Animal Crossing DS could be hitting US shelves as early as July...

In the latest issue of US official Nintendo magazine, Nintendo Power, the highly anticipated Animal Crossing DS has been given a release date of 'July 2005'. Animal Crossing DS is the first DS online game to come from Nintendo and while at E3 Reggie announced plans to have gamers "playing Mario Kart DS and Animal Crossing DS, both by DS wireless internet and both by the end of this year", it was clearly not expected to have the game released so early.

No more details have been given at this time about the US release or indeed if a PAL release could follow shortly after.

Whether or not this was a simple typo will remain to be seen, however in the past Nintendo Power has been known for being fairly accurate with release dates.

As nothing can be confirmed at this time, this news should remain as a RUMOUR.

Cube-Europe has obtained the scan from the mentioned issue. Other games that were given US release dates in this issure were:

• Nintendogs - August
• Trace Memory - September

Click image to enlarge.

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Update: Just to confirm this turned out as false, Nintendo have responded and have claimed the magazine article was indeed in error and that the game "still carries an estimated release date [of] sometime in the Fourth Quarter (October, November, or December) of 2005."