what is this sense of nostalgia?

[kisaker39]

i remember watching every nintendo direct waiting for news for New Horizons. i remember pre-ordering the game too. in the end, i did not enjoy it as much as i anticipated. it is not a bad game of course, i still played it, just not as much.

i was not too fond on the soundtrack. to me, it seemed as if it lacked the charm of the old games. if i can be honest, i felt this way about the game as a whole.

now, 3 years on, i get a weird sense of nostalgia from it. i did not play the game often at all. i get a form of somewhat strong nostalgia from a game i barely experienced. i did not hear the soundtrack from anywhere but my switch, so its not a matter of hearing the it elsewhere due to its popularity.

i apologise if this isnt the correct place to post something like this.

 

[VanitasFan26]

I don't know if I call it "Nostalgia" since its only been 3 years and its not for the good reason since the world was going through a rough time. I sometimes wonder if this game was released in 2019 instead of 2020, maybe then it would've been different. I guess maybe its a little Nostalgia since you had that time to connect with a lot of people when everyone was in doors, but as soon as the pandemic started to die down everyone started to not play the game as much. I guess maybe thats the charm that ACNH has. Its weird to me for some reason.

 

[lunecaster]

Honestly, having begun to play NH again after a really long time of not playing it, I've also started having a similar feeling. The soundtrack also didn't really do it for me, but I heard one of the hourly tracks and I just felt... bittersweet? Idk how to put it into words. I really wanted to like the game more than I do (it's not terrible or anything, but not personally what I look for in an Animal Crossing game), so maybe that's it in my case. Long story short it's nice to hear someone having a similar experience to what I'm feeling as I revisit the game.

 

[boring]

I think it's just the natural process for any game, regardless of how amazing. New Leaf was (in my opinion) the best AC game Ive ever played, but at the time I still didn't appreciate the wonder of it. Same for Wild World - I spent so much time saying I didn't like 5PM until I woke up one day and realised it actually made me feel really warm and fuzzy.

I am big on AC and NH had me frustrated for many reasons. I too felt that Nintendo had dropped the ball on a lot of things like hourly themes but now I enjoy these features. I enjoy the lack of hourly music before you build the town hall, I enjoy the process of terraforming, I enjoy gifting my villagers. There are so many things that had me rioting with rage before that, now 3 years have past, I think of fondly and warmly. They bring me a sense of comfort.

I also think a big contributor to this is the 'COVID nostalgia' that's popping up now. A lot of folks miss the 'simplicity' of being made to stay at home all day every day and ACNH coincided with that in a powerful way. For me - when I think of lockdown, I think of the fact I played 400 hours of ACNH in the first month. It was a powerful coping mechanism for a lot of us so I wouldn't be surprised if that's part of the reason people are developing this warm love for it years later.

 

[Romaki]

I miss the time when everybody was talking about New Horizons.

 

[VanitasFan26]

I miss the time when everybody was talking about New Horizons.

If only Nintendo would've supported this game longer it would've been talked about but it was too little too late.

 

[nightglow]

The theme song is pretty nostalgic to me because it played so much... Everywhere.

I feel like that is the only aspect that feels nostalgic to me, beyond the very beginning of the game when you are running around catching stuff for bells and your tent is over flowing with random things.