I have been a huge fan of Animal Crossing since I got my first Animal Crossing game. I joined this fandom in Wild World. I don't really know why I got the game or anything but I really liked it. It was cute, simple and you could do whatever you wanted.
I have pretty much always remembered one thing about my first ever Animal Crossing town - I cut down all the trees because they got in my way and then I realised you actually need trees haha. It was heartbreaking because I didn't want to plant trees again but at the same time I didn't want to restart my town. I did end up resetting though and since then I have restarted my Wild World game countless times.
After that I did get Animal Crossing: Let's Go To The City. I mean I pretty much only got my Wii for that reason. I really loved the DS game but it was time to move on to something better. The Wii game was honestly not that great. I mean at the time I loved it, it was something new and the city feature was exciting but there weren't many events or anything like that.
Then a couple of years ago I decided to start an Animal Crossing Tumblr. I was bored one summer and thought it was an original idea. Obviously I had no idea how big the Animal Crossing fandom was. I didn't even know we had one but we do and they are all on Tumblr haha.
I like my blog, I mean I don't really know why people find it interesting because honestly I don't find it that interesting. It was just that there was a feature on the Wii where you could take screenshots and I took a lot of them. I used to post them to Facebook but obviously my Facebook friends weren't interested so I took them to Tumblr because someone was bound to like them there. I just felt that if you didn't share the photos, what was the point in taking them?
When I found out about the 3DS Animal Crossing game I was super excited. But at the same time I didn't know what I was going to do because I didn't have a 3DS. My brother had one but I didn't know if I could really get another console just for one game. I mean I do have other games for my Wii but it was mostly for Animal Crossing. At the time I didn't have to worry about it because it was about a year from the game's release.
I remember seeing lots of things on Tumblr about it and seeing the first YouTube video about it and I was so excited. They made so many changes to the game and I was more than ready for it. Of course I have always wondered what the Gamecube version of the game was like, I never owned a Gamecube so I didn't know about it. I had tried using an emulator before but it ran so slow that I couldn't play it properly...I remember that it was so slow that I was playing for an hour but only like four minutes of game time passed which is mega slow.
I was never really into Animal Crossing: Let's Plays at this time, or any Let's Plays. I don't even think I knew what they were two years ago...
But when it came closer to the time of Animal Crossing: New Leaf's release I had to look into it. It was the only way I was going to find out more about the game. I am pretty sure the first person I came across playing the game was Josh Thomas from the Bitblock. He had gotten an advanced copy of the Japanese game and he was so funny.
Josh is great I still watch him today and he is the only person I think I can watch actually play Animal Crossing and Tomodachi Life. I have tried watching GamExplain a few times but I don't like them as much and I have watched iJustine play but she doesn't play enough haha. So really I only watch Josh from the Bitblock play Nintendo games. Which is totally fine because he's great at it.
All my tweets from last summer were me commenting on Josh's videos I mean I started watching his videos late in the game so he already had loads of Animal Crossing videos uploaded so I didn't find myself waiting ages for the next one.
Eventually the time came when I had to find a way to get a 3DS and Animal Crossing. My birthday was coming up but I didn't want to ask for it because I felt like it might be too much. I mean it was. A 3DS is so expensive and I had my eye on the Animal Crossing Limited Edition 3DS XL which was super expensive. Plus I didn't have a job and I had zero money.
Thankfully, I did manage to ask for a 3DS for my birthday and my mum bought me one, and the game. I was super happy. No, I didn't get the Limited Edition DS but that didn't matter because I had the game and the console which means I could play.
So on the 20th June 2013 I became mayor of Serenity.
This was a huge deal for me. I mean I knew it was going to take over my life but I didn't know just how much. I literally played everyday and still do...
Now that it has been a year I don't feel myself wanting to play as much. The novelty has worn off. I mean I'm sure it has for everyone as I don't see as many people post on Tumblr anymore....but I will get to more of that later.
When I got Animal Crossing: New Leaf I was most excited to wifi with my friend Emelie. We had met the summer before on Instagram because I wanted someone to wifi with on Animal Crossing: Let's Go To The City. Emelie is from Sweden so we do have a bit of a time difference but she is super nice and we actually have a lot in common and meeting her was a blessing because she is my first ever Animal Crossing friend.
We don't wifi as much anymore because we are both busy with school and things but we definitely go way back...
Through Animal Crossing: Let's Go To The City I also met Jade. We played Animal Crossing quite a bit together but kind of lost touch after that one summer. I mean we wifi-ed once or twice since then but people get busy and so we haven't spoken in a long time.
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I made a couple of other friends from Animal Crossing: Let's Go To The City but none that I have really spoken to since then. Plus, with New Leaf being released I haven't played Let's Go To The City in a long time. Apart from one time that Emelie and my new friend Nathan wanted to for old time's sake.
Since then Nintendo has shut down the wifi services for the Wii and so we can no longer wifi which is sad because I have officially lost touch with those people who I met in Animal Crossing: Let's Go To The City. I mean I am pretty sure I met these people through social media but I didn't ever take notice of usernames and things at the time.
So with New Leaf, I did make a lot of new friends. Mostly through the help of Club Tortimer. It is this option in Animal Crossing: New Leaf that let's you wifi with people around the world on an island. Which is always something you have to be cautious of, stranger danger and all of that. But I never ran into anyone there that was too rude. I did meet people who came to the island and then left but that was about it.
I remember the first time I came to the island and met someone I really liked, I was sad because I think I ended up taking her friendcode down wrong and then we never became friends. Which really sucked because she was really nice...
After that I did meet one person whose friendcode I got right and through her I actually met all my other Animal Crossing friends. I mean we have ourselves a little community of people who are really cool now and I really like them all. So the girl I met on the island that time was named Olivia. She and her sister Charlie shared an Animal Crossing game and I got to wifi with them at different times.
Through them I met Synyster and J Balls. They were brother and sister but they didn't share a game cartridge. They were very different and I definitely found myself taking more of a liking to Synyster than her brother...
I met a few other people through Olivia and Charlie as well as Synyster and J Balls but it's hard to tell who now. I mean when you wifi with someone and you are in their town and one of their friends stops by, you automatically add them and they add you back so you have a new 3DS friend just like that.
Olivia and Charlie had to delete all of their 3DS friends that they didn't know personally after the summer as they were too young to have people they didn't know as friends. Which kind of sucked because it means I haven't really heard from them in a while. I follow them on Miiverse so at least there's that.
Synyster played Animal Crossing a lot up until recently. I talked with her a lot because we always seemed to play at the same times and we talked about how no one plays Animal Crossing anymore. She has recently become addicted to Tomodachi Life and I can relate to that, so I don't see her on Animal Crossing as much...
Through Emelie I made a good friend, Nathan. It was during one of the fireworks shows and we kind of just clicked. I have no idea what it was but we became really close last summer. Emelie, Nathan and I wifi-ed every Sunday for the fireworks shows in August and so we talked a lot. We also had our fair share of drama with the fourth person who joined the wifi sessions but that has been put behind us.
Through Nathan I met a few other people as well. One person who didn't seem to like me for no apparent reason but that was fine. I think he figured out I only used him to buy things from his Nook shop because he had time travelled and expanded it before me. Which I know is horrible haha. But we all did it...
I also made a few other friends myself, I met this guy from Vine and made a few American friends, who I don't wifi a lot with because of time differences.
Still...last summer I did spend a lot of time glued to my DS and if I wasn't doing that I was blogging about it. It sounds crazy but I did have a good time. I mean obviously it's not that healthy but if I was online and talking to someone they were online too.
But as new games for the 3DS were released people seemed to leave Animal Crossing behind. The most notable one taking people was Pokemon X and Y. I admit I did buy Pokemon X but I would not let that get in the way of Animal Crossing. But a lot of people did.
We all actually used to keep in touch outside of Animal Crossing using the Nintendo Letter system. It was really fun and I loved sending letters to people that way and talking to them when we weren't playing Animal Crossing. Unfortunately Nintendo stopped the wifi service for that because apparently people were trading nudes for Pokemon...which sounds so bizarre to me but people were doing it.
So we haven't been able to talk other than Animal Crossing but since people have stopped playing...we don't really communicate.
Since they released Miiverse for the 3DS I have been able to follow all my 3DS friends there and sort of know what's up on the gaming side of things but even then we don't use it to talk.
It just seems as though we have grown apart which really sucks because I liked having Animal Crossing friends. I mean like I said earlier, I don't play as much as I used to mostly because when you play almost everyday for a year nothing else really happens you know? You've kind of seen it all...
It doesn't mean I'm ready to leave my game behind. It's been a big part of my life and to just never pick it up again would be terrible. So I still play, about half an hour to an hour everyday. It's kind of nice to do after a day of school or whatever else, it's very calming.
I do still keep in touch with Nathan and Emelie, we have kik so we can talk there. As for everyone else I don't really hear from them. I mean it makes sense, we all have to move on with our lives eventually. You can't always spend everyday sitting on your DS. As much as we'd like to we have to grow up and deal with the real world.
But I always like to look back. I don't regret my choice to stay home all of last summer. I mean okay maybe I do a little bit but I still made a lot of good friends. I mean I think we all have that one summer where we didn't really do anything.
I mean I have had a few summers like that but even so...I definitely enjoyed my last summer.
As for this year I am definitely doing a lot more things than last, I am making an effort to see my real life friends, I am still blogging and I started a YouTube channel so things are definitely changing.
I guess what brought this all on was that in Animal Crossing there was a reminder about the fireworks shows in August again and I was reminded of last summer.
I do want to make it a little get together for old time's sake. I mean the firework shows in August are every Sunday running from 7 to midnight and it was always a nice time to play the game. I know a lot of people don't do much on Sundays so it is a good time to play.
I just don't know if anyone else is up for it...
If they are I hope it becomes a tradition. It would be cool.
But yeah...I guess that's my Animal Crossing story. I don't know what's next for Animal Crossing, I heard they were thinking of a Wii U game which means I would have to buy yet another console...but I would be excited for it.
No I can't let this game take over my life forever but while they are still making games and I still have free time I will enjoy it. I don't exactly know what the obsession really is about but I always find myself playing it. I mean I currently am making Let's Plays of the Gamecube game as I finally am able to play it at a good speed.
So it will always be a part of my life and so I choose to embrace it.
Here's to 8-ish years of playing Animal Crossing and many more to follow. x
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