When was Animal Crossing made

The first game, Dōbutsu no Mori (lit. Animal Forest) was released in April 2001 for Nintendo 64.
It was ported to Nintendo Gamecube 8 months after that. The US and PAL versions, both called Animal Crossing, were released in September 2002 and 2004, respectively.
Wild World was released in December 2005 (PAL version in March 2006).
City Folk was released in November 2008 (PAL version one month later).