Today marks my one year anniversary of playing Animal Crossing. I've played every day since September 17, 2002. I was hoping that something cool would happen today, but nothing did. I can't say I'm surprised; that would be a pretty awful way to hide a secret in the game, wouldn't it? Very very few players would hit that goal. But it would have been great to get Super Mario Bros. in the mail this morning. I would have went straight to the message boards and posted in all caps.

So let's reflect on what I've accomplished after a year living in Animal Crossing.

• Catalog completion: fossils, stationery, K.K. songs.


• Completed the fish and insect collection screens.


• One painting to go, and my entire museum is finished.


• For several weeks, I had every single villager wearing the Noble Shirt.


• Collected the complete Harvest series, Jingle series and Igloo item sets.

So do I continue? Honestly, yes. I missed several special events over the last year... like next week's Fall Sports Festival, for example. But get this: once you get the special rare item from an event, you can never get it again. I found this out at the recent Harvest Moon party. Last year, Tortimer gave me the special Moon item, and I sold it for quick cash. This year, no item. Just small talk. I assumed that every year you could collect the event-exclusive items again, but that is not the case. I'm more than a little pissed about that. Seems like playing one particular day over the course of a damn year should earn you the right to multiple copies of rare items. (Or in this case, replacing one that was foolishly sold.) I guess Nintendo anticipated cheating time travellers that would beam from year to year to collect a house full of Moons. Thanks again, you cheating bastards.