Heads up, Wii U owners: Animal Crossing: Wild World and Kirby Canvas Curse have both arrived in the DS virtual console.
These beloved titles were some of the reasons why the Nintendo DS was the most popular handheld console in its heyday, despite being far less powerful in specs than Sony's PlayStation Portable, its direct rival at the time. The games have aged well despite their outdated graphics, as the signature Nintendo charm and outlandishly pleasant vibe are still heavily embedded in both.
Wild World and Canvas Curse will be playable on the Wii U gamepad, as with all the DS games on the virtual console.
Canvas Curse is a welcome addition to the Wii U's library, which already includes the exclusive Kirby and the Rainbow Curse, with Canvas Curse acting as a possible break for those who ache to play a retro Kirby title. Canvas Curse took great advantage of the DS' touch screen when it was released early in the DS' life, making for some innovative and unique control input with the touchscreen.
"When Kirby gets turned into a ball by an evil witch, your hand-drawn rainbow paths become the only way he can find power-ups and reach the gates in each world," reads the listing on Nintendo's site.
Wild World, on the other hand, is a much larger deal than Canvas Curse, given the fact that no main Animal Crossing game has ever been developed for the Wii U system, while the 3DS has already enjoyed two: Animal Crossing: New Leaf and Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer. There's Animal Crossing: Amiibo Festival, but Animal Crossing fans would rather forget that that title even exists. So far, the aforementioned game and a few special Animal Crossing race tracks on Mario Kart 8 are the only measly presence of the cutesy anthropomorphic animals in Animal Crossing.
The last Animal Crossing title for a home console was Animal Crossing: City Folk, released back in 2008. Luckily, now that Wild World is available to purchase on the virtual console, it could make up for the total absence of a main Animal Crossing game on the console.
Both titles are part of a heftier list of additions to the Nintendo 3DS eShop and the Wii U eShop starting Oct. 13.
Kirby Canvas Curse was released in 2005 for the Nintendo DS system, using the touchscreen as the exclusive input in order to play the game, a notable veering-away from traditional Kirby platformers.
Animal Crossing: Wild World was released the same year as Canvas Curse was, featuring a village full of talking animals as your neighbors. The game, bizarrely enough, has virtually no goals or orders in the vein of traditional video games. It's simply a free-to-do-anything simulation game that has racked up to 11.75 million copies to date, one of the best-selling DS titles of all time.
Kirby Canvas Curse and Animal Crossing: Wild World are now available on the DS virtual console for $9.99 each.
