I am getting closer and closer to pre-ordering the Animal Crossing: Let's Go to the City for the Wii. I have had my eye on it for a while but thought I might wait and see what UK reviews it gets when it is finally released here. They seem to be putting the release date later and later though and I think I will be disappointed if I don't get it before Christmas.

I am unclear about this Wii Speak peripheral however and whether it is going to be something I really want. You can buy Animal Crossing together with the Wii speak and if it going to be a big part of Animal Crossing then I don't want to miss out. I have to say though that being able to speak to other people playing the wii all over the world just doesn't really appeal. I can understand the pull of being able to chat using the written word as you can hide behind it but I think I would feel very self conscious actually speaking to people.I don't really have any friends who use the Wii regularly so maybe I am not really the type of person it is aimed at.

I loved Animal Crossing on the DS. I don't really play it anymore but it is one of the games that really had me absorbed for a good few weeks and I am interested to see if they have added enough new stuff onto the Wii version to work it's magic again. It's little things about the DS version that make it so fascinating. The simple fact that it runs on a realtime calendar, so you turn it on on a chilly November evening and it's snowing in the Animal Crossing world. The trees lose their leaves in Autumn and grow new leaves in Spring. Simple things for the game developers to include I would imagine but very pleasing while you are playing.

I use my Wii sporadically. It sits there unused on the shelf if I'm honest for weeks on end until I get a new game and then spend the next week playing it whenever I get a spare five minutes. I am a lot more picky about buying Wii games these days after having so many disappointments. Rayman Raving Rabbids and Sonic and the Secret Rings were just not very good. I bought them just cos I felt I needed to bulk out my games collection a little but we never ever play them.The Wii Fit had me stepping and boxing for a good few months - much longer than I expected and I still think very highly of it  and feel I should get on it more. Super Mario Galaxy and Mariokart are favourites that I wouldn't part with. I played Mariokart a lot for the first month I had it and I still love the way you can just pop on for 10 minutes and have a few races. The online play on there is brilliant and while I don't really know what to expect from Animal Crossing, I have high hopes of the online play really increasing the fun in the same way as on Mariokart. Amazon have the release date as the 5th December at the moment so hopefully it will not get any later. I think I will be ordering without the Wii Speak and waiting to see how that goes down with other people. I am really running out of places to keep all these peripherals anyway - my lounge is becoming buried in white plastic.