Animal Crossing: New Leaf launches its Welcome amiibo update

Several months ago, Nintendo revealed that it was adding a substantial update to Animal Crossing: New Leaf that would include support for amiibo and bring other new features. During a special Nintendo Direct this morning the company detailed the free DLC — and launched it moments later. And yeah, there’s quite a bit of stuff included.

For a game that is four years old on an aging platform to receive an update this big is practically unprecedented. In fact, the game’s sales have mostly stalled out. Another thing that’s potentially stalled out is the sale of Animal Crossing branded amiibo. Perhaps by bringing the two together Nintendo can spark some more interest in the game and the little electronic toys.

Here’s what’s included in the beefy update:

• There is a brand new camper van camp site where citizens from the towns will appear to take breaks, as well as random visitors.
• By finding a magic lamp, players will be able to scan in Animal Crossing amiibo or cards once per day. Those characters will appear in the camper park and can be added to the town.
• Scanning in non-Animal Crossing amiibo brings in characters dressed as those figures.
• The new villagers will also bring along with them a mini New 3DS or Wii U, which open up brand new mini games to be played. These include Desert Island Escape (from Animal Crossing: amiibo Festival) and Animal Crossing Puzzle League.
• The RV campground is run by new character Harvey, who will let you buy the gear you see in the visitor’s vans with MEOW tokens. These tokens can only be gained through new daily and weekly activities, like catching 20 bugs or decorating your home a certain way.
• Players can attain a new secret storeroom to place their equipment in instead of hoarding up space in their virtual closets.
• If there is Happy Home Designer data saved to the 3DS, 20 special “Giant” furniture items will be unlocked.
• Like HHD, players can now more easily arrange their furniture with the stylus.
• Finally, a new Augmented Reality photo feature has been added to the title screen, so that players can scan in amiibo (or bring in citizens from their town), pose the characters, add frames and take photos in real space.

We’ve already had some fun playing around with the updates, but it’s worth noting that for a piece of important DLC titled “Welcome amiibo” it’s not exactly easy to welcome those amiibo. In order to find the above mentioned magic lamp (and Wisp, its inhabitant) players need to run around the town searching for it to pop up, which it does apparently best between the hours of 12AM and 4AM. Then, only one amiibo can be scanned per day. Perhaps the update should have been named “Welcome *an* amiibo”?

Either way there’s still plenty of stuff to enjoy in the update, and it’s brought me back for the short foreseeable future. Animal Crossing: New Leaf: Welcome amiibo is available as a free update and will be included into retail versions at a later date.