Hundreds of thousands of Japanese gamers have a favorite new destination. Welcome to Animal Crossing indeed.

Japanese site Nintendo-Inside is reporting the initial two-day returns on the new portable Animal Crossing for the DS. To say the least, the results are impressive. From November 23rd to the 24th Animal Crossing DS (known in Japan as Oideyo Doubutsu no Mori) has sold over 250k copies. The returns place it well on its way to fulfilling the 300k estimated earlier last week, with opening week totals of over 350k-400k quite likely (basically selling out of the initial shipment).

The game, featured in recent Japanese television spots clearly targeted at female users, is expected to give a huge boost to sales of DS systems (again, rumours see system sales nearly tripling from the previous week). Animal Crossing DS also marks Japan's first Nintendo WiFi Connection capable game, but it will remain to be seen if Japanese gamers (generally considered less savvy with online games) embrace the online connection aspect that has the rest of the world so intrigued. However, sales this impressive again underscore how successful Nintendo's dual-screened handheld has been at attracting new users. America will be the next stop for this potential phenomenon, due the first week of December (with Europe looking at a March 2006 release).

Check back with us for further details on Animal Crossing DS, including full week sales figures. Thanks go to user Oogami of the Gaming-Age Forums for pointing out the article.

Update: We can confirm that final weekly figures for the game are now over 325,000 copies, with the DS seeing a boost in sales to over 130,000 units sold in the past seven days. Full Japanese weekly figures will follow soon!