As part of the this year’s Nintendo Direct at E3 2019, the team showed off the highly-anticipated new Animal Crossing title for the Nintendo Switch — Animal Crossing New Horizons. The game has a release date currently slated for March 20 2020, pushed back slightly from a projected 2019 release date that was previously communicated to fans.
Fans have been waiting a long time for an Animal Crossing announcement for the Switch. It’s been about 7 years since Animal Crossing New Leaf came out on the DS, so this next installment feels long overdue. From placing furniture outside to new features available from Tom Nook, what’s been shown off so far looks like it has plenty of quality of life improvements.
The Nintendo Direct showed off a bunch of new gameplay footage for Animal Crossing confirming a new location for the franchise, which looks a lot like a tropical island. Players were also greeted by the familiar visage of Tom Nook and the trailer revealed that they had been flown out to the island by the enterprising raccoon for reasons currently unknown. Animal Crossing New Horizons currently has a March 20 2020 release date: a slight delay from the 2019 release that the team at Nintendo had originally intended it to be.
It looks like Animal Crossing New Horizons features a host of new improvements to previous games: the character creator is likely more robust, as we see a wider range of skin tones and features in the trailer. The new island location is an interesting one as well, and we anticipate flora and fauna that we didn’t get to see in New Leaf showing up as well. The Switch’s graphical fidelity is a huge step up from that of the 3DS, so it’ll be exciting to see everyone’s favorite villagers (and most likely some new faces) rendered in high definition. Players will also have access to a Nookphone which will allow them to connect to multiplayer functions and to hang out together on the island itself, which seems to work much more efficiently than the previous method used in New Leaf.
If you’re wanting to keep up to date with the rest of the news from the Nintendo Direct like the reveal of the new Dragon Quest Smash DLC characters, check out the E3 event hub that we’re updating as we find out more.
