More Thoughts From Me: Three Years of Animal Crossing New Horizons

Animal Crossing New Horizons came out three years ago today, March 20th, 2023. As you may or may not know, I’m a huge Animal Crossing fan. I’ve been playing since the Gamecube Animal Crossing. And guess what?! I reviewed the game back in 2023! Whoa. Let me talk about all that and how I feel about the game now.

When Nintendo announced Animal Crossing New Horizons, my dad, mom, and I were all extremely excited. The game looked absolutely wonderful. When the game was delayed until 2020, well, we weren’t so happy. Of course we’d wait. And we continued to play New Leaf until the new game came out.

2020, as you all know, was a complete mess. I won’t go into that here. I will say that the arrival of Animal Crossing New Horizons gave my Dad and I a joyful moment in a time when we were generally not happy. We had a great time starting our islands! Most amazing of all was that I got to review the game!

It was, of course, a completely biased review. I was a huge Animal Crossing fan reviewing the newest game. Of course I was going to like it. But how much? I liked it a ton. I gave the game a 10 out of 10. In hindsight, as I mentioned elsewhere, I should’ve only given it a 9.5. When it received its final huge update, it was absolutely a 10 out of 10 game.

Three years have gone by and I know most people act like the game is over. There is nothing else to do in Animal Crossing New Horizons. Thats just not true. Animal Crossing games never end. There is no game over. They continue forever. My New Leaf towns that I never play are still going on without me. I could check them now and my animals would be like “where have you been?!” I won’t do that! No way.

I still play Animal Crossing New Horizons every day. I just love the game. What do I do in the game? I talk to my animals, check out my town, and sometimes play online with friends. It may not be as exciting as the early days of the game, but that okay. Animal Crossing is supposed to be a laid-back experience. You can play it as much or as little as you want. This game doesn’t punish you for not playing as much as the older games did. Of course, as a “hardcore” AC fan, I’ll continue playing the game until a new one comes out!

And I’m sure some people are already wondering when the next Animal Crossing will be out. Nintendo only does one AC game per system. So we likely won’t see another Animal Crossing until after a new system comes out. And the likelihood of a new Animal Crossing being available at system launch is…well…its not high. We’ll be waiting years for the next Animal Crossing game to come out. sigh. Yes, I’d love to play a new one already. But I will continue to play and love this game until the new one pops up.

Three years. I can’t believe it. Time really flies.

More Thoughts From Me is an opinion column. The thoughts expressed here are mine and mine alone. I do wish Nintendo would do another spinoff game for the Switch, even bringing Pocket Camp to the system would be cool.