{"id":273932,"date":"2025-11-05T23:03:16","date_gmt":"2025-11-05T23:03:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/273932\/"},"modified":"2025-11-05T23:03:16","modified_gmt":"2025-11-05T23:03:16","slug":"the-nostalgia-and-surprise-of-returning-to-animal-crossing-new-horizons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/273932\/","title":{"rendered":"The nostalgia and surprise of returning to Animal Crossing: New Horizons"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week, Nintendo surprised everybody with an announcement: Over four years after its \u201clast major free content update<\/a>,\u201d Animal Crossing: New Horizons is getting a Switch 2 upgrade and a free update for all players<\/a>. It\u2019s not often that an incredibly popular game goes years between updates, but since when has anyone been able to predict what Nintendo will do<\/a>?<\/p>\n

In 2021, the company was very clear that the 2.0 update would be the game\u2019s last. Slowly but surely, most of us stopped playing, accepting that support for New Horizons had ended. Well, sike, I guess! In preparation for the 3.0 update and Switch 2 Edition this January, we at The Verge decided to check in on our islands and see what we\u2019ll be coming back to in a few months.<\/p>\n

\"An<\/a><\/p>\n

Image: Nintendo<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll admit, I was expecting a much bigger mess. While I haven\u2019t played New Horizons in ages \u2014 the villagers tell me it\u2019s been 11 months, though it feels much longer \u2014 my kids have jumped into the island periodically during that time. And, just like in real life, they\u2019re slobs in Animal Crossing. Yet our island appears mostly intact. There were a few items strewn about, and a shockingly small number of weeds, but not much else to complain about. Mostly, without me to do the gardening, the entire island is now one gigantic field of flowers. It\u2019s beautiful and not at all what I was anticipating. Even more shocking: Both of their houses were tidy. Now if only I could get them to do that in real life. \u2014Andrew Webster<\/p>\n

\"An<\/a><\/p>\n

Image: Nintendo<\/p>\n

Returning to Isla Ashtra has been a neat exercise in forensically investigating my own brain. After being away for many years \u2014 one villager told me it was five years and four months, to be exact \u2014 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 pleased to see my little pizza shop and fondly remembered the process of remixing mundane items like a hat into a clever pizza display. But, as I continued to explore, I found items discarded randomly about \u2014 a crystal ball here, a mirror there \u2014 and I simply cannot intuit why they\u2019re there. Maybe I meant to make a tarot shop, or maybe I just needed to free up some inventory space. Who knows? Certainly not me. \u2014Ash Parrish<\/p>\n

\"Dialogue<\/a><\/p>\n

No, not my first time, actually. Image: Nintendo<\/p>\n

My island, once populated with lovable neighbors and thoughtful placement of shrubs and amenities, is gone. It has been wiped from existence by its creator, me, in a swift act of negligence while moving data from an original Switch to a Switch 2. I guess I didn\u2019t do something correctly. Oops. Precious erased neighbors, cover your ears for what I\u2019m about to say. I should feel more sad, but I\u2019m not. Maybe I\u2019ll become engrossed in building a new island once the Switch 2 Edition update comes out in January. If I do, I will erect a memorial to you all on it that I hopefully don\u2019t accidentally erase someday. \u2014Cameron Faulkner<\/p>\n

\"An<\/a><\/p>\n

Image: Nintendo<\/p>\n

My house is perfect, an oasis of organized calm. The kitchen is warm and inviting, espresso maker on the counter beautifully complimenting the totally-not-a-KitchenAid mixer on the sideboard. There are no clothes strewn on the hardwood parquet of my bedroom floor. Upstairs, in the office, there is nothing on my desk except my laptop and a mug of coffee. The bathroom, too, is spotless. If only I could say the same for literally any part of my real home, where my children \u2014 now ages 12 and 7 \u2014 currently sit on our stained, ratty sofa, fighting over who gets to be the lead player in ACNH today.<\/p>\n

The truth is, my island house is not a home but a fly trapped in amber \u2014 a fossil, fixed and unchanging. My daughter was 6 and my son a baby when I first started playing, and back then I was able to exert some measure of control<\/a> over the island and, by extension, over anything else at all, in a world gone even madder than average. But really, the world is theirs to inherit, and to remake in their image. And they have done so, with flowers, trees, rocks, and even houses in unexpected, unfamiliar places. The part of me that has learned to make peace with the chaos is allowed to overrule the part of me that craves organization. If only they wouldn\u2019t leave so much crap to trip on lying around on the ground everywhere \u2014 in both our worlds. \u2014Kate Cox<\/p>\n

\"An<\/a><\/p>\n

Image: Nintendo<\/p>\n

I played New Horizons every single day for two years, amounting to what my Switch Lite tells me is over 1,700 hours of time spent on my island. I collected every single item in every single colorway. I unlocked every DIY recipe and, after the 2.0 update, every cooking recipe. My storage is full of spare Nook Miles Tickets and crafting ingredients and rare seasonal items. But my island itself? It\u2019s completely unfinished. The fish market along the southern shore gives way to a vast field of wheat (and artfully placed weeds), and then\u2026 nothing. The river lies incomplete and connected to no water source. The museum sits alone at the top of a hill I never finished building. And I\u2019d moved all the villagers\u2019 houses to the beach to keep them out of the way for a construction period that never ended.<\/p>\n

I am so unbelievably excited to have a reason to complete that construction. I\u2019ll see you all in January. \u2014Kallie Plagge<\/p>\n

\"Roscoe,<\/a><\/p>\n

Image: Nintendo<\/p>\n

When I last fired up New Horizons three years, 11 months, and (estimating here) a couple of days ago, I had no idea all of the hoops you had to jump through in order to move your island between consoles. I left my island, LilHalcyon, thinking I could always return \u2014 even on a new Switch \u2014 once I downloaded the game again. Had I heard people telling each other about the importance of backing up your island online and using the Island Transfer Tool? Probably, but I didn\u2019t take that advice to heart. This is how I wound up in a mild panic, confused as to why LilHalcyon wouldn\u2019t load up on my Switch 2. As I sat there looking at Tom Nook in a void of darkness telling me he couldn\u2019t find a backup on my OLED Switch either, I thought something might have gone wrong with the download process and all my villagers had been lost in the ether.<\/p>\n

But then Kallie pointed out that I probably never moved things over from my long-uncharged OG Switch \u2014 and she was right. I was relieved to see all of my old buds still knocking around. All of the roaches and weeds were kinda gnarly, but LilHalcyon was still the charming little homestead I remembered. A couple of other villagers speculated that I was a figment of their imaginations who might have never existed in the first place. But I\u2019ve let them all know that reports of my (and our island\u2019s) death have been greatly exaggerated. \u2014Charles Pulliam-Moore<\/p>\n

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