Alright, it’s quite something to have my very second post in this series be a post about not actually doing it. But I want to hold myself accountable to it, because I really would like to make some headway through my retro games and see some new old stuff that I haven’t played or want to revisit. So what DID I play this month? Well, more Animal Crossing.

But! It was a mix of keeping up with Wild World to some extent, as well as playing a LOT of Animal Crossing New Horizons.

With the new update, I was wondering if I’d find renewed interest in the game. A game that was overshadowed by the pandemic and how it carried us through lonely months with wholesome social times in shared island visits, it’s been a little hard to revisit without remembering long afternoons in the house, stuck inside with the rest of the world. So I wondered if I’d get back into it despite the new content (the previous large update did not pull me back in for long). This time, however, it worked.

For the first time in years, I was able to get sucked back into the game’s daily draws. I strove to see all of the new content added, whether it be from the latest 3.0 update, or the prior 2.0 update that I never saw through. I designed hotel rooms, I designed vacation homes, I collected gyroids (even set out to acquire one of each and display them according to their instrumental purpose). My wife and I tried out slumber islands as well, which are really cool (even if I struggle with interior decorating still more than she does).

I even set out on some island reconstruction projects, including rebuilding a neighbourhood I’d spent time on in the past, to spread my villagers across the island more and give it some more life in otherwise quiet corners. I also worked in some villager replacements, sorry Biskit!

Plus, I got to experience some of the regular Animal Crossing stuff again. Hanging out with pals on the island, celebrating holidays like Valentines Day, Festivale, and my wife even got to celebrate her birthday in Animal Crossing again this year.

Also, an interesting highlight: my wife and I were able to participate in a 12-player event organized by Rebekah Valentine at IGN, which was set up for the purpose of reporting on the new feature, which resulted in a great article you can find here - you can see us in those screenshots! Not the smoothest experience in terms of getting everyone on to the island, but you can read the article for more on that. It was still a lot of fun!

All of that kept me pretty busy with daily checks. But it was a blast, feeling the urge to play the game again. It may not last quite as long as a whole new game would, but I was reminded of a lot of the things that this entry did to make it feel special. Especially when played alongside Animal Crossing Wild World.

That’s right - last month’s retro game definitely continued. But I’ve got some qualms!

Sorry, my house is a disaster.

Yeah, so my wife and I kept playing Animal Crossing Wild World, and I was really glad for it. Our Animal Crossing era was mostly a good time. It had some elements in the QOL department that have been improved in later entries, and as I mentioned, definitely stood out while playing alongside the newest entry in the series. But that’s all fine, it’s part of the fun.

My real issue comes down to villagers being really aggressive in terms of how frequently they move out of your town. If you read my last post, you may remember that my wife and I had to run a rescue mission to salvage her favourite villager who had moved out. We worked to get him into my own town, made space again in her own town, skipped a bunch of days to get him to move out of my town, and eventually back safely to her town, so we could resume comfortably playing the game.

However! What we both quickly discovered is that our villagers really loved to just, move out, all the time. It’s sort of ridiculous. Daily, we’d go around and check on our favourite neighbours, and inevitably we’d end up finding one who had their house packed up in boxes. Sometimes it didn’t matter if we didn’t care about that particular villager, but sometimes it’s someone you don’t want to move away.

Anyway, so this became a chore where, even though I was playing more of New Horizons, I was having to pop open Wild World to make sure nobody I liked was moving away. Meanwhile, my wife was doing the same, but inevitably missed a day, only to open her game and find out that Chow had, in fact, moved away once again.

Now, in my last post, I’d also said that I was considering writing down the steps we took to save Chow that first time. Summing up quickly, it was essentially running Tag Mode to clear out the queue before visiting each other’s town so that the “9th villager slot” would be empty before attempting to send over the villager you intend to save, so that there’s no leftover villagers who’d previously moved left in that queue slot. The reason I’m not writing that post is that it wasn’t really reproducible, so I’m not sure at this point if it was just an internet rumour that this approach even does anything. At this point, it seems like Chow was really lost this time. A shame.

Ultimately, having to keep chasing after neighbours we like means that we’re probably just setting the game aside finally. It’s a shame, we’ve enjoyed revisiting the game, but it doesn’t make it so fun when you feel obligated to hop into the game just to make sure nobody’s leaving. It’s extra bothersome to me because of the longevity of these games. I spoke to Biskit, who’d returned to my Wild World town after having bounced between mine and my wife’s games, and he mentioned a friend of mine who he hadn’t seen in 5894 days (over 16 years)! This is a small thing, but also great legacy is stored inside these villagers’ memories, and it’s a shame that they can just vanish instead of serving as a sort of time capsule years later.

But anyway, as the Winter season ends, so perhaps does the Animal Crossing era for now. I still intend to keep up with New Horizons daily checks for a bit, but with Pokémon Fire Red just releasing on the Switch, and Pokopia on the way next week, I imagine I’ll have to make room for playing some other games that aren’t Animal Crossing, at least for now.

So this was just another Animal Crossing post, but I think it makes sense given how the last 2 months have gone in that direction. I also wanted to make sure I got a post in before February ended, to keep these posts in mind so that next month, I hopefully have another retro game that I’ve revisited to share here. Tragically, my favourite local game store closed up recently, so I’ll have to look at elsewhere to add to my retro games collection in the future. But I’ve got a lot on the shelves to try out anyway, so there’ll certainly be much to choose from for next month’s post. Thanks for reading!