases out of customers. The other question is, let’s say in a perfect world you bought 17 packs of amiibo and got every single card you needed. You could only do that in the US, because in EU you’d have to buy at least 42 packs, meaning you’d have about 25 surplus rare cards. In reality, unless you trade or buy a number of cards, you are very unlikely to get all the cards without paying Nintendo an obscene amount of money, something of which I am sure that Nintendo is very well aware.
Your point about the 6 card US packs vs the 3 card packs we and the EU get, 100% agree that that’s shoddy and a big slap in the face.
But the cards being randomised? I accept that, that’s the way it always has been and even though it costs more money, being randomised is what makes card collecting fun and gives you that excitement when you open up a fresh pack.
And about being targeted to kids, of course it is, most card collecting is, I collected basketball cards, TMNT, Jurassic Park, Batman cards and more when I was i kid, I’d beg my parents for my pocket money early or do extra jobs so I could go down to the news agent and by a packet of cards. I don’t think collecting would have been as fun if I could just go out and by a full set of every card, where’s the point? I’d spend months and months trying to complete a set and it’d feel great when I finally did.
Nintendo are just doing it how it’s always been done, the only thing that makes them pricks are cutting our pack sizes in half.
+1 for the headline
This is as nerdy as it gets
I love collectible cards and I enjoy amiibo (and Animal Crossing is awesome when we’re not talking about the recent spin-off nonsense), but I’m going to have to skip these. I’ve spent enough on the figures as it is without obsessing over getting every last one of these.
Nintendo’s left us high and dry with card sets in the past anyway. e-Reader, Kid Icarus… nah. No thanks.