Animal Crossing Plaza

Animal Crossing Plaza is a discontinued social application for the Wii U that was available for free from the Nintendo eShop as a companion application to. It was released on August 7, 2013 in North America and Europe, and on August 8, 2013 in Japan.

The app takes place in an area based on the WaraWara Plaza from the Wii U Home Menu and themed after the event plaza from. From the plaza, players could post to the Animal Crossing Series Community on Miiverse.

An update for Animal Crossing Plaza was released on November 14, 2013, which added polls, the ability to mark villagers as residents, Miiverse stamps, improvements to the album, and additional dialog.

Animal Crossing Plaza was removed from the Nintendo eShop on December 22, 2014, although it can still be accessed for those who previously downloaded it, and Miiverse posts could still be made from the app until Miiverse was discontinued on November 7, 2017.

Announcement
Animal Crossing Plaza was announced in a Nintendo Direct on August 7, 2013 and released immediately after the presentation. The app was introduced in a segment mimicking the startup sequence of, with Isabelle telling the viewer about the app and respective Miiverse communities before then-president of Nintendo Satoru Iwata explained it further.

Features
Animal Crossing Plaza takes place in a large plaza with a Town Tree in the center. When the game is loaded, the player's Mii and Isabelle appear near the Town Tree before a random selection of several dozen villagers and special characters walk into the plaza. Occasionally, K.K. Slider can appear sitting on the ledge of the Town Tree, and other special characters can appear near the Town Tree before the other characters show up.

Miiverse
There were two Miiverse communities for Animal Crossing Plaza: The Animal Crossing Series Community, where players could post and view others' posts, and the Animal Crossing News Community, where Nintendo would post updates and announcements. The Animal Crossing Series Community could be accessed by tapping on Lloid to the left of the Town Tree, and the Animal Crossing News Community could be accessed by tapping on the bulletin board to the right of the Town Tree.

Players could post post text, drawings, or screenshots from their album to the Animal Crossing Series Community from their profile. Additionally, posts could be made from a character's profile, and the resulting post would be tagged with that character's name. Beginning in the November 2013 update, stamps could be added to drawings. The ability to post to the Animal Crossing Series Community directly from Miiverse was disabled on January 1, 2015; however, posts could still be made from Animal Crossing Plaza until the discontinuation of Miiverse on November 7, 2017.

There were three Animal Crossing News Communities: one for Japan, the Americas, and Europe/Oceania. A total of 10 posts with news about Animal Crossing Plaza and the were made in all regions by Animal Crossing Plaza and  director Aya Kyogoku (@NintendoKyogoku) from August 7, 2013 to January 21, 2015. Japan received an exclusive post from Kyogoku about Photos with Animal Crossing, and the Americas received an exclusive post from a Nintendo of America staff member named Tom (@NintendoTom) about the distribution of the furniture item in  at North American Nintendo Zones.

Characters
All 333 of 's villagers, as well as 52 of its special characters are included in the app. One to two characters display a dialog above their head when viewing the plaza; each villager personality and each individual special character has a pool of dialog strings that are displayed at random. Additional dialog was added in the November 2013 update.

A character can be tapped on from the GamePad. This switches the GamePad view to a profile of that character, who cycles between different dialogs and shows various emotions. When in this view, the character's birthday and ranking in the latest poll are shown. The player can mark them as their favorite character and could make a Miiverse post about them to the Animal Crossing Series Community or view recent posts about them. Moving the Control Stick rotates the character; this cannot be done for Zipper T. Bunny, who will fight against the movement so that his back side cannot be seen.

The character marked as the player's favorite always appears in the plaza. Additionally, beginning in the November 2013 update, the player can also mark up to ten villagers as residents who will also always appears in the plaza.

Player profile
The player can tap on their Mii to view their profile, including the following information about them, which was also shared with others on Miiverse:
 * Profile name, as set in the Wii U system settings.
 * Birthday, as set in the Wii U system settings (can be hidden from public view).
 * Location, as set in the Wii U system settings (can be hidden from public view).
 * town name (must be entered manually; default is "Anytown").
 * player name (must be entered manually; default is "Someone").
 * Dream Address (must be entered manually).
 * Favorite character, set within that character's profile.

The player could also post to Miiverse and view their Miiverse profile from here.

Album
From their profile, the player can access photo albums which screenshots from can be uploaded to from an SD card. There are 12 albums, each of which can be named, and each album can hold up to 240 screenshots. Any uploaded screenshots could be posted to Miiverse.

Uploaded screenshots can be deleted or moved to another album. Beginning in the November 2013 update, multiple screenshots can be deleted or moved at once, and screenshots from other users can be saved.

Polls
Beginning in the November 2013 update, there were monthly questions that asked players to vote on a character. Polls were held until the end of 2014.

The rankings for all 385 characters for each poll can be viewed from the bulletin board while connected to the internet, and they can still be accessed of December 2022. Isabelle received the most votes in every poll by a wide margin.

Below is a list of the polls and the top five most-voted characters:

Real-time clock
Like the main series games, Animal Crossing Plaza utilizes the system's clock. The current date, weekday, and time are displayed in the top-left corner of the screen. The clock only effects the dialog of the characters, with certain characters mentioning current or upcoming events based on the time of year. Unlike in the main series games, there is no day/night cycle or seasons and the environment remains constant throughout the day and year.