Animal Crossing, known as Dōbutsu no Mori (どうぶつの森, Dōbutsu no Mori) in Japan, is a life simulation video game developed by Nintendo EAD and published by Nintendo. It was first released in Japan for the Nintendo 64 on April 14th, 2001. Due to limited sales because of the drastically decreasing N64 market, the game went unreleased for the N64 outside of Japan and was ported to the Nintendo GameCube in Japan on December 14, 2001; North America on September 15, 2002; Australia on October 17, 2003; and Europe on September 24, 2004. The Japanese GameCube version lacks e-Reader support, a feature found in the North American and Australian versions. A version of Animal Crossing was released in Japan with e-Reader support on June 27, 2003.