Over the course of 25 years and half a dozen installments, Animal Crossing has gone from a quirky curio to one of Nintendo's marquee franchises, standing alongside the likes of Mario and Zelda in terms of popularity and sales clout. But while the series has managed to retain the same whimsical spirit that helped endear it to players, it has also undergone some dramatic changes in its 20-plus-year history. When the original Animal Crossing first arrived at the turn of the century, it was a stark contrast to the predominant fashions of the industry--a slow, unconventional life sim that integrated a real-time clock into its brand of laid-back, open-ended gameplay. Since then, the series has appeared on nearly every Nintendo console and has grown into a vehicle for player expression, gradually embracing user creativity and town customization with each successive entry. With so many millions of copies sold, it's only a matter of time before Animal Crossing returns with a proper new installment for the Nintendo Switch 2, but just what that will look like remains anyone's guess at this point. However, by taking a look back at every major Animal Crossing game released thus far and the ways each expanded the scope and depth of the series, we can get an idea of where the franchise may go from here. Animal Crossing (Nintendo GameCube) Although it originated on the Nintendo 64 in Japan (and started off as a much different kind of game than the one that would eventually hit shelves), the Animal Crossing series made its international debut with its eponymous GameCube installment. Released in the US in 2002, Animal Crossing was a markedly different kind of experience than most other games at the time--a leisurely, freeform simulation with no overarching goal beyond living out a virtual life. As a new resident in a quaint forest village populated by talking animals, you spent much of your time doing various day-to-day activities: collecting decor for your home, catching fish and insects, browsing the daily wares at the local shop, and interacting with the other villagers who lived in the forest. This laid-back, open-ended gameplay was truly unique in an era before cozy life sims of this sort became commonplace, but what made the experience particularly novel was its real-time calendar. Animal Crossing used the GameCube's internal clock to track not only the hour, but the day and month as well, reflecting the passing of time and seasons in-game. Come winter in the real world and your village would be blanketed in snow and festive lights, while cicadas and beetles would emerge during the summer months. This applied to holidays as well; the shop would stock candy in the days leading up to Halloween, and your villagers would gather in the plaza on December 31 for a New Year's countdown. These moments reinforced the feeling that life in your village continued to tick along, whether or not you were around to witness it. Despite its unconventional premise for the time (and the GameCube's meager userbase), Animal Crossing would become a sales success for Nintendo, moving more than 2 million copies over the system's lifetime. More importantly, the game laid a foundation that future entries would build upon, planting the seeds of what would eventually become one of Nintendo's most beloved franchises. Animal Crossing: Wild World The series' first proper sequel, Animal Crossing: Wild World , arrived on the Nintendo DS in 2005. Despite the move to a weaker piece of hardware, Wild World expanded the scope and depth of Animal Crossing's gameplay with new features and more ways to personalize the experience. Along with new pieces of furniture and K.K. Slider songs to collect, the game introduced entirely new types of clothing; in addition to shirts and dresses, the tailor shop now stocked headwear, glasses, and other accessories. You could also visit the newly added salon and change up your hairstyle, offering a much greater degree of character customization than before. To accommodate the handheld's dual-screen display, Nintendo made some notable tweaks to the presentation, as well. Wild World eschewed the isometric viewpoint of the original title for a "rolling log" effect, which allowed for a clear view of the sky (and has since become a staple of every subsequent Animal Crossing). The game also traded real-world holidays for a handful of game-specific festivities like Yay Day and the Acorn Festival, offering a uniform experience for all players, regardless of their region. The most notable new feature, however, was the addition of online play. Wild World was the first Animal Crossing game to support online multiplayer, allowing up to four players to gather in one town simultaneously. Making use of the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection service, players could open up their town gates (after exchanging an unwieldy Friend Code) and invite friends over from anywhere around the world, transforming the game into a truly communal experience. Of course, this early attempt at online play carried some rather significant restrictions. When players were connected online, all of the villagers would retreat into their homes, and any special events that were underway would be paused until the online session ended. Despite these limitations, however, online play had a transformative effect on the series, and would become an integral component of future installments. Animal Crossing: City Folk Released for the Wii in 2008, Animal Crossing: City Folk was not so much a step forward for the series as it was a consolidation of everything that had come before it, combining the best elements of the original Animal Crossing and Wild World into one package. While the gameplay and presentation were closely based on Wild World (right down to the soundtrack, which featured the same hourly tunes as the DS game), City Folk also incorporated holidays from the original Animal Crossing, bringing back beloved events like Halloween and Toy Day. The biggest departure came in the form of the titular city, a bustling shopping area that was accessible by bus. The city hosted specialty shops like the salon and Gracie's fashion boutique, giving it a distinct feel from your main town. This would turn out to be the game's biggest influence, inspiring similar shopping districts in later titles, like New Leaf's Main Street. City Folk's other major innovation was WiiConnect24 support. The game utilized the online service to regularly distribute special items to players, making it the series' first foray into DLC. Beyond that, however, the game did not deviate much from Wild World's template, and as a result, it's remembered as one of the series' weaker installments. Animal Crossing: New Leaf Animal Crossing returned to handhelds with 2012's Animal Crossing: New Leaf for the 3DS. As its subtitle implied, this installment was something of a refresh, rethinking many of the series' longstanding conventions and nudging it in a more creativity-driven direction. The core premise, however, remained unchanged. Once again, you played a fresh-faced human who had just moved into a sleepy forest village. This time, however, you were not only a resident of the town, but also its new mayor. This added responsibility shifted the dynamic of the gameplay, giving you a degree of control over the way your experience played out. This was most clearly illustrated in the new ordinances. As mayor, you could enact one of several laws that would alter certain aspects of your town (and even residents' behavior). Implement the Night Owl ordinance, for instance, and shops would operate later than usual, ensuring that players who typically couldn't check their town during the day would still be able to pop in and enjoy the experience on their time. This changed the nature of the series. Whereas previous titles followed a strict cadence, ordinances allowed players to tailor the game around their personal schedule, making it the most flexible installment to that point. New Leaf also leaned heavily into player expression by placing a greater emphasis on landscaping. As mayor, you had the ability to commission public works projects like benches, fountains, streetlights, and other fixtures, giving you a wealth of options with which to decorate and personalize your town. This marked the first time an Animal Crossing game offered this level of exterior design possibilities, and coupled with the new Dream Suite (a facility where you could upload a "dream" copy of your town for others to visit), it allowed players to build and show off some truly inspired town designs. New Leaf expanded the series' multiplayer options as well with Tortimer Island--a nearby tropical resort where former mayor Tortimer was spending his retirement. Not only did the island offer a perennially sunny retreat where you could catch summer fish and bugs year-round (helpful for making some quick cash to fund the exorbitant public works projects), it also hosted a number of different minigames that you could play either solo or with friends. These served as an amusing complement to the standard Animal Crossing gameplay, giving players more activities to enjoy together while visiting each other's towns. Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer The second Animal Crossing game released for the 3DS, Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer arrived two years after New Leaf and was the series' first spin-off, moving away from the life-sim aspects of previous installments and focusing solely on interior decorating. Despite this stark shift, however, the title would have a profound influence on the main series moving forward. In contrast to previous Animal Crossings, Happy Home Designer did not begin with your arrival in a forest village; rather, the game cast you in the role of a new hire at Nook's Homes, a real estate agency that furnishes houses and other facilities for clients. As the agency's budding designer, it was your responsibility to take on various jobs for the different animals who'd stop by the office, tailoring homes to their specific tastes. This bigger emphasis on interior decoration necessitated a new control method. While previous Animal Crossing games required you to manually grab a piece of furniture and move it around, space by space, Happy Home Designer introduced a grid interface, which made arranging items much more flexible and intuitive. Using the system's touch screen, you could tap on a piece of furniture and simply drag it to the desired location, making home decorating--often a chore in earlier titles--quicker and easier. This interface would become a staple of the series; not only would it later be backported into New Leaf, but it would appear from the outset in the series' eventual next installment, Animal Crossing: New Horizons for the Switch. Happy Home Designer would also receive a successor in the form of Happy Home Paradise, a DLC expansion for New Horizons that similarly focused on designing homes for different animal clients. Animal Crossing: New Leaf - Welcome Amiibo Update Four years after New Leaf's initial release, Nintendo rolled out an extensive content update for the game dubbed Welcome Amiibo--the first time an Animal Crossing title had ever received a significant post-launch update of this sort. As its name signified, the headlining addition was Amiibo compatibility . Players could now tap an Animal Crossing Amiibo figure or Amiibo card via the handheld's bottom screen (or a separate NFC accessory, for those who had an older 3DS model) and summon that animal in their game. In addition to being able to take photos of the characters you summoned, this feature allowed you to invite specific villagers to move in, marking the first time you could hand-select which characters you wanted living in your town. Tying into the newly added Amiibo functionality, the update introduced a range of new and returning villagers to the game. Along with 50 animals who hadn't appeared since the original Animal Crossing, more than a dozen special crossover villagers based on Sanrio, Splatoon, and The Legend of Zelda were added. Just like other characters, these special villagers could be invited into town after scanning a respective Splatoon or Zelda figure (or one of the Sanrio Amiibo cards that launched alongside the update). Beyond the new content, the Welcome Amiibo update also introduced numerous quality-of-life improvements to the game, most notable among them being Happy Home Designer's grid interface for interior decorating. With this, players now had the option to arrange furniture around their homes using the system's touch screen, making it much easier to design indoor spaces. Despite how late the Welcome Amiibo update arrived, it was a welcome addition that breathed new life into the aging sim. More importantly, it paved the way for future titles to receive similar post-launch support, which is something Nintendo would fully embrace with the series' next installment. Animal Crossing: New Horizons After a couple of inconsequential detours on the Wii U (in the form of the short-lived Animal Crossing Plaza social service and the tepid party game, Amiibo Festival ), the Animal Crossing series made its long-awaited return in 2020 with Animal Crossing: New Horizons for the Nintendo Switch. Like New Leaf before it, New Horizons shook up the series' formula, building upon the tentative steps its 3DS predecessor took in even bolder ways. This time around, rather than moving into an established town, the game began with your arrival on a deserted island, which you'd gradually develop into a community from the ground up. Nearly every facet of the town was left to your discretion; not only could you handpick which villagers you wanted to move in, but you could also dictate where their houses would be built, select where facilities like Nook's Cranny would be located, and even reshape the very terrain with new terraforming tools. This degree of freedom also extended into landscaping. Building upon New Leaf's public works projects, New Horizons allowed you to arrange an even greater variety of items and structures around your town, letting you customize the island to your liking. While some larger structures like bridges and slopes still required funding before they could be built, other fixtures like fountains and benches were now classified as furniture and could be placed freely outdoors, making it much easier to decorate your town. Underpinning these changes was a new crafting system, which gave you the ability to fashion items like tools and furniture out of the different materials found on your island. Nintendo later expanded this system to include cooking as well, allowing you to whip up certain dishes out of crops and other foods. New Horizons also continued improving the series' multiplayer options, bumping the number of players who could gather together during an online session up to eight. For the first time in series history, the game also supported couch co-op, allowing up to four island residents to play together on the same system simultaneously. These changes made it easier than ever to set up a multiplayer session, which undoubtedly contributed to the game's incredible popularity during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Further building on the lessons it learned with New Leaf, Nintendo supported New Horizons with a regular stream of updates following its launch. While the company shied away from turning it into a full-fledged live-service game, it did roll out a new update for the game on a near-monthly basis, each of which introduced new features and major holidays. This was a clever workaround to time traveling, as it prevented players from adjusting the system's clock and accessing holiday items early, and it also ensured that users had a regular incentive to check in on their island. Animal Crossing: New Horizons - Happy Home Paradise New Horizons' first and only paid DLC, Happy Home Paradise , arrived in November 2021, just on the heels of a free 2.0 update for the base game. The expansion served as a sort of follow-up to 3DS's Happy Home Designer, offering a new spate of content revolving around interior decorating. This time, rather than working for Nook's Homes, you lent your services to Paradise Planning, a design committee operating on a nearby archipelago. As in Happy Home Designer, it became your task to take on design jobs for the different clients who'd visit the office, turning their dream vacation homes into reality. The core loop played out much like the 3DS game, but with an expanded suite of design options at your disposal. On top of designing a home's interior, you could now customize the surrounding landscape as well. After selecting an island for the home (each of which varied in size and scenery), you could decorate the yard with furniture, lay down paths and fences, arrange trees and flowers, and even customize the house's exterior, giving you full control over the look and feel of the vacation home. Happy Home Paradise also added a few new wrinkles to make interior designs richer. You could adjust the size and lighting of each home's interior, as well as add soundscapes and other effects to accentuate the theme. There were also new furniture and DIY recipes to collect, which allowed you to build pillars, partitions, and other furniture to spice up your home layouts. And once you completed enough design jobs, the game gave you the option to work on the houses back on your main island, allowing you to redecorate any of your villagers' homes. Animal Crossing: New Horizons - Nintendo Switch 2 Edition & 3.0 Update More than four years after the release of the game's "final" 2.0 patch, Nintendo surprised fans with an extensive 3.0 update for Animal Crossing: New Horizons, injecting the aging life sim with a wealth of new content to tide players over until its inevitable successor arrives. The biggest addition came in the form of a hotel, a new facility located on your island's pier that offers a small sampling of Happy Home Paradise-style gameplay. Much like that expansion, the hotel allows you to flex your interior design skills, putting you in charge of designing its rooms according to the requested themes. The update also introduced some welcome quality-of-life improvements that make exterior decorating more intuitive than before. Crafting was streamlined considerably; not only can you now craft multiple items at once, but the required materials are taken directly from your storage, eliminating the need to carry resources on-hand. Nintendo also added the ability to strafe and walk backwards , making it much easier to lay paths and terraform the landscape. These adjustments tie into the update's other big addition: Slumber Islands , shared dreamscapes that you can customize with other players. In a first for the series, Slumber Islands allow you and several friends to decorate an island together, giving each player freedom to place items and shape the landscape as they please. Coinciding with the 3.0 update, Nintendo also released a Switch 2 edition of the game. This upgrade is fairly minor by the standards of other Switch 2 editions, as reflected in its cheaper price , but it offers some nice enhancements. Beyond improved resolution and performance, the Switch 2 edition added a couple of features that take advantage of the hardware, including the megaphone--a returning item from New Leaf that lets you use the system's microphone to call out an islander's name and easily track them down. Even more notable was the addition of mouse controls. While indoors, you can use the Joy-Con 2's mouse functionality to quickly grab and drag items, which makes it much easier to arrange furniture when interior decorating--and perhaps offers a preview of what we can expect from an Animal Crossing game that's designed from the ground-up for the console. What's Next For The Series? As Animal Crossing has grown over the years, one facet that Nintendo has consistently expanded on is the degree of customization the series offers, and that will likely continue with its next installment. The next Animal Crossing game will almost certainly build upon the strides that New Leaf and New Horizons made, particularly when it comes to town customization. Designing and showing off towns has become one of the most appealing aspects of the series, as evidenced by the trove of "town tour" videos that appeared online in the wake of New Horizons' release, and the next game will likely offer even more ways to personalize and showcase your own. We can also expect Nintendo to continue refining the series' interface. Much in the way that Happy Home Designer's interior design controls were folded into the main series, the landscaping options from Happy Home Paradise may similarly end up being integrated into the next Animal Crossing, which would make town decorating much more intuitive than before. Like the Switch 2 edition of New Horizons, the title will almost certainly support mouse controls as well, which would be handy for arranging items both indoors and around town. Another facet of Animal Crossing that Nintendo has consistently expanded is its emphasis on multiplayer, and we can expect that to continue with the next game. The Switch 2 edition of New Horizons increased the number of players that can gather together online to a whopping 12, and it would not be surprising to see that become the new standard moving forward. Couch co-op will likely return as well, and could even make use of Switch 2's GameShare function to allow others to play on a separate system. New Horizons' newly added Slumber Islands also feel like a test run for the next Animal Crossing, and it's easy to envision Nintendo expanding on the idea. The next installment will likely allow you to cooperatively decorate and terraform your town with other players, although to avoid any potential issues, it will presumably be restricted to those you've designated as best friends. Nintendo could also build on the idea of Slumber Islands by providing each player with a secondary town that you can decorate and populate, separate from your main one. However the next Animal Crossing ultimately turns out, it's clear that multiplayer and customization will continue to be integral components of the series' future. With any luck, we won't have to wait too long to find out.