How did you first start loving Animal Crossing? Origin Stories!

[Suguri]

It was nothing too special, really… My first exposure was from seeing my siblings play Super Smash Bros. Brawl. The Wild World theme song there has been nostalgic to me… I also liked to look at the trophies they collected, which included a few AC characters.

Come the age of the 3DS. By 2018 (late, I know) I've had mine for almost a year. On Christmas I got New Leaf, my first AC game. It was fun and relaxing and it clicked with me and now I really like Animal Crossing! ("love" would be overstating it for me...)

I didn't really expect myself to be part of the fandom though. I can be pretty reclusive, and in the past I had a guilty pleasure of reading these wiki articles bashing stuff like video games and movies. At one point there was a wiki like this that was about fandoms and hatedoms. My memory's hazy but I'm pretty sure the Animal Crossing fandom was in there. It was in this wiki that I ended up with a bad first impression of the community and learned about some certain questionable content (which we shall refuse to speak any more of).

Thankfully, joining The Bell Tree has helped me come to realize that not everyone in the Animal Crossing fandom is toxic after all.

Still, saying I'm part of a fandom makes me feel nervous because of everything I read back then, but now I'm slowly but surely transitioning out it. Just give me, like, a few more years...

 

[KittenNoir]

I first started loving animal when I saw someone post a town tour video of their town in New Leaf I thought it looked so cute and immediately bought the game.

It was such on release for New Leaf and I’ve been playing animal crossing ever since

 

[Late Night Thoughts]

A friend from my childhood had both WW and CF and would show me her town, so I really wanted to have my own. After begging my parents so much, they finally got me City Folk, and then later on New Leaf came out so I became obsessed with the franchise.

 

[moonbyu]

i saw the trailer for animal crossing new leaf on the internet and instantly wanted it. after playing new leaf and enjoying it a lot, i began getting into the other installments too. still love it to this day!

 

[sashoo]

I was given a DS by a very distant family friend, and I got Wild World. I was quite small and I just remember getting stuck every time I tried to play because Resetti would shout at me and I didn't understand...

A couple of years later I got into it a bit more and I found out that I needed to save my game and he wouldn't bug me () so I played more often, and then ACNH came out.

I got it in August 2020, so a little while after it came out and I LOVED it. Honestly animal crossing was what got me through lockdown. My first island ended up a bit of a mess, but now I've restarted and I'm going to spend more time and put more effort in.

 

[Yoshi155]

One day in late 2020, my older sister showed me a cool little mobile game called Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp. It seemed fun. It had to be because it was made by Nintendo. So I picked it up and played it for a few months… and then dropped it. I was aware of the New Horizons hype but I didn’t really care about it because it wasn’t Mario or Sonic. Which meant that it was totally lame.

Anyway, cut to a year later, in late 2021, and I started getting back into the game. I don’t really remember why, but I was becoming more open to other video game franchises so I decided to play it. I actually really liked it and continued playing it. Since I connected my Nintendo account, I could just pick up where I left off. After a month or so, I was kind of bored of only playing this Animal Crossing game and wanted to branch out more and play other games in the series. So I decided I wanted to play New Leaf But first, I started watching a playthrough of the game made by the one and only ZackScottGames. And it just made me want to play even more. This was around November 2021, so in late March 2022, I decided to ask my parents to get the game. And it arrived just in time for spring break.

I don’t think anything will match how it felt to play the game for the first few days. It was so fun to play a new kind of game that wasn’t anything like Super Mario 3D Land or New Super Mario Bros DS or Sonic CD, or even Kirby Super Star which I’d also started playing recently. And those games were really fun when I first started them. But this game was different. You probably know what makes a life sim different than a platformer, but Pocket Camp is really different than mainline games, and that was my only exposure before I played this game. After that, it became my favorite video game series (which you probably know isn’t the case anymore), and I became obsessed with consuming Animal Crossing content, including all of the other games. While I’m not nearly as ecstatic about the series anymore, probably because I’ve played for more than two years at this point, I still have fond memories of playing for the first time.

I guess the reason I like the series so much is because it’s different and relaxing. Like, after I’m done raging because I was trying to beat Champion’s Road in Super Mario 3D World, I can play something that’s just chill, and then go back to platforming or playing an RPG, or trying to solve a puzzle to escape a dungeon.

Hmm. Another paragraph or so and this could easily qualify as an essay.

 

[mewp0ka]

when pocket camp first came out, which still had me wanting more but i didn't own any of the games at the time.

then when nh released, i ended up getting it as an early gift for my birthday and played it for about three or four months straight; u have no idea how eager i was to play the next day to do my daily routine and slowly mold/decorate the island to my liking. ended up buying the characters i loved on ebay in order to get rid of the ones i had but didn't really like.

looking back now, it's made me wonder why i had thought the original game was boring as a kid (without even having played it in the first place!), which in turn makes me wish i could go back in time just to try it and then go on to play the later titles had i ended up loving it as much as i loved (or even more than that!) nh.

hope to be more active in the community because my hyperfixation is starting to come back and i'm very excited to get back into ac! <:

 

[ShadowLelouch97]

In the Spring of 2017, I had completed my first semester at my new college. It wasn't my first college semester, but it was my first at a "proper" college. To reward myself, I thought I would treat myself to a new game on the 3DS. I talked to a good friend of mine, who insisted I get "Animal Crossing: New Leaf"

One day after the semester ended, I went to my local GameStop and purchased a copy of New Leaf. I was hooked from then on, and went on to play some of Pocket Camp, New Horizons, and more recently, Wild World. I still think New Leaf is the best game in the Animal Crossing series.

 

[Neb]

I’ve shared the story I thought was real in the past, but I think I misremembered. In reality I think Wild World was my first. I most likely rented it from GameFly back when I had a subscription to that service in 2010-2011 and played a little bit of it on my DS lite. The memory came back to me when I started a save file of Wild World recently and a very fuzzy memory came back. The title screen and intro were just too familiar. I didn’t last long on the game though since I didn’t know what to do and returned it.

Then I rented New Leaf in 2014 and really enjoyed it. I was bummed to have to return it and waited until my birthday in 2015 to get my own copy. I’ve always been bad at keeping a habit to log on that game regularly, but I still return to it sometimes now.

 

[Beanz]

technically my first exposure was to the animal crossing nintendo land mini game but i have no idea how that correlates to the series’ general gameplay.

i think i’ve mentioned this before in another thread but i was 9 years old and saw reggie’s new leaf house tour video on the nintendo eshop.

i always loved customizing my characters/whatever i could in games but when i saw that video of new leaf, i was so amazed that you could have your own life and your own house and customize it to that extent in a game.

two weeks later, i begged my mom to take me to take me to gamestop, i only had $20 but luckily she lent me another $10 (back when games were $30) and now its been almost 10 years since i’ve started playing.

 

[Firesquids]

How did you FIRST discover Animal Crossing?
I knew about it for a while before I started playing, just never really thought too hard about it. I remember my friend who used to work at Nintendo got to play test NL's English version and they also got the poptart DS in advance I thought it was cute and similar to Rune Factory that's about it
Did you like it at first?
My sister eventually bought us both a copy so we could play together, and I was nigh instantly hooked! I especially loved all the care that went into the sound design and I loved catching the bugs and reading what Blathers had to say about them
What was your FIRST AC game you ever played?
New Leaf
What was it about the game, that solidified your dedication to the fandom?
I think just the massive catalog of items is what really hooked me. In NL I made it my goal to decorate my house with what I considered the rarest items, like full sets of items from holidays, Gracie furniture, and all the DLC I could get my hands on.
How did you know this fandom would be in your life forever?
Basically in 2020 when I started participating in the community and the events here on TBT. This place has been so good for me, I feel like a better person for joining, and I'm glad to be able to share my love of this silly little game with you all!