Animal Crossing: New Horizons – 3 reasons why it’s ranked No. 21 on FanSided 250
Animal Crossing: New Horizons on Nintendo Switch recently hit number 21 in FanSided’s top 250. Here’s what helped it get there.
FanSided recently dropped their “FanSided 250” of the 250 most popular things they (and their sister sites) have covered over the course of this bananas of a year. Nestled way up high at number 21 (and #1 in Gaming) is Animal Crossing: New Horizons for the Nintendo Switch. Honestly, it’s not hard to see why but, in case you didn’t know, here are three major reasons why this thing climbed to the top with its fancy new ladder.
Perfect Timing
This is absolutely not discounting the greatness of Animal Crossing: New Horizons. It is good. It’s so good. But the timing couldn’t have been better. Animal Crossing is the ultimate fantasy vacation sim and the promise that you could customize the ENTIRE ISLAND as opposed to previous games letting you just customize your character and your home’s interior hyped people up to no end. But a week before the game launched, something else launched, Covid-19 Regulations.
The week prior to the game’s launch, government officials nationwide started rolling out what we now know as the “New Normal”. Stores were closed to customers outside of call ahead requests, restaurants became take out only, people started working from home and schools slowly started closing as they readied online distance programs. Everyone was stuck indoors looking for something to do and this. was. it.
The people who had the game were finding themselves still able to run around with friends, talk and be stupid. And the people who didn’t have it were beaten over the heads with social media feeds filled to the brim with Animal Crossing memes, status updates and screenshots until they eventually drank the Kool-aid.
Since then it’s become a major force. Politicians like AOC and President-Elect Joe Biden used it as a platform. It was used so efficiently by Hong Kong protestors that it got the game banned for a good long while. Even KFC built their own island where you had to find chicken and a hiding Colonel Sanders.
The game gave everyone a virtual playground constantly filled with new and exciting things to do, ways to hang out with friends, celebrate holidays and, if you were lucky, a visit from Elijah Wood.