Animal Crossing: New Horizons: Events from past games we’d love to see

Morning Aerobics

I liked this one a lot. I’ve mentioned this a lot in past Animal Crossing articles — of which I’ve written a few — that I love when Nintendo adds mini-games. It’s a delightful change or pace that keeps the game fresh for me.

One of my favorites, with one of my favorite prizes, is the Morning Aerobics. Heavily based off Japan’s morning calisthenics programs, the Morning Aerobics was an event in the first Animal Crossing that went from July 25 through August 31.

Every morning, from 6:00 a.m. to 7:00 a.m., you met near the wishing well (a regular meeting place in the first Animal Crossing) and the ultimate good boy, Booker the cop dog, would lead you and your towns folks in the morning exercises. You would use different buttons to do different moves. If you missed a move your character would wiggle adorably and sweat would fly off their heads.

My favorite part, other than it was just a really cute game, was you would get a stamp on a card every time you participated. If you got 14 stamps on the card, you’d get a special radio that allowed you to play the mini-game any time you wanted in your home. It was a regular routine of mine to start each play session by doing that as if I was Kitano-Sensai from the Battle Royale movie (a reference I bet you didn’t expect in an Animal Crossing article) and it was super enjoyable.

Obviously, they’ve yet to introduce Booker into the game but as Isabelle is already doing the morning announcements, I’m sure no one would mind if she did it for a while.