But that means 500 hours of actually playing and not just standing around and being idle.
I had over 600 hours clocked before I got the badge, and I'm sure some of my play time was because I just stood around waiting for time to pass or for other reasons so it didn't count.
Also remember that it's 500 hours on that character alone -- your 3DS activity log shows the total time you've spent on the game in all characters, including characters you've deleted or reset.
Yeah it took me a little longer too which I put down to resetting for layouts/villager plots etc. ~ and probably too long spent listening to the title screen.