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181 - Animal Crossing: New Horizons (Patreon)

Published:
2025-03-19 06:30:02
Edited:
2025-03-19 16:59:39
Imported:
2026-06
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Good morning, everyone! The current date is March 20, 2020. Residents, I have some exciting news for you! The Lads have just moved onto our wonderful island! Let’s all give them a big island welcome! In other news, the museum is under construction and you’ll never go outside again. Be sure to visit Blathers tomorrow once construction is complete. Clean your groceries with bleach and head on down to the shore because we have a visitor to the island! It’s always so interesting learning about different people and the shops are closed and the streets are closed and there’s nothing but deathdeathdeath but don’t you worry because tomorrow Flick is due to come and somebody’s gotta catch those bugs. That’s all for now, I hope you have the loveliest of lovely days!

Media Referenced in This Episode:

Animal Crossing: New Horizons

Animal Crossing (GCN)

Animal Crossing: New Horizons: The Official Complete Guide by The Team at FuturePress. Future Press. 2023.

i WiLl MaKe YoU rEmEmBeR

Boss Fight Books #33: Animal Crossing by Kelsey Lewin.Boss Fight Books. 2024.

CDC Museum of COVID-19 Timeline

"How Villagers 'Read' Your Letters in Animal Crossing" by Hunter R.

Interactive Map of the George Floyd Protests

Monterey Bay Aquarium Tours the Animal Crossing Museum with Emily Graslie of the Field Museum!

”Pulse (2001): How J-Horror predicted 2020” by Brian Alford

“Quest 64: Days of Grief and Werehares” by A.J. Ditty

Spaceship You by CGP Grey

Shredded Cheese Fajita Sad Wife / My Wife, Date Night After 3+ Months

TWOAPW theme by Brendan Dalton: Patreon // brendan-dalton.com // brendandalton.bandcamp.com

Interstitial: “A New Horizon” // Written by A.J. Ditty // Featuring A.J. Ditty as “Orville” and Madeleine Bundy as “Katherine”

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Comments

Charli Christine Marker

I also fell in love with Animal Crossing on the GCN, and as an elementary schooler it taught me almost AMBIENTLY about mindfulness and community for the very first time. I came from a very toxic family, and amidst all the chaos AC taught me slowly over my childhood years to take things one day at a time <3

Vesperus

Thanks for reminding me that I haven't played that game in years. I'm sure my islanders are pissed at me.

shadowcb

I've never played Animal Crossing, but I do remember that this one came out at the same time as Doom Eternal, so multiple reviewers would have the promo art for their reviews be things like suited up Isabelle with a rocket launcher or Doomguy fishing by a river. It was very fun to see.

the_cosmic_alexolotl

I remember very vividly discussing with other students and the TAs what would happen to our CHEMISTRY LABORATORY CLASS if there was a shutdown and the professor being like "whaaat no that won't happen." and then it did. that night.

HollyBroWoo

“It’s a mirror of you,” cannot believe how that line is reallly making me go back in it haha. I’m away from my switch but it’s calling to me like the green goblin mask

Typhoon Jim

Thank you for the Dr Sbaitso opening. This is exactly what my uncle used to do with the Soundblaster voice synthesis, while his partner would try to string together phonemes to make it swear in Serbian

Beck B

the covid retrospectives are always very wild to me as someone who was a cook during covid and thus basically never stopped working for 8 months, i always feel like i missed out on that sense of community and togetherness that a lot of people seemed to feel

Noah

Pocket Camp had absolutely the best designs and furniture pieces. Underrated game. RIP

Mulloy

Turnip discords and visiting "celebrity" islands (youtubers I'm parasocial about) were great. As was teaching *finger guns* to my islanders as their catch phrase. Also shout out to Sherb, my #1 homegoat.

Ryujin713

Same! I worked in fast food at the time and while our inside dining was closed, my work was largely unchanged. It's so surreal to have the narrative of How Covid Was to be so unrecognizable from my own actual experience of it.

Em Gravesong

This is the ending of the Pulse/Quest trilogy I never knew I wanted.

P.A.L.

It's a game that I tried to play at the start of the Pandemic but just couldn't get into it, felt like such hard work that was for no joy. I was working through it so I feel that I didn't have the surplus of time that others did to get into it. But I really appreciate the rallying cry about telling your story, it's a very nice note to leave the episode, and this snapshot of one particular moment in time, behind.

dog barking!

I don’t think the Hunter R. video about how the letter writing system works is linked here. I’m assuming that’s what Josh was referencing in the beginning of the episode. Anyway, great episode. I think a lot more could’ve been said about the game, the culture around it and how the series has shifted from a quirky life sim born from nostalgia for the countryside to a game primarily about personal expression (you kind of touched on it when you mentioned the autonomy the villagers used to have when they could move away without speaking to the player). I think AJ was correct in describing the games as a mirror, but I think that could mean different things depending on what entry you’re talking about. The DS entry Wild World had a hobby system where the villagers would develop interests in different collectibles like fish or fossils. Those hobbies change over time and for players willing to engage with the fiction of the world that system creates unique emergent storylines where your friend or potentially the whole town goes through a big bug catching phase. And I think what you get out of that reflects who you are in a very different way very different from how the New Horizons island you’ve terraformed and carefully curated every acre does. Old school Pokemon YouTuber Tama Hero has some videos about Animal Crossing where she talks about how the series has changed and how much Wild World specifically meant to her at the point in her life when it came out. Anyway, living through covid was also a deep and very interesting subject, and, again, I really enjoyed this episode.

Adi

essential worker vs stay at home ordered worker experience is nuts. as a nurse who worked in public health and watched normal PH services shut down in a frantic pivot to contact tracing, I definitely missed out on the sourdough-starter-and-banging-pots-together part of covid and didn’t try ACNH until like 2023

Alex

Cannot wait to play this game religiously during the next pandemic!

The Worst of All Possible Worlds

You are 100% right, we forgot to link to the Hunter R. video but the notes have now been updated! Thanks for letting us know!

tye leatherson

this was probably the best way to talk about that period of time. i related alot to your individual stories (mostly brians), but i opened up animal crossing for the first time in ages a few months ago and found i could not play bc it brought back too many bad memories (mostly a toxic friendship but also 2020 at large)

umbraviolet

Oh man an OMORI episode would be interesting, but possibly kind of hard to discuss too

Harles Barkley

I am grateful for the closing message of this episode. This whole episode has been very cathartic for me. For at least 2 years I've been talking about the societal trauma we all experienced and how we just moved on like nothing happened. I didn't get to stay home, I had to continue to go to work for not even a single penny more. I will never forget the anxiety I felt everyday stepping out the door, fearful that id get sick and fuckin die. Not seeing my family for months because they're immunocompromised. It was fucked and it sucked, it was scary, and the passive attitude we have towards absolutely fucking baffles me. Sorry for rambling, thanks for such an excellent episode

Do Golems Dream of Ceramic Sheep

This has little to do with the episode beyond being Washington Heights marginalia (kinda literally), but when l was taking those walks to the LRLH to clear my head in 2018 there was a renegade art installation where some guy from the Bronx, who had been taking walks down by the LHRH to clear _his_ head was stacking up rocks down by the river very artfully. (Look up "Sisyphus Stones", they're really cool and really eerie). Dunno if they're still there (last article l could find was from 2021), but if hope they are, and either way I hope.... Brian(? no horses or catholicism were mentioned so all l got is "not Josh") got a chance to see them.

Maladapted

I left being a carpentry apprentice during the George Floyd uprising in the twin cities, I cooked north of the cities for the whole lock down. So many people died cooking, so many ODed too.

Noah

When this game came out, Justin McElroy said in an episode of the Besties that this might be the most important game ever released because it was going to save lives. I think he was right.

Eliza Blackhart

Yeah I didn't get the Animal Crossing Let's Stay Home Vacation, I was an "Essential Worker" working a warehouse job I didn't get the months of isolation or anything else I just had to Go into this increasingly unsafe work environment. Still transed my gender but that was a work in progress from a few months before the pandemic

Josephine

The intro got me way too hard you can't do that too me

Holly B

I will never forget fajita cheese wife.

J

Now I want a Animal Crossover with Tropico

Camoose the Uncrackable Egg

To be fair, that Pulse video was fire. Easily one of my favorite. Especially when you get to the guy in the train engine is very creepy.

The Worst of All Possible Worlds

Yeah it's Brian haha. I actually just went out today, and the rocks were not stacked. But I'm pretty sure they were last fall

Kevin M

God this episode brings back memories. I got sent home March 15th, 2020, and remember telling my then-boss "I'll see you on the other side of the end of the world". I try not to think about those days, that loneliness. But you're right that the memory, the remembering, is important. Thanks as always fellas.

Ciara Rhiannon

One of the many things that will forever perplex me about ACNH is that soft wood doesn't always come from palm trees, regular wood always from standard trees, and hardwood always from pine trees. It's just right there.

this purple heart's for gettin glomped on Iwo Jima

not even half an hour in and I know this is going to be one of the hardest episodes for me. I was deemed an ""essential worker"" and was working 50-60hr weeks on night shift. I had ordered a switch for this game, having let myself get excited for it. I played this game for hours and experienced such isolation, I didn't even really talk to my friends online and didn't see anyone outside of my fellow night shift weirdos (non-derogatory). haven't kept up with my island but I'll not soon forget playing this every morning after I got home in the early covid days.

Do Golems Dream of Ceramic Sheep

maybe they're seasonal ¯\_ツ_/¯. I miss them though (been a while since l made it that far up the island for any reason).

Ciara Rhiannon

Yeah I worked at Trader Joe's from 2018 to 2022 and it still makes my blood boil thinking about the backhandedness and condescension of being "essential" and never getting real compensation for that suffering and never getting to mourn that time of my life. But I do have fond memories of getting off work after my closing shift and immediately hopping on with my coworkers and playing hide and seek in our museums and just getting to have that community and solidarity through this game.

Joseph E.

"Nook's Cranny", owned by Tom Avery Nook

BarFly

To me, animal crossing is about making little fits to wear. It's also partly a catch-and-cook vacation experience but primarily it's about putting that shit ON. I was working for a menswear shop at the time, so I got sent home for about a month where I cooked and cleaned and played video games while my wife worked from home. They brought me back to the shop to just do online retail, meaning my sales and marketing role became a warehouse job. My friend and I spent the next two months essentially alone in a deserted store, watching Disney movies and old westerns and losing our minds as the George Floyd protests ramped up. We drank wine at work and at times we would just throw ourselves on the floor and primal scream it out. But we would also take a morning coffee break on the front steps every day, and I'll fondly remember sitting there in the sun as the spring of 2020 turned to summer and wondering what the world was going to look like.

Jonathan V. Cann

I just want to say how affirming this episode and the run-up to it have been. I don't watch Twitch often, but I happened to catch Josh on stream this past Monday, when he was talking about how the recording went and about Covid more generally (while somehow crushing Tetris Attack at the same time). From that moment on through, I've been so impressed with the clarity and courage you've all displayed in facing up to these memories, as well as their implications for the present day. I typed in Josh's chat that a lot of people's only operative coping mechanism for Covid turned out to be denial, and leaving many of us with no other moves to make was a structural choice that largely came from the same annihilationists currently running our government. I'm a school staffer in central-west Queens, the hardest-hit place early on--I had to manage my students' quarantines, do contact tracing, make remote learning work in a way that was doable for people stretched too thin to parse complicated instructions--and yet I ultimately lost my best friend not to the virus, but to his disgust with me for keeping up precautions like masking that he NEEDED to believe were no longer necessary by mid 2021, because to think otherwise was to realize how vulnerable he was after his boss and others with power over him essentially forced him to drop his precautions in the name of projecting normalcy. His adaptation turned out to be the most common one; I ended up having the same friction with a dozen other people, and I had to acknowledge that their way had the momentum of majority. Having to argue over reality itself and LOSING is a crazy position to be in as an educator, so thank you for making me feel a little less crazy.

Leo Curtis

I will never forget my boyfriend (now fiancé) and my 2nd anniversary candlelit dinner...in Animal Crossing. In reality, we were in different cities, eating Dominoes pizza and watching Into The Spiderverse over Discord. I strangely miss it, in a small way.

Laur

You guys have inspired me to start playing from scratch again (time travel allowed) and i think i will stage my island as various murder scenes from the poirot novels

Rhaen

“You can’t let anyone convince you that your story doesn’t matter. It does. So go out there and tell it” absolutely loved this episode so much. The end made me tear up cuz since I was a kid I’ve always convinced myself that my story doesn’t matter. Can’t say y’all solved decades of mental issues but that was such a meaningful way to end the show. Thank you

Max

Same! I was an essential worker at a group home, so I wasn’t “frontline” like nurses or grocery store workers, and my daily routine didn’t actually change that much. I definitely did not get the work from home experience, just more hours, less social interaction outside of work, and a periodic crushing fear that my vulnerable clients who I took care of were going to get Covid (and also the experience of nursing a few of them through mild cases). Hearing other people’s pandemic lockdown stories makes me feel like I spent those years on another planet.

Jordyn Clementi

Trump got Covid on October 1, I remember because it's my birthday and it was the absolute best birthday present I could have asked for. He looked so unwell

James Cézanne-Taipale

Two points. #1 I’ll have to start recording this podcast and figuring out how to etch it into quartz crystal. #2 when did you guys all move into the houseboat with all the bunk beds?

Wilko

Brilliant episode. One of my favorites so far. Using Animal Crossing to talk about your personal Covid timeline - a stroke of genius. Incredible.

ACXG

I'm very grateful for this episode, and for the other essential workers who have commented here. In February of 2020, I was a new STEM graduate working a temporary job in a hospital's Employee Health and Safety department. In March of 2020, I was an essential worker with enough of a bio and chemistry background to triage the pandemic information, and a pair of hands to answer phones, schedule nurse testing, and inventory respirators. I worked that 2 week temp job for 13 months. I didn't have any preparation for becoming a front-line healthcare worker. Every day I drove to work on empty highways, waiting to hear who had died, while the radio gave me strategies on how to be home alone. Sitting here, going, "Fuck, I remember that creepy-ass rabbit" is the first through-line I've felt to someone else's pandemic experience. Hearing as well the difficulties and moves you went through finally adds texture to my conception of "whatever everyone else was on about." Thank you for your work in connection and storytelling

I Love Brian Alford's Bible Corner

I'm a community college instructor. I started a "Pandemic Journal" on March 24, and I'm thinking of crafting it into a memoir by weaving in the emails I sent my students, the YouTube videos I posted for them, and official comms from the college. I kept a photo album of screenshots and pictures of the changes in the world, also. We'll see if I can stand to take on that work. I started to show signs of a major decline in mental health around August 2020. Never recovered but I also never got COVID, so hooray?

I Love Brian Alford's Bible Corner

I was back in the classroom teaching by August 2020. Wild. Granted, I'd already been vaccinated as part of the Moderna trail. But I didn't know, no one did, if that would actually help.

Lewis Morgan

I remember that I got so irrationally angry at the video that CGP grey put out about the 'Spaceship you' thing at the beginning of the pandemic. I was stuck in a single room + bathroom studio apartment, still educating my students who rightfully felt like the whole world was ending, and he was trying to tell me how to divvy up my 100 sq ft into helpful little areas. I ended up with an isolation induced mental health crisis due to the pandemic, and it burns my soul to this day hearing people talking like it never existed, or that all the precautions were unnecessary. My life got changed forever, and some people were just mad they were told they had to wear a mask and be fucking normal so all this could end sooner. Denial is such a powerful mechanism of the human psyche. Thank you for this video, it was very cathartic and affirming to have this period of our lives brought up again in an emotive and honest way.

Nobody

Lmao thanks for bringing up bunny day. I got into AC late and when I got there my friends were like “oh yea, bunny day, you’ll see”. I collected everything. I crafted everything. That son of a bitch with his ugly furniture, littering EVERYWHERE. The last one, the bunny wand… Idk what I expected but after the last fetch quest and Zipper’s gloating… I got so mad I got spit all over my switch screen from cursing Zipper. Fuck that shady mf. He doesn’t dance unless you’re in his eyesight btw (extra sus).

Sam

I worked fast food at the time as well and honestly them closing the dining areas made my job *easier* for a time.

Maple

I’ve listened to this in bite-size chunks throughout the week since I knew it would probably bring up some big feelings, and after finishing today I am so grateful to the lads for making this episode. I was an essential worker, and like many other essential workers felt completely alienated from the experience I saw playing out on social media, and this episode made me feel so much more connected to the experiences of people who did stay at home. With the powers that be so eager to brush the lived experience of 2020 under the rug in the years since, it felt really cathartic to listen to you guys purposefully take a few hours to sit (and invite the listeners to sit with you) in the memories of that time, both good and bad.

MJ Michael

I was doing my year long mandatory military service in 2020. It was bizarre being completely away from the pandemic while also being more isolated than most people. We couldn't leave the barracks like recruits usually could, the cafe was closed most of the time and we weren't allowed to interact with the other companies. We only had like five cases of confirmed covid for the whole year so the isolation worked, but it made the already miserable military service even worse. At least i didn't have to wear a mask i guess. Also something animal crossing related. I was playing New Leaf at the start of my service, but i broke my 3ds during the first week and couldn't do that anymore.

tworobocops

i really appreciated your commentary at the end. Sometimes I feel like it’s just me and like 5 other people who still care about how covid continues to affect people and it’s nice to hear y’all still give a shit. it‘s also really nice to hear your experiences! luv y’all 🥰

Erica Jones

Today I've discovered I have the same birthday AND year as one of you. Freaky.

Tone Bug

God damn. “These have been hitting me pretty hard,” I said. “I love the video game episodes, let’s start there.” “But a lot of these seem like darker games with heavy content, let’s go with something light,” I continued. “Oh! Animal Crossing!! I’ve never played it but I know it’s nice and light; this will be nice!” Thank you again 🙏 Jesus h friggin Christ

Kaylee

I know I'm late to this but holy shit this was a little rough to listen to and remember how things were in peak pandemic.

NowhereMan661

I find it very funny that I had a relatively nice COVID Quarantine. I was on spring break from college with my family going to Boston just as reports of COVID cases were being to be reported in the US, and then my college was just like "stay home, don't come back to school", which was great because I hated that school, and I just got to stay at home with my family. Didn't have to worry about infection except when I got a summer job, but of course all we really were required to do was wear a mask, which was tolerable. Then I deal with the awkward transition to my second school, which was weird because they opened with all the quarantine stuff, but again, not a big deal for me. I'm not a very social guy, so I wasn't exactly wanting for many public spaces. I've always been a shut-in. Yeah, the isolation and loneliness did get to me sometimes, but I always had my family I could back home to and my friends to text. I was never in a panic, it was just the bullshit state of the world that everyone had to deal with. And the best part? I have literally never gotten COVID. Never got sick, not once.

FelineJay

Unexpected PATMOS lore

Tay

1:09:48