Friday, November 27, 2020: Sleepwalking Area 51

Earlier today, as is tradition in the Animal Crossing games, I changed the island tune to Deck the Halls. We'll see when the rest of my family realizes what I've done when we all next play.

I decided to go to another random dream island tonight. Especially since random islands are now a thing in the game, I thought it would be fun every once in a while to dedicate blog posts to these, like I've done in the summer with Aika Village and New Hyrule. I am hoping to do a livestream potentially next weekend trying to solve New Hyrule, by the way - it's been updated to incorporate the fall season, and some new puzzles!

Here's a list of all the islands I've visited thus far (since you could save them to your game). Yes, for those reading in the future, Biden Island is here as part of the marketing campaign for the 2020 election cycle. Animal Crossing: New Horizons has been in the news a lot since March with the pandemic (even an article in the New Yorker, I remember!), so it made sense for them to capitalize on the game's success.

As you can see at the top of the list, tonight I explored Skye's island, Area 51 (just from a random address). The code is shown if you want to visit yourself (or New Hyrule - highly recommend, and I discussed it back in August!). I loved this arcade, which is what made me take pictures. The aesthetic of neon in a dark room reminded me actually of what Stampy Cat did for his arcade on his livestreams. And even though this is from Nintendo's end, I do love the parodies of the arcade cabinets included in the game!

I loved the bedroom as well! It had a similar dark vibe going on with bright colors.

Upstairs was really neat - there was a tennis match on TV. And the villager posters along the wall were cute too! Again, lots of pastel colors everywhere (I think), really making the room pop. This definitely isn't a gritty dark (or however close you can come to that style in a Nintendo game)!

The island itself seemed to carry the same theme as the house. Chunks were "blank" or unfinished, but there were a lot of neat spacey brick patterns that had a sparkle or glitter effect on them. I loved this section by the house that lead to a place where you had to leap to continue along, with some outer space icons!

It was also neat how all the villager homes (save maybe the one by the house) were in a row on an eastern cliff overlooking the island. It was fun to just run through the path, after a rest on these fruity chairs.

I met up with "Yucky Yuka", as Jeff would call her. I remember her from Wild World, I believe. And finally, it was fun to learn I can indeed save and quit the game while lying in bed - akin to how you could save in the DS version as well! The loading/saving sounds seem to be drawn mostly from Wild World, which in turn took them from the GameCube version. Anyways.

So yeah! It was really fun to explore a new island, and I know this will be the "Mario Maker 2 level community" version of New Horizons. Players have even more control than they did in New Leaf, so it will be even more fun to wander around. (I was watching StacyPlays on Twitch this morning, and it was neat to see how she opted for a forest/taiga vibe with spruce trees and a more natural look, versus other players that go all out with designs, patterns, etc.)

Listening to the original Animal Crossing soundtrack as I type this blog post has been fantastic and nostalgic! :P