The original was a revelation. I poured hours into that game. I remember reading about it in NGC Magazine and it seemed fantastic. Then they gave away a DVD with footage of the game on it and that cemented my decision. It was my first ever import game. I didn't buy a Freeloader as a disc that came free with an issue of CUBE worked as an AC-only Freeloader so I used that (the same disc let me unlock all the characters on F-Zero GX IIRC).
It was hugely engrossing right from the off. I remember the first day I played the game was the day of the Meteor Shower, so as soon as I'd finished working, the whole town ended up at the lake watching the stars and listening to how the music changed. It was a fascinating introduction. For the next few months I must have spent most of my young spare time in the village of Windstil, discovering the secrets of the game.
My brother also started a town on our second memory card and we spent many hours visiting one another's towns, decorating and vandalising the landscapes, defacing villager's faces and lamenting the loss of our favourites to the other's town. We then decided to start from scratch in a combined town... what an error.
The new town wasn't the same. And of course we realised just how much depth was available on one disc.
Every new village was totally different, but no town was quite like Windstil. So through the winter months we kept re-building, attempting to stumble across the perfect town. It was only by the time the magic had been and gone, diluted by constant reinvention, that we realised that there's no such thing as a perfect town, but there's never anything quite like your first.
A few months later, in the springtime, we returned to the game and played properly for a while, more to learn the game's innermost secrets than anything else. Turnips were sold, mortgages were cleared, clocks were changed, secret furniture sets amassed. I'd wager I've learnt more about the secrets of AC GC than any other game, ever. If I were to do an Andrew Mills, Animal Crossing would be my game to guide.
Several years later (and several years ago) I went back to the game, starting at the start of the year, totally afresh. By this point I'd learnt of the code generators that allowed you to obtain any item from Nook's but I steered clear of these this time and set out to obtain a legitimate set of furniture map pieces.
I still visit my town from time to time, but I usually get flak for not showing up for X months, or allowing the place to become overgrown. It's a great town and I like it a lot... but it's not quite the same as Windstil. Real life has numbed the feeling somewhat, and I'm very aware it's simply a virtual environment that I'd become disproportionately attached to due to the nature of the game (and just how different it was to every other console game at the time) and the time in my life that I encountered it. But I'd still always advise the same to new players: never leave town, because you can't go back.