Crossing in Quarantine

Changing tastes in changing times

I never cared for Animal Crossing.

Not that there was ever anything wrong with it, but I grew up on the likes of Final Fantasy, Zelda, and Sonic. My favorite thing about games was always the story, the world-building, or simply the satisfaction of completing a level. I played games to learn the mysteries of Darth Revan, to explore the world of Azeroth, or to simply challenge my skills in Mario 64. There are specific things I look for in games and Animal Crossing doesn’t really have any of that.

I remember my first introduction to the series, a sleepover at a friend’s place as a young teen. His family had a Gamecube while my family only had an Xbox so much of our time in the sleepover was spent exploring games I hadn’t gotten a chance to play. Animal Crossing seemed interesting enough to mess around with, but I quickly grew bored of it before we swapped to playing Melee for the rest of the night.

Fast forward a few years and I gave the series another shot on the Nintendo DS with the release of Animal Crossing: Wild World. But once again the game just didn’t click with me. The routine seemed simple enough, but there was only so much you could do in a day, and I was the type to marathon through as much of a game as I could before moving on to the next release. Animal Crossing…