New Animal Crossing coming to 3DS this fall, Amiibo cards in tow

In a whirlwind of news from their presentation today, Nintendo announced a new Animal Crossing game for Nintendo 3DS today, subtitled Happy Home Designer.

cardsThe game, which is said to hit the portable console this Fall, will be the first of any game to utilize amiibo cards instead of toy figures.

Scanning an amiibo card will create a home for the villager on the card, and after designing the villager’s abode, scanning other characters will invite animals to visit. From there, they can interact as one might expect them to in an Animal Crossing game, complete with photo-taking.

While pricing wasn’t announced for the cards, they’ll likely be sold in blind packs with five or six cards to a pack. The press images that Nintendo has released have a couple of numbered cards visible, going as high as “092” which indicates that there could be at least a hundred cards released, if not all of them at launch. It would be a huge mistake for Nintendo not to release a ton of these cards, as they could be introducing the next generation collectible card series along with it.

Just think of what this could mean for the Pokémon series. Woah.

Nintendo didn’t announce a specific release date for Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer, but expect us to know more about the game at E3 in just over two months.