Animal Crossing Addict Speaks Out

I’m coming out with it. 

I. Love. Animal Crossing. 

After playing the original that came out several years ago now, I still adore the concept and the gameplay. My beloved GameCube endured numerous hours each day of my incessant letter writing, errand running, shirt designing, and Nook working. Working to pay off your mortgage will never be that fun or easy in real life–and I guarantee that rummaging through junk yards will not be as lucrative as it was in Animal Crossing. 

It was one of those unprecedentedly addicting games for more people than just myself. Scooting from one animal neighbor to the other and fulfilling their needs didn’t get as old as one would think it might be. If you had completed all the errands the animals could think of, then maybe it would be time to take a break. But there was always something to do aside from that. 

Confessions

I never completed the fossil museum or the bug and fish exhibits; if I dug up an ancient and thoroughly valuable Tyrannosaurus skull, I was gonna sell that sucker and pay off my house! Same went for the fish, if they happened to be beastly or rare. I didn’t have issues parting with bugs for the exhibit though. I wonder if I was the only one who got annoyed with the hissing cicadas, because I wished I could have eradicated those noisy buggers with a bazooka or something. 

My absolute favorite things were: the Gyroids, KK Slider, Gulliver, Wendell the Walrus, and pissing off Resetti.

First of all, the Gyroids had that Pokemon quality of inspiring you to compulsively collect as many as possible. I didn’t like selling them, so I hoarded them in my house. Once I had multiple floor levels, it was slightly better, but my house was ashamedly cluttered, noisy, and tacky. Eventually a floor had to be dedicated to all the Gyroids that didn’t match the majority of the house and, you know, so I could walk around. It was like an episode of Hoarders, but with Gyroids. 

The special characters were such a treat…because you received treats. I reset the time and date multiple times just so I could get mass amounts of songs to put in my stereo. If I remember correctly, I enjoyed KK Bossa and Aloha KK the most. Some of them were pretty rad… but maybe that’s my 10-year-old memory speaking. 

Finding Gulliver passed out on the beach like he’d had a hard night of partying was always great because he gave you random junk. Sometimes that junk was pretty sweet, but most of the time it was pawn shop fodder. But still! Free stuff. I scoured the beach often just for the off chance he’d be face down in the sand.

Similar to Gulliver, Wendell would show up with wallpapers and you could trade your crummy paper for a potentially fancy one. Again, it was mainly the thrill of getting stuff, but having slammin’ wallpapers and carpets was more exciting than it should have been. And Wendell, what a walrus.

Finally, Resetti. For some juvenile reason, I got a kick out of resetting my GameCube to make him pop up. He’d yell about the dangers of resetting without saving, but I’d just laugh, even though my character’s face would get jacked up in the process. But I kept doing it–YOLO. 

With the release of Animal Crossing: New Leaf, I just felt an intense urge to gush about how much I love this series. I need to go buy a Nintendo 3DS or a Wii U to fulfill my dreams of living among the animals, but it’s worth it. I expect that it will usurp my life like the first did long ago, but it will undoubtedly be a fun escape from reality. 

Were you ever an Animal Crossing addict?