'Tis a great week for gaming, isn't it? And, for the Animal Crossing addicts among us, it should be pretty freaking awesome. For the sad, strange readers who haven't been chain themselves to a monitor for the last few days, listen up: E3 recently brought word of the next installment in the series, albeit one primed and ready for Nintendo's white waggle box. But don't drop Animal Crossing: Wild World just yet -- there's still plenty of life in the game, even if you've paid off your house three times over and now get your jollies from planting pitfall seeds in front of your neighbors' doors.

That's a perfectly admirable pastime, sure, but Wild World offers plenty of snappy activities for a gamer on the go. In honor of this super special week and the new game on the way, Gaming to Go is adopting a slightly different format for your reading pleasure. You guys like lists, right? Well, buckle your seat belts, ladies and gents, and get ready for 5 Things You Can Do With Five Minutes in AC:WW!

Gallery: Animal Crossing: Wild World

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Sure, we could have shown some other E3-centric videos here in our weekly spotlight, but we really wanted an excuse to talk a little more about the fun potential of MySims, which continues to bear a strong (though less anthropomorphic) resemblance to Animal Crossing. We even saw a little guy with a shovel in this trailer. Since there has been no real sign of Animal Crossing for the Wii, this looks ripe to tide us over while we wait. Who knows, we may even (gasp!) like it better.

Also, splashing in a fountain sounds pretty good right about now. Oh, July, July ... how you make us long for December.

Maybe it's us. Maybe we're the ones who just don't get it. But the last time we checked, lots of Nintendo fans enjoy cuteness (hi2u, Kirby!) and the look of Miis, and it doesn't mean we magically became casual gamers overnight. However, to hear IGN tell it, a fondness for anything cute obviously means it's family-friendly ... which these days, seems to be code for "non-hardcore." IGN confirms that theory when, at the bottom of their latest MySims preview -- which is as devoid of actual content as they claim the game to be -- they say, "This isn't likely to be a game that appeals to hardcore gamers, but families will probably enjoy some innocent fun in a creative environment that will provide some interesting challenges and problem solving."

Did we maybe miss a memo about how games can't be fun? Because we like to think of ourselves as pretty hardcore -- we like to sweat and toil and swear our way through hours and hours of gaming of all types -- but we also like to have fun. If MySims is fun, how is it somehow only okay for families and not "real" gamers? The preview doesn't deny the fun factor. And there's no age limit on being a hardcore gamer. So what gives?

We can only guess that the folks at IGN have never heard of a little game called Animal Crossing ... or maybe they just assume that only children want to beat up Tom Nook when he starts asking for his mortgage payments. After all, seems that MySims is pretty much Animal Crossing that trades the animals in for more building elements, and nothing in their preview contradicts that image ... except their idea that "hardcore gamers" won't like it. Personally, we're looking forward to giving it a try. The building elements of The Sims were always fun, and perhaps this new spin will make the actual gameplay more engaging.

The DS Life is a weekly feature in which we scour the known world for narrative images of Nintendo's handheld and handheld gamers. If you have a photo and a story to match it with, send both to thedslife at gmail dot com.

Sean Foreman mixes his advanced technical abilities as a photographer with post-processing effects to create images that almost seem magical in their composition. Check past the post break for a sample of his creative work and this week's edition of The DS Life.

Hey, a thing with Animal Crossing characters on it! Must buy! Seriously, Nintendo did a bad thing by making a game full of super-adorable characters and then designing it such that players are required to interact with these characters on a daily schedule. Then, when you see Tutu or whoever on a toy, you feel more compelled to buy it because you've formed somewhat of a relationship.

We recognize this manipulation, but it still works. We may have to buy that Snowman stylus. We love the snowman.

The Animal Crossing merchandising explosion continues. Soon you will be able to outfit your house only with things that bear Tom Nook's smug face.

The latest cash-in is this series of Animal Crossing cups. They come in pairs featuring related characters, like the set with Mable and Sable above, and another set with Tom Nook and his roaming counterpart, Crazy Redd. Each cup holds about 10.5 ounces, and each set of 2 costs $8.75 from NCSX.

We like the design of these cups. The colors are nice and happy, ensuring that your Sunny Delight (or purple stuff, you rogue) is somewhat sunnier and more delightful.

NCSX is selling more adorable Animal Crossing toys, including a lil' plush K.K. Slider and Blathers the owl-- you can pretend to be annoyed about how long it takes to get your dang fossils appraised! But the real star of this update is the freaking huge Tom Nook seen here, gettin' his Potion on. He comes in at 15.74 inches tall, with an 11-inch-wide head. That's big enough to intimidate us about our house payments!

Unfortunately, to get an armful of Nook, you need an armful of cash-- $49, plus shipping. Better get started selling cherries you find on the ground!

We just cannot look at MySims DS screens and see anything other than Animal Crossing. Everything we see of the game just further reinforces the similarity between the two games. These new screenshots are no different.

It's just ... there's the wishing well! And the beach! And the shop! And the little houses, the interior and exterior of which look just like Animal Crossing houses! Maybe if the screens focused on the character editor and not on walkin' around town, we wouldn't get such a strong Crossing vibe. But looking at these ... who could be so shameless? Oh, right.

Animal Crossing is more interesting than we thought, it seems! Whereas we (read: I) found the improvements in Wild World a poor trade for NES games, and not enough to hold our interest after a year or so of Gamecube Crossing, academics are speaking out in appreciation of Nintendo's pointless-by-design communication game.

The latest essay on Henry Jenkins' blog, is an excerpt from a thesis by Kristina Drzaic, about "secrets" in Animal Crossing. The idea is that other games feature glitches that allow the player to redesign the game in small ways and alter the basic experience, whereas Animal Crossing features such "glitch-like" abilities as part of the natural design of the game, and allows even more customization than the engine was designed for. One example showed a player creating a narrative conflict between herself and Tom Nook just by trying and failing to buy some candy.

We were just wondering aloud why customizable content was so compelling! Good thing there are people smarter than us out there.

[Via GameSetWatch]

Animal Crossing engages players by giving them tools to do whatever they feel like, a large part of which is designing clothing, wallpaper, flags, and even dialogue to personalize their towns. Mario Kart DS has customizable emblems. And then there's Drawn to Life, which looks like the ultimate example of the in-game drawing tool, with the whole game designed around player-created characters and items.

What is it that is so captivating about putting your own work into a game? We were really amused by the Drawn to Life demo, specifically because we got to watch our creations move while we were still creating them. But why are our crude scratchings often so much more interesting to us than professionally-designed art? Or is it just us?

If you've been tethered to Nintendo consoles for the last eight years, then you might have missed Sega's epic Shenmue. Nominally, it was a game about taking revenge on the man who killed the protagonist's father. In play it was more about walking around town chatting with people.

Sound like anything you know? It did to Eric-Jon Rössel Waugh, as well, and his feature on GameCareerGuide is an excellently in-depth discussion of the open-ended, generally optional gameplay found in both games. It'll make you appreciate Animal Crossing more than you already do.

And since we're probably not going to get another chance to mention Shenmue on DS Fanboy, we'd like to suggest that anyone looking for a neat adventure game/RPG would do well to pick up a Dreamcast and a copy of the game. It's not everyone's favorite, but we couldn't have loved it more.

[Via GameSetWatch]

The folks at GamePro have put together a pretty interesting feature listing their picks for the top 52 most important games ever. These aren't necessarily the best games, or the best-selling games, but their choices for those titles that have been the most influential on gaming as a whole. And while we're sure many of their picks will be questioned and debated to the point of exhaustion, we're really only interested in one small part of the list -- that is, the only DS title to make the cut. Nintendogs weighs in at #44. Does this mean it's the most influential of all DS games? Since it's the only one on the list, it would seem so, and while we agree that Nintendogs certainly advanced gaming, we might argue that since the franchise draws heavily on both Animal Crossing and the digital pet phenomenon, it's hard to see Nintendogs as a "focusing lens" that forever changed gaming. Does that mean Nintendogs did nothing new? Of course it did. But the idea of a needy digipet existed long before Nintendo popularized the portable pooches with their array of titles. GamePro says "first" doesn't matter -- it's being the folks that do it right that matters -- Nintendogs certainly did a lot of things right, but is it the most important game on the DS? It's an interesting question.

And we have a question of our own -- where's Brain Age? The game that started the training phenomenon is easily equally influential, or perhaps even more so. But we won't argue; rather, we admire the effort that goes into such a list, and after skimming the comments on the article, we don't envy the flood of angry e-mails that are surely flowing into the mailboxes of the writers.

Is it just us, or does MySims look more and more like Animal Crossing with everything we see from it? That's tough, considering it looked like Animal Crossing when it was first announced. But we can't be mad. It's too adorable, and we cannot resist the power of MySims. After the jump, there are enough screenshots to convince even the hardest of hearts.

We're really not sure if these are work (or other public place) safe. They are so freakin' cute that they may cause a complete emotional breakdown. You've been warned.

We've perused doc18's Flickr account before, and now we return for an adorable, bug-catching Animal Crossing village buddy to give happiness to what looks to be the user's Mac. Check out the highlights for today:

Joystiquery
SXSW: Serious Games: Can Learning Be Hard Fun?
Today's best-looking mech video: Armored Core comparison
Weekly Webcomic Wrapup, now with a case of the Mondays

News
ONM says 'world exclusive' not April Fools prank
Take Two mulling sale of company
New games this week
Study: Racing games may spur risky driving
Army of Two = 1 part innovation + 1 part bad dialogue
Excitebike, Splatterhouse, Beyond Oasis join Virtual Console line-up
Bungie talks us down from Halo 3 Legendary ledge
Miyamoto talks user-generated content, critical of PS Home
PS3 firmware 1.60 adds background downloading; due March 22nd
Pandemic unveils Saboteur, a 'different' WWII shooter
Game Park is dead, long live Game Park Holdings
Devil May Cry 4 no longer a Playstation 3 exclusive

Rumors & Speculation
Nintendo on Wii hard drive: 'pure rumor & speculation'

Culture & Community
Puzzle Quest demo sneaks online
Entire SNES game collection on eBay
More LEGO Halo goodness -- Warthogs and Spectres, oh my!

It's becoming more and more common for games to require or expect you to play every day; quite a few of the big sellers on the DS encourage daily gameplay, in fact. Frankly, we're hesitant to say that we really like that. Expected every day is one thing, but Animal Crossing and Nintendogs seem to take it pretty far. In the former, you often find yourself gently scolded by the other inhabitants, and in the latter ... by not playing, you are starving puppies and are therefore a bad person. That's just harsh.

But if you really enjoy a game, then perhaps the every day requirement isn't quite so onerous. We've seen a few towns in AC:WW that were lovingly crafted and maintained, day after day, for impressive lengths of time. And while we admire that sort of dedication, we just may not have it, and no one wants to be thought of as the person who starves puppies. So Nintendogs? Not for us, not in the long run. When it comes to these daily games, what's your take?