Animal Crossing – Some Interesting Facts About The Game

“Animal Crossing: New Horizons” was one of the most popular video games of 2020. With over 26 million copies sold, it’s the most successful entry in the entirety of Animal Crossing history. There are some interesting and sometimes surprising facts about this greatly loved franchise for you to enjoy

This heart-warming game was created out of sadness

Katsuya Eguchi started working for Nintendo in 1986, at a quite young age of 21. To be able to do that, he had to move away from his family home. His career was developing pretty fast, and by the 1990s he worked on some big titles and most popular Nintendo games, like for example Super Mario Bros 3”. However, the feelings caused by moving away from home and missing it was the one thing that inspired him to create the first Animal Crossing game.

The developer wanted to make a game that would recreate the same feeling of being lonely in a new place and away from your family and friends. That’s why the game from the beginning included things like getting letters from your mother, building up and decorating your new house to make it a new home, making new friendships with the villagers, crafting, and working hard to make your new life good. The game also allows your villagers to move out, so we also get another perspective on the situation – someone else is leaving, while we are staying. It can be a lesson not only for the youngest, but the older players alike, and you can experience it yourself thanks to the game keys available for you to buy.

The dialogues sound different in Japanese and other languages

Some developers use existing languages for their characters, some create one from scratch (like the lovely simlish in “The Sims”, which may sound like nothing at all, but words can be distinguished and learned, like “Sul sul!” meaning “Hello!”), and some decide to let the characters speak in gibberish. That’s what Nintendo opted for with Animal Crossing since the first game in 2001. However, that doesn’t mean it’s the same gibberish in every language version of AC. As it turns out, the Japanese version sounds quite different.

As players have noticed how different AC language sounds in Japanese, the internet started looking for an answer, and it lies in exactly how these “gibberish” languages are created for video games. In Animal Crossing, the language was created not just by creating any gibberish, but by sampling a real language, cutting those pieces, and speeding them up, and in addition, with “New Horizons” coming out, a decision was made, that the language will be localized from now on, because of the differences in rhythm, tones and sounds in various languages. And because of how completely different Japanese is from any European language, the sounds created for Animal Crossing are also different. Some people think the game sounds better in its Japanese version, and that Tom Nook seems to be nicer in it.

K.K. Slider is based on a real-life composer

This laidback, talented dog, which appears on your islands every Saturday to give concerts in front of the Resident Services, is based on Kazumi Totaka. This Japanese musician co-created music for Animal Crossing, and K.K. is supposed to be based not only on his character but even his looks.

What’s interesting, even the character’s name has a connection to Totaka. In the Japanese version of the game, the singing dog isn’t called K.K. Slider, but Totakeke, which is basically playing with the name of Totaka.

Animal Crossing characters became “nicer”

After “New Horizons'' premiered in the spring of 2020 and saved everyone from boredom, loneliness, and anxiety accompanying most of us during that crazy year, it’s been easy to meet with an opinion that the characters became a bit blander, and too nice even, although it’s really heart-melting to be called “toasty”, “mochi”, “stuffin” and many more super cute names by your favorite villagers. However, some people seem to miss that pinch of rudeness that would sometimes appear in the older games, making the dialogue a bit spicier. It still appears in “New Horizons” in some situations, depending on the villager’s type, but nowhere close to what it was in previous games.

Some characters were removed from the game completely after developers decided that they were creating too many extreme and strong opinions. One of them, that was either loved or hated, was Mr. Resetti, an angry mole, whose role was reminding players to save their game before turning off the console. If you forgot to save, however, Resetti would get angry. And the more often you would forget, the angrier Resetti would be, which apparently would be a bit scary and disturbing to some of the younger players, and would even make them cry.

Become a part of the Animal Crossing family yourself

With its interesting beginnings, millions of fans around the world, and hundreds of loved characters, Animal Crossing isn’t something to be ignored. It’s one of Nintendo’s most successful franchises, and definitely one of the most beloved ones. It became more than just games, with toys, gadgets, and even a movie. It has a whole culture built around it. You can purchase one of the game keys we offer, and start your journey with this funny, warm game yourself.