Like the original game, Animal Crossing: Wild World has no real plot or goal. You are a young boy or girl that moves in to a new town, that gets populated by animal characters (with human personalities). The game relies on what the player makes out of it. Even so, some of the objectives that lie on the game are paying up your house, upgrading it to make it much bigger than its original form, building friendships with your neighbors, furnishing your house, interacting with other players through local wireless or Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection, complete the museum exhibits by catching all kinds of bugs, fish and finding fossils.
Within the game's code are items colloquially known as "seeds" (their real names in the game's internal memory consist of garbled data) that spawn landscape objects (such as trees, rocks, or buildings) when dropped. The game uses these items to implement the layout of each randomly generated town.
Through cheating, it is possible to place these "seeds" in the player's inventory and spawn landscape features as they please, though they will not appear until the player has entered and exited a building. Placing these objects is irreversible, and it is possible to softlock or brick the game if they are dropped in excess or otherwise abused.
Ankha the cat was originally intended to appear in the game, but was replaced by Anabelle the anteater for unknown reasons.
Nook's Cranny and Able Sisters are placed in a random location in a player's town, but always next to each other. However, the box art depicts them in separate locations.
One of the Messages of the Week can be "Bird, Bird, Bird. Bird is the word.", a reference to the song Surfin' Bird by The Trashmen.
During a summer day, if you stand outside for 30 minutes or more you will get a tan. You can also get higher level tans the longer you stand outside. This can only be done from July 15th to September 16th and must be done on a clear day.
This game has a crash debugger triggered similarly to the one in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. This one is a bit less technical and more informative, but a lot less in-depth. To access the crash dump screen, first crash the game; then, hold L, R, A, and Left, let go, hold Down and B, let go, and finally hold Start and Select. This screen also exists in Super Mario 64 DS and New Super Mario Bros.
Wearing the "Egyptian Look" set (the King Tut Mask and Egyptian Outfit) increases unluckiness for the player, making it more likely to trip and be stung by scorpions and tarantulas.
