It's been 14 years since I first switched on my pink DS lite to play Animal Crossing: Wild World and it quickly became a staple in my gaming life. Now 3 Animal Crossing games later, this 20-year-old couldn't be more excited for the release of Animal Crossing: New Horizons.
It's amazing that all the games I played as a child, Animal Crossing is the one that stood the test of time and still gets me excited to play both old versions and new. Nintendogs definitely can't say the same.
While on the outside, the franchise seems quite childish but it's not until you're a bit older that you truly begin to understand and appreciate the beauty of the game. It's almost like being apart of a not so secret society. Unless you've truly spent an hour slaving to Tom Nook, it can be quite hard to understand the game's magic.
It's a very so simple game yet it is so hard to explain it's appeal to someone who has never played it, as I found out when trying to tell my boyfriend why I still care for a game about talking animals and plant watering in 2020.
Even after all these years, I'm still learning new things about both Wild World and New Leaf and all of the game's favourite characters. There are layers upon layers in this game that have literally taken me over a decade to discover and appreciate.my boyfriend just called animal crossing a glorified facebook game,,, how do i dump him guys— jonna (@enchantedlilme) March 8, 2020
I think the best way to describe my life long relationship with Animal Crossing is to relay a story my mum recently told me that even I didn't remember about myself.
Unlike most BookBloggers, as a child, I just didn't like reading books but that's not to say that I didn't not like reading. My teachers at school just couldn't get me motivated nor could we find the right book to keep me engaged and to boost my reading level.
But what the teachers didn't realise was that I did like reading, just not what they were giving me. Every day I would go home, flip open my DS and see how my favourite villagers were doing. While most teachers thought it was unproductive to let a primary school kid play video games rather than force them to read each night, my mum noticed that I was doing much more reading (and learning) about bugs, fish, fossils and just talking to my villagers than I would have reading whatever book school would have wanted me to read.
So that's the story of how baby Jonna became such a strong reader without books, shocking all the teachers. And despite not being 6 years old anymore, I still find myself learning, laughing, and improving myself every time I switch on a game of Animal Crossing.
While Animal Crossing may just seem like another small town simulator about gardening, building, and being a slave to NPCs, it's actually one of the few peaceful games out there that can withstand the tests of time.
You can't 'complete' it, heck, the average person can't even play it every single day. But that is the beauty of Animal Crossing. You'll play it consistently for weeks and then forget about it for 6 months only to return to guilt trips and an overgrown village and the cycle repeats.
That's why 14 years later, this 20-year-old is still playing Animal Crossing and why I'm spending a little too much to buy a console for the sole purpose of playing it.
For updates, follow me on Twitter @enchantedlilme or find me on Instagram @jonnarogers
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