The Tragic Truth of K.K. Slider

A wild, insomnia-fueled theory about father and son

Do you remember the oddly creepy-yet-calm 4AM music from Animal Crossing: New Leaf? Because I do. Vividly.

It is, I think, the most fitting video game music ever composed — and I’m aware that this is a controversial opinion. After all, video game soundtracks are beautiful.

PCMag compiled a list of the 20 best video game soundtracks ever, and Animal Crossing — any iteration of it — does not appear once on that list. To be fair, they have The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt and Breath of the Wild on there alongside Journey and Final Fantasy VI, so I can’t exactly argue with their choices. Maybe Animal Crossing would have been #21. Who knows?

The point is, the music in Animal Crossing is criminally underrated, and I’m not just talking about the background instrumentals. While “4AM” perfectly captures the feeling that, well, four in the morning gives off — a calming sense of unease as the rest of the world is asleep and you, for some reason riddled with an incredibly anxious mind that won’t shut up and go to bed, boot up your 3DS to distract yourself from the ghost in your mirror, the monster under your bed, or the creepy face outside your window — it does not befit me as both a fan of the series and a lover of music to ignore the masterclass…