Do Animal Crossing x Sanrio cards work with Happy Home Paradise and 2.0 Update?

A ways back, Animal Crossing: New Leaf and Hello Kitty owner Sanrio had a collaboration that resulted in special amiibo cards that allow six different new villagers to move into your island. Each character had an entire warehouse of furniture and clothing themed after specific Sanrio characters.

You had characters like Rilla, the Hello Kitty superfan and gorilla; Marty, the little hamster who’s obsessed with Pompompurin; and my personal favorite, Toby, the rabbit who was obsessed with Japanese culture, and Kerokerokeroppi. And those were just half of them.

More recently, the cards were recreated for a new special cross-over with the same villagers in Animal Crossing; New Horizons. Which would have been pretty cool had it not been for scalpers who, much like their love lives, ruin everything they encounter. It also  didn’t help that Target completely botched the responsibility of being the exclusive US retailer of the special cards.

But, let’s say you actually managed to get yourself some of the Sanrio cards so that you could unlock the six special villagers and the ridiculous amount of furniture they come with. You probably used all six and then put them somewhere to be forgotten, right? Well dust them off because you got two new things you can do with them.

First off, we got The Roost, the new cafe that was added to the museums after the 2.0 update hit Animal Crossing: New Horizons hard. The Roost has an amiibo phone in the back that allows you to scan any Animal Crossing: New Horizons amiibo and have coffee with them. Doesn’t do a lot beyond lore building but it’s cute and a lot of the dialogue is clever.

But you can scan the Sanrio cards and get those special villagers to stop by. Personally, I summoned Cinnamaroll mega fan, Chai, over. I don’t really find her character interesting but as her character has a teacup on her head, I figured some of the dialogue would address this obvious conversation point. Turns out the only elephant in the room she wanted to address was herself.

The other thing you can do with the Sanrio cards is a lot more substantial. If you purchased the DLC for Happy Home Paradise, after you do about 5-6 clients, you’ll get an amiibo phone.

Scanning any Animal Crossing amiibo or card will allow you to contact that character so you can design a home for them. Guess what, this also applies for the Sanrio gang. Designing these areas is both easy AND hard. While each one comes with all their Sanrio mascot’s furniture, it’s not always easy to make something nice using a bunch of them in the confines of a room.

Especially when you have characters like my personal favorite, Toby, who wanted the inside of his house to be a sort of Japanese-themed outdoor patio experience which, with everything he gave me was almost the equivalent of him handing me a chicken breast and asking me to cook it into a hamburger. But I did it and it didn’t look too bad. Definitely not something I’m proud of but it still looked really nice.

Anyways, it’s not a huge thing but it is really nice to see that they got supported. It’s just a shame that with all the stuff they added, they never got around to bringing the other amiibo characters back, like Epona, Medli, Ganon, or W. Link from the Legend of Zelda amiibo, Cece, Inkwell, and Viche from the Splatoon amiibo, Filly from a 7-Eleven amiibo card, and my personal favorite, Feylne which you only got from scanning one of the amiibo from the first Monster Hunter Stories game. Here’s hoping they remember because I want my Monster Hunter items from New Leaf back in the game.