Required Items
» Fruit (Lots!)- There will be one fruit that your islander does not like. You will know this because when they eat it they will get a skull above their heads instead of a heart. If this happens you will have to start making your islander happy all over again. When you have identified this fruit, restrict the growth on you main island of these and don’t bring them to your island any more, just sell them. Apart from this I think that all other fruits are equal favorites with your islander, including coconuts (even though my islander always says how fed up she is with them).
» Golden Shovel- The easiest to obtain golden item. Just use 2 shovels and bury one in a shining hole, where a tree will grow. When matured, shake tree for the shovel.
» GBA and link cable- connected to port 2 on your gamecube and switched on with no cartridge in it

Considerations
• When doing Island trips, always have 10 letters in your inventory. Using this, grab stuff from your hand and put it in a letter. Take 26 items (including shovel, rod, net, etc that you are holding) across to the island instead of 16. This cuts down on trips and Kappn’s songs.
• Make sure you have good batteries (i.e. green light on) on your GBA, or preferably use an adapter as you do not want to go losing your island in the middle of an important digging mission, or worse during a save/transfer.
• Feng Shui- I am not sure if having Feng Shui correctly set up in your house makes any difference to the items you get. I only have about 30 colored items in the correct place at the moment, and regularly get both ‘island only’ NES games (about 1 in three items buried!!). I get so many of these that I just bury them again. I am sure that this does affect the amounts you get in moneybags though as I have seen the values rise considerably as I have added more colored items.
• Island Layout. I have only seen my island, but I guess others may be substantially different. I have a main island, where I bury items, drop fruit and where the islanders hut is, and a smaller adjoining island to the east where my hut is and where I drop the money bags and make sure the islander does not go across the bridge and steal them.
• Any of the following items are possible to get from the island with the golden shovel and when your islander is happy. You may also get more common (Tom Nook) items. Common items are all that you will get if you use a normal shovel or your islander is not happy.

Items You Get
• Island Only NES Games- Wario Wood’s and Baseball.
• Island Only Items– Beach Chair, Beach Table, Diver Dan, Life Ring, Snow cone Machine, Surfboard, Treasure Chest Ukulele, Wave Breaker.
• Rare Items– Any Lottery or Redd Items.
• NES Games– Any other tradable NES games.

Method
1. First of all, fill your inventory and letters (see considerations) with unwanted furniture. It has to be furniture and not wallpaper/carpets to work. This only needs to be done on such a large scale on your first go as after that you only need to replace what you kept when digging on your previous visit. Because of this, I never sell any unwanted furniture (from jobs, dump, etc) back to Tom Nook. I just collect it up and take it to my island. I usually end up buying all the furniture for sale in the shop each day just to take across.
2. Next, turn on your GBA, connected to port 2 by a link cable, and visit the dock found in one of your beach squares. Then talk to Kapp’n in the boat to visit your island. If this is your first visit he will ask you to name your island. I don’t think it matters what you call it so name it something you like as it can’t be changed later.
3. When you get to your island, choose a place to bury your items. You want to choose somewhere that has a big open space and that is not obscured by trees, as it can be hard to see the buried items on the GBA. It is also easier if you bury them all together as getting your islander to move around is sometimes hard, and you need to keep a mental note of which ones they have dug up already (I usually use an area 6 wide by 5 tall on my main island and try to make them dig one row at a time). You may need to clear some flowers, etc, out of the way, or you can just bury around them.
4. You now need to talk to Kapp’n to go back to your town, but don’t bother to take a copy on your GBA yet.
5. When back at your town, fill up on fruit using the letters method as above. Make sure you are also holding your golden shovel.
6. Now talk to Kapp’n and travel back to your island. Drop off all your fruit and put the golden shovel somewhere where you will remember where it is.
7. Return to your town once more, this time taking the copy of your island across to your GBA when prompted. You can then let you character return to town and you can pick up and start work on your GBA.
8. On your GBA you should see a little hand pointer, use this (button ‘A’) to move items around and tell your islander where to move. Start by clicking on the door of their hut to get them out. Then pick up and drop fruit near them, you should then hear a chime. They will stop, eat the fruit and then carry on. You now need to continue to feed them fruit until there eyes turn shape!! It should change from the ‘normal’ mood where you can see white in their eyes, to ‘happy’ mood where their eyes nearly vanish altogether apart from upturned ‘v’s’. This is the state you need them in before digging. If you are unsure, when they reach this mood, they will drop a moneybag and continue to drop one bag for every fruit fed. If you want to keep these bags of bells then I suggest picking up and dropping them to a part if the island out of the way as your islander will delight in stealing them back again, given half a chance.
9. When they are in the ‘happy’ mood, you need to pick up the golden shovel and drop it near them. It will look like a brown and blue box (which is what all tools look like). You will see it in their hand when they pick it up. The problem lies in the fact that when they are happy and have the shovel they like to plant flowers or trees in any empty space at every available opportunity. The only problem is that they will then turn back to ‘normal’ mood and you will have to feed them fruit again. If this happens you will need to get them to drop the shovel, by moving them to an empty square, and keep clicking them until they drop the shovel there. You can then feed them again until their eyes change (usually only takes one fruit when this happens), pick up the shovel and start again. This becomes less of a problem the more you use the island, as the more flowers that are planted the less ‘free’ space is left for them to plant. I have a complete border two deep of flowers around my buried items, and when the islander gets in there, they have no choice but to dig up my stuff.
10. Once the islander is within your ‘buried’ zone, keep clicking the buried items in turn and they will dig them up and replace them with other items. Try to get them to work in a pattern so you know which ones they have done, they will only dig up each item once. If you are looking for the NES games, you can tell when they bury them because they look like a NES console.
11. When they have dug up every item you have two choices: a) get them to drop the shovel and keep feeding them fruit to get more moneybags (don’t forget to move them). I often get 10,000 and 30,000 so it’s great for loan paying (see Feng Shui in considerations) or b) leave the remaining fruit alone for the next visit (useful if you are running short on fruit).
12. All you need to do now is press ‘B’ on your GBA to stop you islander running riot, go back to the gamecube and return to your island on Kappn’s boat again. Make sure you have exited the dock acre before speaking to Kapp’n again or else he will not have had time to turn around in his boat and will refuse to take you back to the island. Before you go back you could also stock up on fruit/furniture again or take your net and fishing rod back for a spot of out of season fishing (it's great if you can find a ‘friend’ to do this while you are playing the GBA). When you get back to the island pick up any moneybags and dig up all your new items, anything you don’t particularly want just bury them again as you can always order them from Nook at a later date (I put the island items and a couple of copies of Baseball and Wario Woods in my island hut as you cannot re-order these).

Good luck on digging up what you want, if you don’t get it the first time then repeat the cycle all over again!

Extras
• You may like to take your net to the island as every few minutes, while you are on the GBA, an item will float by. You need to make your islander pick up the net and direct them to catch the floating item before it floats off the other side of the island. You will get different things (i.e. furniture, gyroids, cash, trash, etc) depending on what the icons look like when you catch it. The next time you give them a piece of fruit they will drop what they have caught.
• You can take coconuts back to your mainland instead of feeding to islander, so that you can plant coconut trees near your beach.
• You may want to leave fruit trees on your island with fruit on until last, as this will attract insects that you cannot get on the mainland (depending on season).
• Fishing - You can catch out-of-season fish on your island.
• If you talk to your islander, they may ask for specific items. If you bring these from your town and have them in your inventory when you talk to your islander again, she will try and buy them from you and then they will appear in her house the next time you visit. They may also try and sell you items from their house.
• You can use your own house on your island to store items. I use mine to store island only items, and I have two of each stored in there (as well as wario woods and baseball). If I ever need them I can come and get them, without having to try and dig them up again. Other people have used them to store Gyroids, use a tropical beach house with tropical wall and floor.
• Your islander sometimes asks you to sign the island guest book. I don’t think this has any other purpose apart from showing other villagers to your island what you wrote.
• I have found that your islander can also become ‘sad/angry’ mood. This usually happens when you feed them the wrong fruit or when they call for help when they are stuck and you don’t pick them up and move them quick enough or you don’t drop them in a free space.