A Deep Dive Into Animal Crossing

[Music] animal crossing widely recognized as one of the most relaxing and wholesome games out there the franchise rose from obscurity and to viral popularity and has become one of the most iconic and beloved video game series in the world with its relaxing music adorable visuals slice of life gameplay and slow pace many players use these games as an escape from the hustle and bustle of daily life animal crossing has been around for 20 years and during that time it's amassed its fair share of history drama and fandom stories from the highs and lows of its many releases to its black market scandals there's a lot to cover so grab your vacation juice grab your froggy chair and settle in because today we're diving into the dark world of animal crossing to discuss all the drama and history within [Music] before we get into the video i just want to really quickly mention that i have merch now we got shirts we got hats we got hoodies we got more stuff than than those things head over to crowdmade.com collection izzy's or head to the link in the description to check out the most cursed collection of clothing ever released [Music] animal crossing is a big franchise and there's a lot to cover so let's start with a little history lesson developed by nintendo animal crossing is a video game series spanning over 20 years in multiple consoles and titles despite the fact that many think the original launched on the gamecube we actually have a pretty surprising console to thank for the birth of the series the nintendo 64 or more specifically the complete and total failure that was the nintendo 64's external disk drive see when the n64 first came out in 1996 it was one of the few consoles that still use these big chunky cartridges instead of the more modern and cutting edge discs to amend this nintendo came up with a big dorky ass clunky magnetic disk drive that attached to the bottom of the console which they dubbed the 64 dd the abject failure of the 64 dd is honestly its own discussion but in short the add-on was so poorly received that it was never released outside of japan and was one of nintendo's biggest failures despite this the 64 dd had some pretty revolutionary features which would inspire nintendo designers katsuya aguchi and hisashi nogami the 64 dd enabled features like limited internet connectivity rewritable storage and most importantly a real-time clock system or rtc oguchi and nogami envisioned the game that operated in real time with each in-game hour being equal to one real life hour using the 64 dd's real time clock in a 2003 interview iguchi quoted it began life as an n64 dd project then we came up with the concept of a game where you hang out and do stuff with a bunch of people in a single field then one by one we started coming up with more ideas and animal forest is really just the collection of all of those different strands and thus the first ever animal crossing was born in 2001 dubutsu no mori or animal forest the game obviously wasn't released for the ill-fated 64 dd due to its terrible reception so dubutsu no mori released for the regular nintendo 64. as we know without the 64 dd add-on the console had no internal clock system so dubutsu no mori cartridges actually had battery-powered clocks built into them so the game could still operate using an rtc the game was pretty unprecedented at the time being one of the first ever life simulator games to hit the market in the game the player character moves to a small town inhabited by cute animals where they just kind of live their life the game focused on relaxing activities like fishing bug catching item collection and interior design there's also a big emphasis on the social aspect with hundreds of unique animal villagers with bold personalities to befriend there are goals and quests scattered throughout the game like paying off the greedy businessman tom nook for the house he forced upon you or gathering items for villagers but there's no time limit for these goals and you neither have to complete them the true point of the game is really just to make your own fun take it at your own pace and watch the town and residents grow and change over time the series is renowned for having an extremely relaxing and comforting atmosphere and dubutsu no mori for the 64 set the tone remarkably well and served as the blueprint for the games to come on the release of animal forest ketsuyaguchi wrote in the first week we sold about 30 000 but it got good reviews and word of mouth and we ended up selling 200 000 copies we actually sold out and retailers wanted to order more but we were just switching over to gamecube development and we didn't have any n64 media left we had to produce the cartridges especially because they had real-time clocks built in so we weren't able to fulfill the demand for the n64 version so the release wasn't ideal they couldn't keep up with demand and the release had coincided with the last dying breaths of the n64 in fact animal forest was one of the very last games released for the n64 before the gamecube came out games released late into a console's life when a new console is literally just about to launch tin not to do very well and so animal forest never made it outside of japan despite this kind of middling reception nintendo was willing to give the game another shot and it was ported to the gamecube eight months later as dabutsu no mori plus the game had changed many elements such as the interface and villager designs but had also added features such as the museum able sisters tautomer and more with the game taking off in japan it was decided that it would be given a us release but there was one tiny problem many americans did not speak japanese now most people think that translations for games also known as localizations are pretty simple you just run some dialogue through a translator and boom but it's not as simple as that you can't just do a google translate hack job thousands of lines of dialogue had to be manually translated from japanese to english a tough task given that many japanese words and phrases don't exist at all in english and have no english equivalent additionally animal forest included many items festivals and gameplay elements that reflected japanese culture and had to be changed for a western audience examples include the kamakura hibachi the cubby hole multiple signs and the bell shrine which became the wishing well some items were removed altogether due to their quote japano-centric nature including dharmas lucky cats a shogi board a sushi boat a bowl of noodles spa items paper lanterns and more holidays like seven spring herbs day coming of age day and bean throwing festival were replaced with holidays like groundhog day founders day and the harvest festival lastly the game's title was changed from animal forest to animal crossing also known as animal crossing population growing this localization took six months and was nintendo's largest translation project to date at least at the time nintendo of japan was so impressed with this localization that they added the american content into the japanese game and released it as dobutsu nomura e plus which sold extremely well despite the fact that animal crossing didn't have any violence or high octane thrills it was surprisingly successful in america and europe and sold over 2 million copies worldwide looking back it's honestly pretty surprising that it took off at all given how unprecedented and new it all was there wasn't really anything like it on the market at the time and it kind of changed the public's perception about what a game could be you didn't really do anything other than hang around this little town and vibe out with these funny little animals and yet it went on to receive critical acclaim and worldwide success on the topic of animal crossings reception developer hisashi nogami wrote right after we released it we saw some players that really dug the game the original japanese advertisement featured a young school-aged girl so we thought that it would appeal to this user base once we released it the mothers of these children were also playing the game and then the father would also play and then the entire family would be playing it we were really happy when we noticed that with the successive animal crossing population growing it was clear to nintendo that the population of fans was growing too so they set out to create the franchise's next installment and animal crossing wild world was released a few years later in 2005 for the nintendo ds to avoid another lengthy inexpensive localization debacle the designers created wild world with a global audience in mind designing interfaces items and characters that were universally identifiable wildworld took a lot of inspiration from previous titles but introduced a few new elements that would become staples in the franchise such as online connectivity the slingshot and watering can increase character customization the observatory cross-breeding flowers and more the risky move over to the handheld ds system with its limited storage space and hardware limitations had paid off as the ds went on to become one of nintendo's most iconic and beloved modern consoles the combination of animal crossings casual gameplay and the ds's portability meant that players could take their game wherever they wanted and check up on their town throughout the day and in this way the game and the console were perfectly suited to one another the franchise had truly begun to hit its stride and the numbers reflected this selling over 11 million copies worldwide however the stride would come to a halt with the franchise's next release city folk released in 2008 for the wii also side note back in 2007 when the game hadn't properly been unveiled edge magazine wrote an article claiming that an inside source told them that city folk was going to be an mmo like an animal crossing mmo can you imagine anyway up until this point each entry had built upon the last adding new features and themes that would continue to evolve and improve the series in city folk all of this evolution kind of just stopped many players saw the choice to release the game for the wii as a huge step back given how well received and beloved the ds was and the fact that well it's the wii the game itself ranks pretty low on a lot of fans less purely for the fact that it's almost a carbon copy of wild world on a worst console the game didn't really add many features and the ones that it did were so grass deterioration huh let me explain grass deterioration was a mechanic added to city folk with a grass that your character walked on would become worn out and patchy over time eventually just becoming dirt the mechanic was intended to be a cute way to make dirt paths in the most well traversed areas of town eventually forming unique pathways and roads throughout your town what actually happened was players would go about their game often running around randomly to catch insects and over time their town would become completely filled with patchy grass and barren expanses of dirt this feature was widely widely hated and there was no way to turn it off leading to floods of backlash and even a petition begging nintendo to patch the feature out unfortunately this never amounted to anything so players were stuck with their barren grassless towns overall city folk wasn't a bad game by any stretch of the imagination but many players felt that the once innovative series had begun to stagnate or even regress it was clear to nintendo that they couldn't just slap a few new features on the box and call it a day they had to make something really special or risk losing their huge fan base into animal crossing new leaf in 2013 released for the nintendo 3ds yes new leaf was the true success of the wild world going on to become the fan favorite of the series even today the game once again found a perfect match with the 3ds system thank god they dropped the wii thing i'm sorry to the wee lovers out there for all the slander new leaf added a whole host of new features from the multiplayer dream suite to swimming to tortemer's island to custom designs and more this entry also introduced isabel the adorable shih tzu secretary who had gone to replace tom nok as the unofficial poster child for the series the biggest change in the game was the fact that you were no longer a humble pleb living in the village but the mayor this gave players a lot more control allowing them to completely customize their town a feature which was heavily praised by fans and critics alike i mean sure for some reason they didn't remove the grass deterioration but they acknowledged that it was annoying and slowed the rate that the grass would wear down it's a start i guess but dusty towns aside new leaf was the series biggest entry to date and arguably the most iconic it was also the last mainline animal crossing game to come out before the bad years after new leaf's release players would be left in the dark for seven years with no sign of a new mainland game during this dark dark time nintendo released a bunch of spin-off games which were really poorly received and worried the fan base most of these games focused around the amiibo gimmick amiibos being small cards or figurines of classic nintendo characters that can connect to nintendo devices and unlock bonus content after the release of new leaf fans were pretty dismayed to find out that nintendo had been focusing their efforts into the welcome amiibo update instead of a new game but they remained hopeful that something new was on the horizon in 2015 nintendo released the spin-off title happy home designer for the 3ds which is basically just what it sounds like you run around and design homes it's basically just interior decoration the game it had extensive customization options and improved on the series clunky design controls but the huge amount of content couldn't make up for the lack of challenge or reward the game received pretty mixed reviews and sold 3 million copies honestly decent but a lot lower than ac's previous entries this was a good step though maybe this was like a prototype for the game's next customization system they were getting fans ready for the next big installment nope instead they got animal crossing amiibo festival widely considered to be the worst game in the series and one of the worst games for the wii u amiibo festival was a commercial and critical failure relentlessly mocked and criticized by fans the game was kind of doomed from the beginning nintendo announced it during one of their directs and the announcement and opening shots really lead players to believe that a mainline ac game was about to be announced only to be lit down seconds later when it was revealed that amiibo festival was a party game it was basically a knockoff mario party but worse in every regard generally party games are filled with mini games or challenges to keep the competition fun but amiibo festival is basically just rolling a dice and moving forward to collect points yes that's really it and yes it was incredibly boring and if you brought this to a party you'd be promptly kicked out not to mention the game was just a shameless way to sell more amiibos so amiibo festival was a cash grab and a huge flop and ac fans were becoming more jaded by the day with two average two extremely poor releases and no sign of a new game in sight many fans began to wonder if animal crossing was crossing over to the other side of the game industry um i don't know where i'm going with this these fears were all but confirmed when two years later in 2017 nintendo came out with animal crossing pocket camp a mobile game with micro transactions or plenty the game was free to download on the app store and used many of the same mechanics from the mainline games just dumbed down a bit the game was a lot more restrictive and contained paid memberships microtransactions and loot box mechanics once again the game received mixed reviews with some praising it for the wide variety of items and cosmetics which were far more inventive and aesthetically pleasing than any other ac game while others criticized it as a cash grab and i mean the game has grossed over 150 million dollars so grab cash they did it seemed like nintendo had chosen to turn animal crossing into a slightly more soulless but profitable mobile franchise and veteran players expressed their hopelessness at the future of the franchise and then it happened finally after seven years of suffering fans were rewarded with animal crossing new horizons for the nintendo switch and oh boy what a perfect storm of a release that was the overwhelming build-up of seven years of hype from millions of fans combined with the fact that the release coincided with the start of the pandemic meant that the game appealed to the widest possible audience everyone was inside with a bunch of free time and everyone was looking for an escape from reality and new horizons was basically the living embodiment of escapism sit on a relaxing deserted island inhabited with cute characters and calming music the game was a way for both fans and those completely unfamiliar with the series to relax and pass the time for the first time in the franchise the game allowed players to completely customize every aspect of the island from the terrain to the layout to the decoration and with enhanced sharing features it became the perfect social activity for a bunch of stressed out shut-ins new horizons would go on to absolutely blow all of the other games out of the water selling over 31 million copies more than every other ac game combined it was a global sensation even that is putting it lightly if you were around for this which let's be real you probably were considering we were all inside uh you know how crazy it got everyone and their mum was playing it like people were buying 500 switch consoles just to play this one game celebrities like t-pain maisie williams guy fieri stephen fry and elijah wood were all joining in too showing just how widespread the game had become brands and organizations were using the game to advertise and interact with fans as well for example kfc's interactive restaurant or the monterey bay aquarium's educational live streams even certain political figures got involved leading to the widely mocked and memed joe biden island which encouraged players to vote and educate themselves on the biden harris campaign my point is new horizons was insanely popular and essentially made animal crossing go mainstream not that it was exactly an indie franchise before but it was the first time that animal crossing had been recognized and popularized on such a viral scale because of this fan communities popped up all over the internet and old ones were revitalized with hundreds of thousands of new members but we'll get to that later that's not to say the game was perfect it received its fair share of criticism especially from veteran players who felt that the gameplay was bland and dumbed down villagers had less bombastic personalities often repeating the same few lines over and over and players felt that while the game had improved the controls in mechanics tenfold it lacked the charm and personality of the previous games in the old games villagers would straight up harass you call you an idiot call you fan ugly they could even rob you you're looking as awful as ever who dresses you hey don't take this wrong but you look kind of poor t he you have nothing to lose except you're a lonely loser status you filthy ogre i hope you get stung by a thousand bees yeah the old villagers were straight up ruthless and players loved it but all that charm seemed to kind of be gone from the new games if the villagers don't spit in my face rob me and call me ugly is it really an animal crossing game the lack of items on launch also disappointed fans and this was in conjunction with the biggest disappointment of all froggy chair let me explain so in 2019 a year before the game came out a meme centered around a furniture item called the froggy chair from new leaf became incredibly popular the point of the meme was basically just that this chair was goofy and wholesome and it got super big to the point where some people even got tattoos of froggy chair hell even i made a video sculpting a froggy chair back before my youtube channel really even became a thing so froggy cheer was the internet's biggest new meme and when new horizons came out and there was no sign of the amphibian seat players were extremely disappointed and voiced their annoyance on social media even creating petitions overall aside from froggy cheer and bland villagers many players just felt that the game was half-baked and lacked charm on the other hand it did go on to sell like millions and millions of copies and become beloved around the world so you know like everything it's subjective it's pretty obvious by this point that animal crossing is capital p popular and an incredibly influential franchise without animal crossing the life simulator genre wouldn't be what it is today and we wouldn't have games like stardew valley my time at porsche or cozy grove not to say that it was the only life sim harvest moon and the sims came out around the same time and were equally influential but animal crossing definitely made a huge impact on the life sim genre and the game industry as a whole [Music] before we get on with the community and some of the bigger dramas within the series i just want to touch on some little easter eggs and fun facts and secrets within the game and franchise these are all super interesting tidbits that i really want to talk about but aren't big enough to get their own sections so we'll discuss them now alright let's go meow and bao were two villages only available in japanese animal crossing e plus and only if the player had their corresponding gamecube e-reader cards by the way e-reader cards were basically just old amiibos for the gba and gamecube anyway meow and bao were a cat and dog respectively with lcd screens for faces they're actually based on two obscure japanese devices that supposedly translate what your pets are saying the meow lingual and the bow lingual and you can clearly see the resemblance the free spirited dog musician kk slider is actually based on animal crossings composer kizumi totaka there's even a secret song in the game composed by totaka called kk song or totaka's song in december of 2008 nintendo released 14 copies of wild world to the press to demonstrate the data transfer features between wild world and city folk upon starting up the game and playing through they discovered that one of the village's catchphrases contained the n-word no i'm not kidding the villager barbara's usual catchphrase darling had been changed to a slur and her greeting was changed to love you long time which is a racist quote used to demean asian women naturally the press was shocked and the 14 copies were quickly recalled with nintendo blaming the game's wi-fi features for the incident yikes it turns out that the able sisters the trio of taylor hedgehogs who run the clothes shop have a pretty sad backstory the able sister store was originally run by their parents who passed away in a tragic accident and handed it down to the eldest sister sable shortly after their parents death sabo and the middle sister label got into an argument and label left for the big city to become a fashion designer this left sable alone having to run the shop and raise her younger sister all by herself in wild world saber will get depressed during the month of january possibly linking back to her parents death and throughout the series she'll be cold and standoffish until the player slowly befriends her it's honestly a pretty sad story about a family driven apart by the loss of their parents and the ending is pretty bittersweet and newly flabel has moved back home and seems to be mending things with her sister and unhappy home designer sable confides that she's grateful that label is back but is terrified that mabel will move away like she did in new horizons label is no longer working in the store and instead traveling the world learning about fashion so in a weird way sable's fears of abandonment were confirmed when her sister moved away again in the gamecube titles while crossing over to the island on captain's boat players have between a one and four percent chance of seeing the silhouette of a giant whale beneath the boat the whale isn't catchable since you can't catch fish on captain's boat but if you use cheats to glitch it into the river and catch it the player will pull up an arapaima with a glitch description text believe it or not the first ever animal crossing let's play and one of the first let's plays in history was created by christine wiston chandler also known as cwc the infamous creator of sonichu recorded a four-hour documentary video where she played footage of animal crossing while talking over it so anyways stepping out is my character sancho he's wearing a clothes with the character on it like i said you might remember his face and there's his actual face you remember the rest of his body you see the whole picture and before we get to the daily routines i'm gonna let you i'm gonna take you on a tour of my house as well as uh you know after as well as a daily routines we'll take a tour of town but first the house you see this logo on here that is the logo to my website on the internet if you would like to visit here's the address i'm gonna leave it up for a few seconds despite the documentary label the video has all the hallmarks of a let's play and it's been suggested that this may in fact be the first let's play ever created this video was even featured in an official issue of nintendo power in a small section titled sonichu's cwc will documentary trading has always been a really important part of the series but the gamecube actually didn't have internet functionality instead when players wanted to trade the game would give you a code which you would then give to your friend which they would input to receive the item it's believed that these passcodes were actually just the item's reference number within the game meaning that sites like cheat planner and animal crossing wiki had lists of passcodes for every item in the game from clothing to furniture to fossils to fruit players abused this system to essentially get any item in the game as my friend charlatan wonder wrote quote i had quite literally everything i ever wanted in ac thanks to a single printout from the computer lab fans were super hyped when they found out that animal crossing was partnering with build-a-bear workshop hoping that they could make and dress up their favorite villages however the fandom was outraged when the only two characters available were isabelle and tom nook and though kk slider was later added fans were still disappointed in wild world seeds were items originally used as beta tools by the developers in order to populate the player's town with trees houses and objects players are never intended to use seeds and they aren't available unless you hack men using an action replay these seeds may seem harmless but they could cause complete havoc within the game seed hackers could travel to other people's towns and place houses and trees in front of buildings and entryways preventing the player from entering they could also place seeds all over the town since having too many objects in one town causes the game to lag and crash scarily another method of seed hacking existed using items called brick seeds these seeds were often used maliciously and were more hardware intensive than regular seeds causing more serious consequences hackers could track the player in a never-ending cycle of entering and exiting their house they could add too many villages to the game and they could place multiple copies of large buildings in the town all of these hacks would often cause the game to freeze crash and in severe cases entirely brick the game or god forbid the entire ds console understandably this was a huge problem as random strangers had the potential to break your entire game and brick your ds hardware with no way to fix it players had to carefully screen everyone coming into the town and it was advised to never invite strangers over which is just good advice for life in general in september of 2020 youtuber jack's films made a tweet warning players about a glitch villager called walber that could supposedly crash your game the tweet got over 20 000 likes and new horizons players began to panic this was of course a hoax but many players were genuinely confused and began spreading warnings about wolbert all over the internet similarly artist southpaws posted this pocket camp screenshot showing a villager edited to look like the character nina from full metal alchemist this reference kind of flew over some people's heads though as many thought that this was actually some sort of hacked creepypasta characters with rumors spreading that the screenshot was real gulliver more like gullible am i right moving on [Music] animal crossing was always intended to be a social game a game about connections and one that you would share with friends and family the first ever online community for the game is believed to be animalcrossingonline.com which ran from february 2002 to 2006. this site was originally named animal forest gamecube since it was actually made before the game was named or released outside of japan that's dedication the site took off and became a hub for all things animal crossing with guides editorials and forums around six months after aco's launched staff began to fight and have disagreements over how the site should be run so some broke off and formed their own site this site called animal crossing ahead or axa for sure would grow in popularity and overtake aco as the most popular animal crossing site many older players fondly remember axa with some citing it as their home on the internet or an extremely nostalgic place for them a few years later in 2004 the beltry forums would be launched its popularity grew steadily over the years as other large sites like aco and axa became inactive and by the time new leaf released it had become the largest and most active animal crossing forum on the internet today it has well over a hundred thousand members and due to the hype around new horizons it's still very active and bustling those are far from the only animal crossing communities though our slash animal crossing has over 1 million active users and there's over 500 000 members in the official partnered animal crossing discord however with a large and bustling community comes a lot of drama and oh boy the ac community has no shortage of that take for example the great star tree drama of 2020 in new horizons there's a mechanic where you can wish upon stars which will then land on your island and you can use for zodiac themed crafting recipes not only were these zodiac items highly valued in the world of aesthetic island decorations but the actual star fragments themselves were admired for their aesthetic appeal and sometimes even placed around islands as decoration this is why players were so intrigued when photos began popping up around fan forums showing what appeared to be trees with star fragments growing on them instead of fruit now the ac fandom has always been kind of argumentative and divisive and they were very divided on the topic of hacking perhaps stemming from the days of brexiting some players are completely against hacking in any form claiming that it's unfair it's cheating and it's not how the game is meant to be played others believe that the game is about freedom of expression and hell they paid for the damn thing they should be able to do whatever they want with it now star fragment trees were actually just modded versions of money trees and therefore were only obtainable through hacking your game or paying someone else to deliver you a hacked tree because of this some people campaigned against and shamed people with star fragment trees for cheating though regardless the item grew increasingly popular and i mean what were they gonna do report them to the nintendo police well a few months later nintendo added a feature where you could report islands for cheating it was introduced in the july update alongside the dream suite feature and oh boy was this reporting future abused to heck a popular gaming youtuber with quite a large audience made a video where they went on twitter and found users who posted about having star fragment trees so they could visit the islands and mass report them this youtuber had expressed anti-cheating views in the past and they told the audience to go and report these islands too obviously players were upset at this targeted reporting and the outrage increased tenfold when nintendo patched star fragment trees out of the game a few months later many blamed the youtuber for causing this while others felt that it was inevitable either way given how pretty star trees were and how most players were just using them harmlessly to just decorate their island it's kind of sad that they got patched out of the game similar instances of discourse can be found all over the fandom for example the infatuation over certain villages and how they should be treated for many players the main point of the game was to get all their favorite villagers to move in and they could get a bit mean when it came to those who were on the less cute side players trapped them in boxes or cages put mean signs up called them ugly and hit them with nets tearless were made shaming the uglier villagers and it became a common meme to joke about trying to get less desirable villages off your island through any means necessary for the most part this was all in the name of fun and basically just an inside joke like oh my god beryl killed my crops and set my house on fire he's a bastard man there was also a rumor that you could get villagers to move out faster if you repeatedly hit them with nets meaning that players were constantly beating up all of their poor island residents all of this culminated in multiple actual genuine call-out posts on twitter about how it was immoral to abuse the animal crossing characters some stated that hitting the villagers and making jokes about them being evil or ugly genuinely showed a lot about your personality and was concerning and disturbing behavior others viewed the whole phenomenon as more of a shift in the community they claimed that back in the gamecube nds days the game was all about making genuine connections with your villagers whereas the new horizons community was entirely superficial only caring about the character's aesthetic appeal this discourse is honestly a really interesting look at how quick the fandom is to divide on really simple non-issues and while the fandom was quick to divide they were also quick to come together in huge acts of creativity and kinship throughout the series and especially after the release of new horizons many memes have circulated through the community and the internet at large one popular trend within the art community was kk slider album redraws where artists would illustrate their favorite albums with a kk slider twist you have the doom and animal crossing crossover memes which started after the two games were announced to be launching on the same day many expected the two fandoms to go to war but instead they came together to celebrate both games by making crossover art of doomguy and isabelle made even funnier by the game's stark difference in tone another popular meme came from this message in pocket camp in 2017 youtuber jerry terry created a remix of the animal crossing theme accompanied by a gif of bob dancing and the no ones around to help text this video has over 5 million views and inspired countless parodies and copies around the internet there are hundreds of thousands of animal crossing memes online with more coming out every day all of which showcase the strong community spirit and creativity found within the fandom the trading part of the fandom however that's a whole other story as the fan base has developed over time many villagers have become fan favorites in the games you can't really pick who comes to your town unless you have an amiibo it's luck of the draw so users will generally have to trade or buy the character that they want in new horizons it's possible to use nook mile tickets to travel to a randomly generated deserted island with a randomly selected villager on it but with nearly 400 villagers looking for a specific one is like looking for a needle in a haystack because of this many players resorted to selling and trading their items with other players creating a player-driven economy which like most player-driven economies was completely broken we'll get to that so certain villages became really highly valued because of their popularity or aesthetic appeal for example judy marshall marina sherb stitches and best cat bob there were others but uh we don't need to talk about them anyway these villages were super popular and players would spend hours upon hours painstakingly traveling to mystery islands to find them to no avail you could buy their amiibos but during the height of new horizons popularity they soared in price costing hundreds of dollars on ebay interneukazon in april of 2020 a software programmer going by the handle squishquin became frustrated with the unorganized state of animal crossing trading and created a dedicated site solely for buying selling and trading items with bells given that this was essentially player driven many users would hike up the price of items to insane levels raising the scarcity and desirability of these items however inflation would put a stop to this time travel and duplication glitches meant that players could accrue tens of millions of bells with ease slashing the price of items and making them essentially worthless one example from a washington post article titled animal crossing's massive popularity has made it less like paradise and more like wall street as of the katana item originally selling for around 4 million bells inflation caused the item's price to quickly drop to only 200 000 bells with bells losing their value they essentially became useless and players began using other methods of currency such as star fragments or mystery island tickets so in a matter of months players had busted the economy and caused money to become completely worthless and those popular villages were only becoming more popular despite the ridiculous number of bells and tickets they were selling for they'd be snatched up almost immediately and were extremely hard to get your hands on this is where the actual black market comes into play nukazon only allowed players to sell using bells or other in-game items and it was strictly forbidden to sell items for real currency so a black market of off-site sellers began to form who would sell animal crossing villages for real currency at the height of their popularity you could find villages on sale for hundreds of dollars and what's worse is that these villagers were often hacked people were making thousands by just hacking a bunch of marshalls or duties into their game and selling them on ebay and reminder you can get like any villager you want through legitimate means in your game for free some sellers even sold move-in packages where they would sell a hacked villager alongside several million bells knock-know tickets and more i can't help but feel that buying something like this would kind of devalue the whole game and make it pointless but i digress so all these characters were selling for hundreds you know but marshall judy and we need to talk about raymond raymond is a smug cat villager introduced in new horizons and the character that made the fandom devolve into complete madness perhaps his appeal came from his cute business cat appearance or perhaps more disturbingly his tumbler sexy man appeal one of the most popular trends at the time was to make raymond wear the maid outfit and take photos art and memes of maid raymond spread quickly and in response counter memes began to appear criticizing these plays for mistreating and humiliating the character it seemed that everybody loved raymond and the insanity didn't just stop at the high price tag or the proclivity for mate attire a bizarre cult seemed to form around the character with people becoming extremely obsessed and protective over him for instance this infamous twitter dm that someone received hello i've been following your tweets for the past two days and i have come to the conclusion that you do not deserve to have raymond on your island he is my comfort character and seeing him in an environment not meant for him brings me anxiety so i will be expecting a reply to this team when you have him in boxes and ready to relinquish him to someone who will treasure him like he deserves this dm took off as a meme becoming widely mocked and spread as a copy pastor the business savvy feline was selling for ridiculous amounts of bells island tickets and real currency one listing charged a thousand real world dollars for raymond another soldier framed photo for nearly a million bells and there was even a listing for one of raymond's fleas five dollars eh well i could get a coffee i'll take the flea some people even began to sell raymond viewing experiences where you could go to the island and view raymond not by him just view him raymond interaction prices observing his house from the outside five nook mile tickets entering his house 10 nook mile tickets picture with raymond 15 mile tickets per pick one conversation with raymond 20 nook mile tickets 10 minute conversation with raymond 35 mile tickets 30 minutes to do whatever you want with raymond a hundred nook mile tickets dm for more info heart who is taking the observe his house from the outside option if i'm paying i'm getting my 30 minutes damn it i'm surprised there's no made outfit rental option on there don't touch raymond just look at him i thought you said he was in boxes there's a box in the corner um you said i could have him this is for raymond viewings not buying him can you read no you said you had him available in boxes what is boxes that's just what everyone is saying i want my tickets back you saw raymond you don't get your tickets back because of the infatuation and obsession around the character some players became extremely annoyed and began to hate raymond one person posted on the animal crossing subreddit quote let me watch you hit raymond on the head with a net we'll pay twenty nine mile tickets and 250k bells bonus bells have hit him multiple times till he's upset more bonus bells if recorded and posted very interested if you're for real alameo i have raymond sounds good you're gonna do the standard working or perhaps some bonuses i can whack until he's mad several times if you want sounds like a winner right here i worry for this fandom sometimes anyway discourse was starting about the raymond black market with some calling it trafficking or even slavery and while i do think that's a little bit far i do understand why people thought the whole thing was a bit weird and just felt sorry for the poor cat it all came to a head when content creator pokey ninja decided to crash the raymond economy by hacking him in and giving him out for free to players a polygon article on the topic read for content creator poker ninja watching people give out hundreds of nook mile tickets or forking over real money just to have a smug cat and their village felt deeply wrong when you're a father and you see certain things happening pokeninja told polygon in a private twitter message it hits a little differently sometimes pokemon just spent hours hacking and giving out free raymonds to anyone that asked in an effort to bring down the black market as well as give players the chance to get their favorite character while the craze around raymond has died down for a few months he was a bonafide celebrity and maid and provided some of the funniest and most unbelievable moments in the fandom despite the fact that animal crossing has virtually no plot there's a surprising amount of theories that surround the world and characters so let's explore a few one of the oldest and most well-known theories is one that proposes that animal crossing is actually set in purgatory or the afterlife let's be honest this theory exists for almost every kid's franchise take any nostalgic kids cartoon or game and there'll be a theory that they're all dead or in the afterlife this kind of plot gets recycled so often for creepypastas because it's a good way of kind of exploiting people's nostalgia for cheap spooks but we'll explore this one anyway the theory goes that the player character is actually dead and the town slash islands and animal crossing are a sort of purgatory or limbo the player can never leave or move out and we get no glimpse of their life before moving you just kind of spawn on the train or at the airport the town is so cute and wholesome because it's what the player's mind is conjuring up as their ideal afterlife and it's where they live out the rest of their days some players even spread urban legends that once the town tree and new leaf grew to its full height you'd be transported to heaven i mean it wasn't true but it was still a cool theory back when the original 2001 game was released a strange and mysterious rumor began spreading about a secret villager in the game it was rumored that if you were away from your village for too long a purple bulldog named brutus would move in characterized by glowing red eyes and a black bee sweater brutus would only talk in binary and would crash the game if you entered his house with some even claiming that the villager would corrupt your entire town a screenshot supposedly existed of this character but if it did i can't find it anywhere and either way the rumor is obviously just a hoax it was pretty big back in the day though and players lived in fear of the day that brutus would come to their town on the topic of macabre theories how about the one that gulliver's ship crew are trying to murder him gulliver is a seagull that frequently washes up on the beaches of your island village having fallen off his ship his phone is smashed and the communicator parts are buried across the beach leading some fans to believe that gulliver's true are constantly sabotaging him hoping that he won't come back either way dude you need to get a new crew a slightly more mundane if not depressing theory is that isabelle is actually an alcoholic the adorable yellow dog is a fan favorite in the series and is characterized by her sweet and kind personality as well as her hard work this is why fans were so surprised to see that isabelle had a suspicious looking drink on her desk and new horizons one that looked a lot like whiskey but that's not all because pocketcamp added a totally not alcoholic beverage called vacation juice which made isabel look pretty out of it after a few sips but the smoking gun in this case a series of animal crossing themed train adverts from japan in which isabel describes the difference between whiskey and whiskey so yes it turns out that isabelle is a day drinker or maybe not after all of this came to light and memes began popping up about the character's alcoholism many japanese fans pointed out that the beverage was actually barley tea a tweet by the user enumaro with over 70 000 likes reads i guess those living overseas have no idea that the mysterious beverage is bali tea so they thought it was whiskey i highly doubt that nintendo would make one of their most famous and beloved characters canonically and alcoholic but still doesn't explain the vacation juice since the dawn of the series fans have been making jokes and theories about why tom knock is actually a terrible terrible guy firstly he's a predatory loan shark forcing you into debt as soon as you get into town and once you pay it off he forces you into an even higher debt the game is basically pay off your insane debt to tom nook simulator but that's not all he has his young nephews timmy and tommy working tirelessly at the shop for him proving that he uses unpaid child laborers to run his shady business for him screen rant wrote an article titled 15 ways tom knox shows his cruelty and ign wrote one titled 5 reasons why animal crossings tom knock is an evil monster according to fans he's nothing but a money-hungry capitalist and a straight-up bad dude but wait i'm here to propose that tom nook's good name has been smeared in a campaign of misinformation designed to attack his character and here's why number one timmy and tommy aren't actually his nephews at all in fact in wild world nook confirms that they aren't related by blood and certain villagers will note that tom nook found them on the street and raised them himself tom knox says that he wants to teach them good economic principles by employing them as assistants in his shop and in new leaf he's promoted them to the owners of the knuckling store franchise so tom knock is not an evil and greedy businessman forcing kids into child labour but instead a kind-hearted man who adopted two orphans off the street taught them about business and gave them their own chain of stores to own and manage and as for the loan thing tom duck offers you an entire house with a loan that has no interest and never has to be paid you can literally pay him in garbage and fish and he'll happily take it and upgrade your house into a mansion the fact that you expect a single father of two orphans to give you free property just because you waltzed into town really speaks more to your character than his and lastly and happy home designer tom knock reveals that he donates 90 of his bells to an orphanage which makes sense given that he spent most of his life raising timmy and tommy and understands the struggle in conclusion all of the tom knockers and evil capitalist bastard memes are pretty hilarious but canonically it's just not true and last but certainly not least the theory that tom nook and red are exes for the uninformed red as a fox or technically a kitsune who sells the player paintings and sculptures most of which are counterfeit he's generally considered to be extremely sleazy and untrustworthy and he's shown to have a serious rivalry with tom know it turns out and this is canon that the two used to work together with tom mentioning and happy home designer that he used to work with a fox but doesn't anymore due to an incident that he won't elaborate on many think that red might have somehow sabotaged tom or stolen all of their money and ran hence why the two are so bitter on the other hand some theorized that tom and reed were actually dating which is why the two are so spiteful about each other and why they refused to talk about the incident that caused them to break up fans obviously ran wild with this theory leading to floods of red x tomnic fan art there are plenty of other theories about almost every aspect of the franchise but those are the main ones it's amazing how creative and analytical fans can be piecing together tiny context clues and fleshing out characters backstories in the absence of any real plot this kind of creative community spirit is really what makes the fandom special whether you believe the theories or not many people view animal crossing as a very cute wholesome and innocent game and they're not wrong but you might be surprised at how many creepy little easter eggs and secrets are hidden within we'll start off with all the canonically creepy content in the game before moving on to the rise of fan made horror within the community so let's go first up kappan is a character introduced in population growing who operates the fairy at first glance he might seem like a weird frog or an unripe tomato but captain is actually a kappa a water demon from japanese mythology this is pretty creepy when you consider kappas are known for drowning and kidnapping children and eating human flesh even worse in city folk cabin may ask the player if they want to sail away to an island with him but only if the player is female get a hold of yourself captain jesus christ gyroids are another pretty creepy staple in the franchise gyroids are basically collectible furniture items though there are a few gyroid npcs in the games they look kinda nightmarish with their hollow eyes and mouth and actually based on japanese hanewa ritual figurines typically buried with the dead the only way to get gyroids is to dig for them after it's been raining so does that mean your village is filled with dead bodies yeah i can't stay mad at these little guys especially with names like squat dingloid and mini plinkoid continuing on with this theme coco the bunny looks like a gyroid and has a house that looks like a funeral pyre additionally there's a pretty famous glitch where if you reset in a friend's town you'll lose all your items and your regular old human face will be replaced with a terrifying gyroid one obviously many a creepypasta has been written about this there's the unsettling 3 33 am tv broadcast which only plays during this specific time in the morning on mondays and sundays and appears to depict an alien abduction the king tut mask is an ominous item that's believed by fans to be cursed when the player puts it on a deep tone will play and their luck will be significantly decreased to the point where they'll constantly trip and fall this is likely based on the real legend of the curse of tutankhamun which is both really cool and really dark another creepy item from the original games is the tomato juice shirt which yeah tomato juice sure it's really bizarre that this ever got past senses in the first place but the gory shirt was removed in subsequent games for obvious reasons zipper t bunny is an infamous character within the ac community he's both widely hated and widely memed for his creepy appearance in general robbie the rabbit vibes it's theorized that zipper's appearance is actually a costume given the huge zipper on his back and the fact that he gets really defensive and asks the player not to look at his back when they position the camera to do so it was also revealed in new horizons that when the player character moves out of zipper's line of sight he will go out of character and let out a depressed sigh last up we have haunted paintings art collection has been a mechanic in the games for a long time but it wasn't until new horizons that the paintings began taking on more unsettling properties for example the counterfeit girl with a pearl earring painting has been known to blink while fake copies of beauty looking back will have ominous humanoid stains on the back it was pretty amazing back when paintings first came to new horizons and everyone on twitter was discovering these haunted paintings in real time and freaking the [ __ ] out so it's clear to see the animal crossing isn't quite the completely soft innocent wholesome uw-woo franchise that everyone makes it out to be it definitely has some kind of darker elements sprinkled in here and there but alas it's still a game for kids so it can't really fully embrace any of those horror elements fans on the other hand more fans can make all kinds of messed up stuff take for example one of the most famous animal crossing villages ike village with the release of new leaf and its dream sweet feature it was easier than ever for players to decorate and share their towns using environmental storytelling and creative use of the custom design tool ike village told a chilling and mysterious story that really captivated players and pretty much became a bonafide creepypasta the village was filled with all kinds of strange imagery from religious scenes to photorealistic eyes to creepy mannequins dolls and axes were a common motif alongside imagery of death and family not only was the town atmospherically chilling it told a genuinely captivating and interesting story worth analyzing forum threads blog posts and videos discussing ikea village and the meaning behind it were common and given its cryptic and mysterious nature it's still a hotly debated topic within the community is it about a creepy business doll a girl whose family fell apart or something even darker aika would go on to inspire plenty of other popular horror themed towns including hitokui annieville and shachipanda all of these villagers tell creepy stories using environmental storytelling from tales about murderers and cannibals to ghostly hauntings new leaf's customization options had allowed players a little bit of freedom to tell stories but when new horizons rolled around they had a field day of course the custom design feature was used in some pretty crude ways in the beginning i mean give someone a pencil and they will find a way to draw a butt but after they've gotten that out of their system they began to exercise their creativity in more well creative ways ike village got a new horizons reboot with more detail than ever and so did hitoku village meaning that new gym players got to live the terror of the cannibal town in hd the ability to create custom floor tiles meant that blood splatters and demonic sigils were more accessible than ever and even artists like trevi henderson and jrg drawing joined them by adding their art to the game overall it was clear that nintendo had loosened the reins a lot in terms of this strict censorship effectively allowing players to go as wild as they wanted within reason it's really incredible looking at how detailed these islands are and it's cool to see how far ac horror has come from the new leaf days if you couldn't tell from how long i've talked about it i love animal crossing horror despite having to work within the limitations of a kids game players around the world have found really innovative creative and scary ways to bring their horror towns to life the juxtaposition between cute and creepy is one that the series toys with but as with most franchises it's really the fans that make it special [Music] animal crossing has a rich history of not only games but merchandise too a lot of this merch is new horizons themed given the popularity of the game but most fans are interested in the vintage dubutsu no mori plushies which are extremely rare the youtube channel 8-bit max gaming made a great video on this topic which i highly recommend but in short most of these early plushies are so hard to find because they were only obtainable through ufo machines also known as claw machines due to how notoriously hard and kind of rigged these machines are you could end up spending over 50 bucks just to get a single plush the plushies were available from nintendo for a very short period through online ordering but considering this was the very early 2000s online shopping wasn't really a thing dubu2 no more plushies are in very high demand by plush collectors they're rarely ever for sale and when they are they can go for hundreds of dollars due to their age there's very little documentation on them which brings us to the mystery of the o'hare plush on june 28 2017 a youtuber called l supersonic q uploaded a video called the mystery of the o'hare plush lost animal crossing plush 2001. in the video they claimed that back in 2013 they were browsing a japanese auction site for animal crossing plushies when they came across a plush of o'hare for around 130 they believe that it was part of the 2001 dubutsu namori collection which is comprised of six groups of five plushies but according to the tags o'hare was not included in these sets ella super sonic q pointed out that these plushes all have famitsu.com printed on their tags which is a japanese nintendo magazine they theorized that the ohio plush may have been a limited edition lottery prize for the magazine as fumitsu had given away limited edition animal crossing merchandise before no sign of the plush has ever surfaced and many believe that alice supersonic q may have misremembered or perhaps seen a listing for a custom-made o'hare plush on the other hand i totally understand that feeling of like swearing that you remember something one way but people are like no you're misremembering it and you're like i'm not i swear i remember it that way that's how it happened and people are like no so i understand that pain of having people not like believe you so it's possible that the plush is out there somewhere the world of animal crossing merch is vast and filled with rare and exclusive items so it's entirely possible weirdly a lot of people don't know that animal crossing actually had its own feature film dubutsu namori released in 2006. to be fair it's probably because the film was only released in japan for some unknown reason but it basically follows the plot and themes of the game to a t a young girl moves to a town full of animals they plant trees they hang out they partake in festivals there's even a ufo interestingly many villages from the game star in the movie but go by completely different names or have slightly altered designs bouquet is rosie selly is maji albert is alfonso bianca is whitney and johnny is gulliver the movie is really cute and aesthetically pleasing it's pretty slow paced and light on plot but that's kind of in the spirit of the games as i said the movie never released outside of japan and nintendo have stated that they have no plans to release it outside of japan so the only way to watch it is to find it online through a completely legal methods dubatsu no mori actually isn't the only animal crossing movie or at least it won't be because a new one is apparently releasing soon this one's kind of weird back in 2020 julie and terry posted an animal crossing horror short called don't peek to his youtube channel it's one of those classic youtube horror shorts i can't articulate it but if you've seen them you know what i mean they all have that certain vibe to them it actually got accepted into south by south west and was picked up to be adapted into a full-length movie i don't know exactly how they're gonna work around the whole nintendo would never be caught dead allowing their kid-friendly ip within 10 feet of a horror movie but it'll be interesting to see how it turns out the animal crossing franchise is well known for its colorful cast of unique and fun characters from isabelle to kk slider to blathers for the most part fans can't get enough of these adorable characters but there is one exception one particular animal crossing character was so polarizing and controversial that he had to be entirely removed from the game to talk about mr raziti we first have to talk about time traveling since ac operates off a real-time clock you often have to wait long periods of time for building projects to be completed or for shops to restock the items because of this many players get impatient and manually fast forward the clock on their system and reset tricking the game into thinking that a day has passed this is known within the community as time travelling and there's a pretty big divide over whether it's considered cheating or not when nintendo were first playtesting the game they saw that players were frequently time traveling and resetting their games to get items faster to prevent this they implemented mr razetti a grouchy mole who would remind players to save the games before quitting if the player did quit or reset the game he would angrily rant at them which would eventually turn into full-on explosive rage mr raziti was actually a pretty great example of fourth wall breaking he would often talk directly to the player and reference nintendo or animal crossing as a franchise and would even fake the player out and pretend to delete the entire save game if they reset too many times this started an urban legend that if you reset the game 61 times mr razidi would delete your game file or force all of your villagers to move out depending on which illum form forum you read it on anyway many players loved mr raziti and he's been praised over the years for his humorous dialogue and bombastic personality but not everyone felt that way truth be told mr raziti actually scared the [ __ ] out of kids you can find countless stories of children who were traumatized by mr rosita yelling at them as a kid and some even stopped playing altogether out of fear the european game manual for animal crossing city folk even warns parents that children may find mr razidi's tone of voice disturbing due to all this hatred nintendo actually began slowly phasing mr raziti out of the game he became optional new leaf and his dialogue and demeanor was significantly toned down and softened as to not scare kids in new horizons it was revealed that he was fired due to the invention of autosave and only appears in name and is a decorative statue in a way it's kind of sad that as animal crossing has grown as a franchise some of its most beloved characters have been left behind the removal of mr razidi kind of reflects the gradual sanitization of the franchise with many larger-than-life characters and personalities being toned down for the sake of being kid-friendly many veteran players remember razidi's angry rants with fondness but it seems like the old mole has lost a little bit of a spark [Music] so if you don't know what peta is i envy you peter or people for the ethical treatment of animals is an animal rights group that advocates for the fear and ethical treatment of animals sounds super noble and like a great cause right well peter have made quite the name for themselves over the years with their viral and often offensive shock marketing campaigns unfortunately peter aren't the best and over the years as their credibility has dropped they've had to resort to more edgy and attention-seeking stunts to gain any sort of acknowledgement in recent years they've resorted to campaigns against video games such as super mario and pokemon in an attempt to bait internet users into becoming outraged and causing a buzz so back in 2020 when new horizons came out peter sees the opportunity to spread the word about the ethics of the fish industry they campaigned against the game's aquarium exhibit storming the museum while shouting empty the tanks and fish our friends and custom peter shirts they also came out with an article titled peter's vegan guide to animal crossing which of course made the rounds for its sheer ridiculousness the article warns players against building the doghouse item and wearing pleather clothing as well as fishing insect catching and clam collecting they also pepper in some nice little graphic descriptions of animal abuse you know it's peta what else did you expect obviously due to the silliness of the campaign it garnered a lot of attention and was widely mocked on twitter and youtube many fans pointed out that peter had to catch fish and put them in tanks themselves for that video to be possible while others pointed out the fact that it's a game you could of course argue that it could influence players to think fishing is cool and good but like i don't think many ac players are gonna throw down their switch and rush out to catch an oarfish all of this negative attention is obviously what peter wanted they gave up trying to earnestly appeal to people a long time ago so now they're just kind of operating off that whole any attention as good attention thing if you want to support an organization and help advocate for animal rights there are plenty of legitimate groups out there that won't force you to read about tom knock being anally electrocuted animal crossing is an extremely fascinating and beloved franchise with a lot of really rich history i'm sure there are many things that i didn't even touch on in this video and feel free to drop those in the comments the lore of both this game series and its fandom are so interesting to me from the merchandise to the spin-offs to all the little game details to the horror community and everything in between i hope this video has been informative or entertaining or hell maybe it just made you want to pick up animal crossing again either way thank you all so much for watching i really appreciate it and i hope to see you in the next one bye a huge thank you to my garfield overlords over on patreon agara finn aiden mcfann american guild arcanthulis estrion vortex brianna robinson charlie b dozo blind curbicon finley group gunderson gyro gyro 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Channel: Izzzyzzz

Views: 2,212,064

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Id: dmbbyfoeImI

Length: 61min 14sec (3674 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 28 2021