Animal Crossing

Animal Crossing began at Nintendo, first in Japan in 2001 on the Nintendo 64 under the title Doubutsu no Mori; the international launch of the series came with GameCube in 2002. Its defining feature is real time tied to the console's clock — seasons, holidays and time of day in the game match what the player is actually experiencing, and there is no fail state at all. Players move into a village full of anthropomorphic animal neighbors, pay off a housing debt to the raccoon Tom Nook, bring found specimens to the owl curator Blathers at the museum, and gradually improve and decorate their village. A series fixture from the start is the dog musician K.K. Slider, who plays a live song on request every Saturday evening.

The series continued with Wild World (2005, DS) adding online play, City Folk (2008, Wii), and above all New Leaf (2012/2013, 3DS), where the player became mayor and the game later added quality-of-life improvements along with the Welcome amiibo update that made use of collectible figures, all of which made it enormously popular, especially in Japan. The mobile spin-off Pocket Camp (2017) took the series into free-to-play, camping-themed territory.

The biggest wave of popularity came with New Horizons (2020) on Switch, set on a deserted island where the player builds a settlement from scratch through crafting and terraforming and can visit friends' islands online. The game launched at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and became a refuge for many people during lockdowns, as well as a cultural phenomenon reaching far beyond the usual gaming audience and drawing attention from mainstream media.