Hey everyone! It's been a year or more since I was last here.

That said, I want to chat about what kept me away: I lost my entire game cartridge.
I didn't just accidentally erase or sell my town, the whole thing went poof one day. It was my town Erdule, which I had had for about 4 years. When I couldn't find it anymore I lost all motivation and even stopped playing my second town Ringly.

After the cartridge was missing for about 6 months, a good friend of mine got my another cartridge of ACNL. So now I have 2 "Welcome Amiibo" editions of the game, with an empty case for the original release sitting next to them on the shelf.

After another 5, almost 6 months, I've gotten the itch to play ACNL again and finally mastered the gumption to restart my town. Named Erdule again this time (but with a - above the u), I've started a new town that's map setup, while similar to the old one, is also very different. A part of me is thinking that I'm early enough in the game to start over again and make it exactly like the old town, but I think that's just the disappointment speaking. Because the other part of my brain says, "No, this town has a lot of potential! I like it already! Just make it a successor to the old town."

Have you folks ever lost a town like that? What have you done in the past after accidentally restarting or deleting your town? I can't help but wonder if someone out there found my cartridge- and if they did, what has become of the old Erdule?

One time, I lost my cartridge for my very first town and I bought another one, after a year and seven months I found the old game again. I didn't like that town so I reset it and after passing through two other towns I'm now using it for Chukotka, my winter town.

A good friend of mine once found a cartridge, which was basically just a town with maxed out bells and nothing else. Even the mayor was still living in a tent. I visited the town once or twice, and I was just as surprised as she was because we thought, nobody would max out on the bells and then just "lose" the cartridge. It has another town which she uses running on it now.

Her very first town was called Honalulu (typo in the name, she told me) and it was her favourite one, but then her daughter's dog chewed up the cartridge and then she lost it forever because three gold teeth fell out from the cartridge rear. She made a new town, Honolulu, and she tried to recreate it, also in another town called Hanalei, using the dream town before the update, and since then using pictures. We have both always wondered what would have happened to the town since. It's almost painful to think that it's so close to her and she can hold it, because she never threw it away, but it's gone and not going to return.

Wow! It's kinda crazy that you found your town and then weren't as attached to it anymore. That sort of 'closure' for lack of a better word, must be nice though.

I either lost mine at my Dad's house in Alaska (though he hasn't found it) or it got lost going through airport security. (Though I don't recall ever removing it from my bag, because I was told there was no need).
It only occurred to me months after it was lost that I should contact airport lost and found services, but their online policy says they throw out items after something like 60 or 90 days. So I knew that it was gone for good.

A pet chewing on it sounds like an equally rough way to lose your town. How did her recreation Honolulu go? Also I can't help but wonder if the old cartridge could be repaired... I wouldn't know how or who to contact for that though. It does make you wonder if the game data is still in there.

I've never seen any photos of her former town, but Honolulu now is very nice and a lot of my town's ideas originate from her town, or I've changed them up to be how I like them and used them that way. She told me that she had more ideas for Hanalei, and had searched on and off for three years for the perfect layout. Apparently, everything was the same, so I suppose all that time was worth it. I'm guessing that she would have packed in a lot to her old town, so she would recreate it using two separate ones.

She has 5 more towns, each one has its own river layout, none being the same. Honolulu and Hanalei have differences since the town hall, Re-Tail and other things are in different places and some of the river s slightly different in each one.

We both have a lot of similarities when it comes to the game. My town, Chukotka, has the mirrored river layout of her town EwaBeach and my town Nazran has basically the same river as her town Molokai, but her river begins at the top right and mine starts at the middle right, but otherwise is basically the same. She names her towns after locations in Hawaii and I name mine after locations in Russia. We both theme our towns. One of her towns, Kailua, is a winter-themed town (but also somewhat Hawaiian), and there are perfect apple trees everywhere, very much like my Chukotka. Her town Molokai is a "VIP" town which has many stormy days, like my Nazran town. She plays each town through one month while I play each of my towns set on a certain day with a weather condition I like. We both use the same water path designs. I created my paths and she creates her own in-game dresses.

The list can probably go on, but it would really hurt if she ever lost one of her towns, and I would feel bad if I lost one of my own. I always take lots of photos when I visit her towns or am in my own one just in case, and she does that in my towns too. I think that recreating a town can be very interesting, but sometimes it just isn't worth it. My first town was horrible, and I would never want to remake it, at least unless I made things look a little bit better. Now I think my towns through more and more, and my friend's towns always give me ideas. It's amazing what you can come up with in this game.

Wow! Sounds like you have a lot of similarities in play style and passion! I spent a LOT of time working the paths, breeding flowers, and placing bushes in my old town. I thought it was quite pretty actually. The fruit was cherries and I replaced all the original cherry trees with perfect ones. This town is perfect pears, which are ok, but don't have the same vibrancy of color. Though, I get what your saying about some towns not needing to be recreated. I like themed towns too. My other town Ringly was in progress of trying to be a circus/carnival type of town. I was having trouble designing a nice pathway for it though.

My biggest issue right now is how the layout of the villagers houses will be... so far I don't like the placement of the buildings. I can plot reset as my permanent villagers move in, but I'm not really sure where I want them to be. I was hoping to put them in a vertical row of alternating houses with a path going through the middle, the way that my old town was, but I realized that the town square is kind of in the way of this. I could have them put their houses on the other side of the town, but that area is where Retail and the Town Hall are at, and I was planning to put the cafe and police station there as an area of commerce in town. If I put houses there, they also would have to be placed Behind Retail and the Town Hall, which I'm not fond of at this moment. I'm thoroughly considering restarting again. :/