Hello ROM readers, and happy holidays!!
I’m taking a break this week and will return with a new full issue soon, but in the meantime I’ve got a little something to give away as a thank you for following the newsletter this year. I’m very pleased to have found 3,000 folks and counting interested in reading about the latest in emulation every couple weeks! That’s a thousand new subscribers since this time last year when I gave away a boxed copy of Front Mission, and I hope to keep spreading the good word to more and more readers next year.
This time around I’m giving away a copy of the Japanese version of Animal Crossing, aka the December 2001 GameCube release Animal Forest+, or Dōbutsu no Mori+.…
Hello ROM readers, and happy holidays!!
I’m taking a break this week and will return with a new full issue soon, but in the meantime I’ve got a little something to give away as a thank you for following the newsletter this year. I’m very pleased to have found 3,000 folks and counting interested in reading about the latest in emulation every couple weeks! That’s a thousand new subscribers since this time last year when I gave away a boxed copy of Front Mission, and I hope to keep spreading the good word to more and more readers next year.
This time around I’m giving away a copy of the Japanese version of Animal Crossing, aka the December 2001 GameCube release Animal Forest+, or Dōbutsu no Mori+. I bought this copy of the game in Kyoto, Japan in 2019 while attending Bitsummit, a wonderful gaming event. It’s sealed (presumably re-sealed by the Book-Off store I get it from since the corners are worn), and I’ve never opened it, but I think there might still be a memory card in there! So I guess there’s a small chance you could get a chance to visit a 24-year-old Animal Crossing town, but maybe don’t get your hopes up too high on that front.
How to enter the giveaway
All you have to do for a chance to win is be subscribed to **Read Only Memo **by Saturday, January 3rd 2026 at 11:59 pm Pacific. After that cut-off, I’ll pick a random winner from the subscriber email list and message them. If the winner doesn’t want the game or I don’t hear back within 2 days emailing them, I’ll draw a new name.
If you’re brand new to *ROM *and sign up just for the chance of winning — I hope you stick around! If owning a Japanese copy of Animal Crossing puts a smile on your face, I think you’ll find a lot you’ll enjoy reading about in this newsletter every issue.
Also, it would be very brave of you to share this post with anyone you know who’d like a free boxed copy of Animal Crossing, even though their signing up will make you a teensy bit less likely to win. Just think how much sweeter that victory will feel if you do, though.
The giveaway’s completely free, of course, and shipping’s on me! (Please do not live in Antarctica, winner). Tips from y’all in 2025 have more than covered the costs of hosting & publishing ROM, and I’m happy to keep paying it forward.
Wow, 3000 readers! A quick look back at ROM in 2025
If you’ll permit a moment of indulgence, I wanted to go over a few highlights from this year’s issues — it was a tiring, travel-heavy year, but I still managed to cover a few topics I’m particularly happy about.
First up, what I’d call the one must-read issue this year: a deep, deep dive into the LaserActive’s groundbreaking emulation:
This story got a tremendous response for my little newsletter, which I owe completely to the developer behind this work, Nemesis. I just helped put some pieces of the narrative together — it’s the accomplishment and the dogged commitment to making it happen that really resonated with people! It was posted on Hacker News, Reddit, Hackaday, went mildly viral on Bluesky and got a mention here and there on YouTube / podcasts. I was psyched to see it "break containment" and appeal to people who, like me, knew very little about the LaserActive beforehand.
Second, this was definitely a big year for decompilations and recompilations, and this is my favorite story on the topic:
This issue was actually a follow-up to my scoop N64 Recompilation is about to have a big 2025, and I thought it would be a better read to focus in on a single project rather than just writing generally about a bunch of recomps that were still a ways off from being finished. Plus, how cool is it to be able to play a "modern" port of a game that was never released??
More recently, I also wrote about another decompilation project for Matsuno’s masterpiece Vagrant Story. I really hope that one makes it to the finish line.
One final story I want to spotlight that’s a bit different: one focused on the revival of a specific online game, FromSoftware’s Chromehounds.
Bless emulation and extremely devoted game communities who will bring their beloved back from the dead!
And if you missed any of the issues below, I’m quite proud of them, too — most are exclusive interviews or in-depth looks at subjects no one else is writing about.
- Inside the long-awaited fan translation of Sega Saturn masterpiece Sakura Wars 2
- How the makers of CrankBoy finally cracked 60 fps Game Boy emulation on the Playdate
- After 2 decades of tinkering, MAME finally cracks the Hyper Neo Geo 64
More about Animal Forest+
If you’d like to read up on the history of Animal Crossing, Shmuplations has translated two short interviews with the game directors that you should check out:
***—It’s pretty bold to make a game with no ending and no story! Why make that kind of game?
Nogami:
**From the start, we weren’t interested in genres. (laughs) RPG, action… we made no effort to classify what we were doing like that.
Eguchi:
**One of our early propositions was to make "a game unlike any that has come before." We were consciously trying to create something in a new genre that you couldn’t easily reduce to a single label. But in reality, you have to write the genre for the retail package labeling. But we hadn’t thought about that at all… it was like, "what should we write? I have no idea!" (laughs)
Nogami:
**Yeah, and I remember someone saying, "well, how about we just say ‘communication’?" (laughs)
—And a "communication game" goes back to what you were saying about people connecting with each other.
Nogami:
Right. Ultimately our gameplay ideas derive from that theme. Let’s swap furniture from our houses! …that was another way of connecting people.*
For a definitive account of the game, as well as its many different versions — Animal Forest for the Nintendo 64DD, Animal Forest+, and beyond, check out Kelsey Lewin’s deeply researched book for Boss Fight Books. I’ve read it myself, and it’s great!
Here’s a video from Kelsey talking about the work that went into the book and reading a chapter.
Thanks for reading throughout 2025. Onwards to the new year!
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