Forbidden Four

The "Forbidden Four" are four NES Games that you can't get in Dōbutsu no Mori, Dōbutsu no Mori +, Animal Crossing, and Dōbutsu no Mori e+ without using an Action Replay, e-Reader Card, or Advance Play. These are Super Mario Bros., Mario Bros., Ice Climbers, and The Legend of Zelda.

Trivia

 * In North America, two NES games were released exclusively through the use of e-reader card. These games are Mario Bros. and Ice Climber. In Europe never received e-reader support, so these games can't be obtained without Action Replay. In Japan never released these cards, but these games was available in Dōbutsu no Mori + and Dōbutsu no Mori e+. For a short time, Nintendo of Japan offered to transfer equivalent save data from Nintendo 64 to GameCube, so it can be played legitimately. However, this service has since been discontinued.


 * The only games that cannot be obtained at all through normal means are Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda. Interestingly, Super Mario Bros. can be played via Advance Play, and Dōbutsu no Mori + includes a port of the Famicom Disk System version of The Legend of Zelda. This is odd as the English release replaces that with the English NES version of it, even though the game is completely inaccessible. This has led some to believe that these two games either are obtainable through an undiscovered universal code or they were originally intended to be unlocked via e-Reader as well, but e-Reader support has died off before it could happen and there is wanning interest in further hacking the GCN Animal Crossing.


 * Advance Play is when the player links his or her Game Boy Advance to his or her GameCube to download the NES game to the handheld temporarily. This is not available for games that were originally produced for the Famicom Disk System, such as Clu Clu Land D and The Legend of Zelda . It is also not available for games larger than 192 KiB, such as Punch-Out!! and Wario's Woods, which cannot fit into the GBA's RAM. All other games can be played on Advance Play, but their graphics are stretched by about 17% on the Game Boy's display and are limited to one player.