The nostalgia and surprise of returning to Animal Crossing: New Horizons

Last week, Nintendo surprised everyone with an announcement: more than four years after its launch.Latest major free content update“,” Animal Crossing: New Horizons is getting Switch 2 upgrade and free update for all players. It’s not often that an incredibly popular game comes to an end Years Between updates, but since when has anyone been able to do that Predict what Nintendo will do?

In 2021, the company was very clear that update 2.0 would be the last for the game. Slowly but surely, most of us stopped playing and accepted this support New horizons It’s over. Well, Siki, I guess! In preparation for Update 3.0 and the Switch 2 release next January, we’re in Edge We decided to check out our islands and see what we would be back for in a few months.

I’ll admit I was expecting a much bigger mess. While I didn’t play New horizons For a long time – the villagers tell me it’s been 11 months, although it seems much longer – my children have been island hopping periodically during that time. And just like in real life, they’re vulgar Animal crossing. However, our island appears mostly intact. There were a few items lying around, and a small number of weeds, but nothing much to complain about. Mostly, without me gardening, the entire island is now a huge field of flowers. It’s beautiful and not at all what I expected. What was even more shocking was that both houses were in order. Now if I could only make them do that in real life. —Andrew Webster

Returning to Ashtra Island was a fascinating exercise in forensic investigation in my brain. Having been away for so many years — one villager told me it was five years and four months, to be precise — there are some parts of my island where I can clearly see my thought process and other places where I have no idea what the hell I was thinking. I was thrilled to see my little pizza shop and fondly remember the process of remixing ordinary items like the hat into a clever pizza display. But, as I continue to explore, I find randomly discarded items – a crystal ball here, a mirror there – and I simply cannot understand why they are there. Maybe you’ve been meaning to start a tarot shop, or maybe you just need to free up some space in your inventory. Who knows? Certainly not me. —Ash Parrish

My island, once populated with beloved neighbors and thoughtful places for bushes and amenities, is gone. It was erased from existence by its creator, me, in a quick act of negligence while transferring data from the original Switch to the Switch 2. I guess I didn’t do something right. Ooops. Dear neighbours, cover your ears to what I have to say. I should be feeling sadder, but I’m not. Maybe I’ll get busy building a new island once the Switch 2 Edition update comes out in January. If I do, I will erect a monument to all of you and hope I don’t accidentally erase it one day. —Cameron Faulkner

My home is perfect, an oasis of organized calm. The kitchen is warm and inviting, the espresso maker on the counter beautifully complementing the not-quite-KitchenAid mixer on the sideboard. There are no clothes scattered on the hardwood parquet of my bedroom floor. Upstairs, in the office, there’s nothing on my desk but my laptop and a coffee cup. The bathroom is also very clean. If I could say the same about any part of my real home, where my kids — now ages 12 and 7 — are currently sitting on our stained sofa, fighting over who will be the main player in… ACNH today.

The truth is that my island home is not a house, but a fly trapped in amber – a fixed, unchanging fossil. My daughter was 6 and my son was a toddler when I first started playing, and at the time I was… He was able to exercise a degree of control Above the island, and therefore, above everything else at all, in a world that has become crazier than average. But in reality, the world is theirs to inherit, and to remake in their image. They did this, with flowers, trees, rocks, and even houses in unexpected and unfamiliar places. The part of me that has learned to come to terms with chaos is allowed to dominate the part that craves organization. If only they didn’t leave so much crap for them to trip over lying on the ground everywhere – in both of them Our worlds. —Kate Cox

I played New horizons Every day for two years, which my Switch Lite tells me is over 1,700 hours of time spent on my island. I have collected every item in every color. I’ve unlocked every DIY recipe, and after the 2.0 update, I’ve unlocked every cooking recipe. My vault is full of spare Nook Miles tickets, crafting ingredients, and rare seasonal items. But my island itself? It’s completely incomplete. The fish market along the south shore gives way to a vast field of wheat (and skillfully planted grasses), and then… nothing. The river lies incomplete and is not connected to any water source. The museum sits alone on top of a hill that I never finished building. And I moved all the villagers’ homes to the beach to keep them out of the way for a construction period that never ended.

I’m so incredibly excited to have a reason to complete this build. I will see you all in January. —Kali Plagg

When was it last caught? New horizons Three years, 11 months, and (estimate here) two days ago, I had no idea all the hoops you had to jump through to move your island between controllers. I left my island, LilHalcyon, thinking I could always come back – even on a new Switch – once I downloaded the game again. king Heard people telling each other about the importance of backing up your island online and using the Island Transfer tool? Maybe, but I didn’t take that advice seriously. So I ended up in a state of mild panic, confused as to why LilHalcyon wouldn’t load on my Switch 2. As I sat there looking at Tom Nook in the void of darkness telling me that he couldn’t find a backup on my OLED Switch either, I thought that maybe something had gone wrong with the download and all the villagers had been lost to the ether.

But then Callie pointed out that I probably never moved stuff from my OG Switch that hadn’t been charged in that long — and she was right. I was relieved to see all my old buds still walking around. It was all kind of cockroaches and weeds, but the halcyon night was still the charming little house I remember. A couple of the other villagers speculated that I was a figment of their imagination, and perhaps never existed in the first place. But I told them all that reports of my death (and the death of our island) were greatly exaggerated. —Charles Pulliam Moore