It’s been 25 years since Animal Crossing was released and I felt like I needed to make a little appreciation post for this game series. It came into my life around 2006 and I am so grateful. I made a post way back in 2014 on my Animal Crossing Tumblr about my journey with Animal Crossing but I thought it was time to make an updated one because it’s been 12 years since then.
So my journey with Animal Crossing did not start on the GameCube, it started on the DS with Animal Crossing: Wild World. I don’t remember much about that time other than in my very first town I cut down all my trees and immediately regretted it. I didn’t want to go through the effort of replanting them all so I did restart my old town.
Since then, I have restarted Wild World a bunch because I never play long enough and my town always becomes overrun by weeds lol. I love revisiting Wild World as my first Animal Crossing game because it brings so much nostalgia and peace.
My highlight memories of the time (aside from cutting down all my trees) were playing with my brother, he also had a DS so we would visit each other’s towns quite often. Our favourite villager was Kitt and we also used to wear matching bunny costumes lol. I also remembered bringing my DS to school on the last days of term and visiting random Animal Crossing towns and that’s how I got other fruit trees because I stole fruit from classmates haha. Sorry not sorry.
Then I moved on to Animal Crossing: Let’s Go to the City. I feel like I really played this game to death. I loved going to the city when I was little because it made me feel fancy. My favourite thing was getting balloons from Phineas and I always got excited to see him. While I played a lot of this game, it did lack depth from the previous games. I found the dialogue much more repetitive and we had less events.
One time, I remember trying to play the game for a full 24 hours and I think that’s when I realised it did not have a lot going on. Still never completed the museum though lol. It was also the time when I started my Animal Crossing Tumblr and tried out the WIFI functionality for the first time.
My Animal Crossing Tumblr phase lasted quite a while, I kept it up until sometime in 2020 when I stopped being bothered to move on my photos from my Switch SD card to my PC. It was a good run and a lot of fun and I used to be really in-depth with my posts. But as time went on less people in the community were there so it just didn’t feel worth posting.
Through Tumblr and using wifi, I was able to make one of my first good friends on Animal Crossing, her name is Emelie and she’s from Sweden. Sadly, we do not talk anymore but for a few years we were close. She and I even moved our friendship on to the next Animal Crossing game too.
Animal Crossing: New Leaf became very important to me because it’s where I met my friend Nathan. Emelie actually introduced us and we clicked right away. I remember playing with Nathan so much and telling him all my school dramas through 1000s of 1 line text messages because we didn’t have voice chat lol. How we coped with that, I’ll have no idea. But we have now known each other for about 13 years now and still talk online from time to time.
I’ve found that New Leaf is actually one of my least revisited games and I’m not sure why. I think when they added the camper van site and things it lost appeal to me. I can’t bring myself to constantly restart the game like the older games in the series because there is so much memory attached to this town. As in this game, you can sit on the tree in your plaza and see a little history of your town. I can’t erase that.
That being said, my town has the UGLIEST path choice and I just can’t bring myself to update it but maybe one day I will and it’ll bring me back to this game lol. I did buy a virtual copy of Animal Crossing: New Leaf Welcome Amiibo version, as recommended by Nathan, so I can have two towns on the same DS, as my original copy of New Leaf is physical. But I have not really committed to starting a new town there because I know it’ll be time-consuming. So I could start over if I wanted to, I just have not.
In 2016, I decided to treat myself and get Animal Crossing for the GameCube, I splurged on a GameCube controller for my Wii and everything. I have only really played it a handful of times but I have enjoyed it, though the grid system is not my favourite. I did also play an emulated version of the game in 2014 when I started my YouTube channel but it did not go very far. I think there is a lot of charm in the first game but it does not give me the nostalgia the other games do.
This brings us up to date with the release of Animal Crossing: New Horizons and I gotta say Nintendo released this at the best time. They didn’t know it at the time but this defined the COVID period for me. They released it on the day that the UK went into lockdown and I didn’t have to worry about when I would fit in time to play the game because I could play the game all the time.
I am so thankful to have had Animal Crossing in this time because truthfully without it, I have no idea what I would’ve been doing. Probably still playing a lot of Sims and things but it wasn’t the same. I really enjoyed the Animal Crossing COVID times because I could catch up with Nathan and my other friends in game and just chill out. I also got really into hosting DIY giveaways and lots of other things during COVID just because I had the time.
I also finally was able to complete a museum in one of my Animal Crossing games because I was playing all the time lol. It was so easy to get every bug and fish because I was always ready to catch one when the seasons changed.
So yeah, long story short, Animal Crossing has always played a big part in my life. And I am looking forward to what Nintendo will bring next for the franchise. I am a little worried that they are leaning too heavily into the decoration side of things with island designing and Happy Home Paradise but I am hoping they can come back to their roots in a new main line game and bring us some good gameplay.
I also have no doubts the game will continue to be a part of my life, it’s definitely helped a lot and I have lots of great memories associated with it. So here’s to 25 years of Animal Crossing and hopefully 25 more.
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