Entry #10: Animal Crossing Across the Years

 

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    During the COVID era, the gaming industry saw a huge boom in sales as more people began to turn to video games for pastimes. A number of franchises grew in popularity, including Animal Crossing, finally giving the series of games the recognition it deserves. Its newest edition was released during the lockdown, getting many hooked on the ability to live out an (almost) normal life while being stuck indoors for the time being. You may have heard of or played the game yourself, as currently, Nintendo has sold about 46.45 million copies worldwide. This is a little over half of what the entire franchise has sold in total, making it the biggest Animal Crossing game to date. However, this huge expanse of the series means that many have likely not heard about the games that predate it, which is what I want to introduce you to today because I believe this timeless series deserves some more recognition.

    The first official Animal Crossing game was released over two decades ago in Japan, under the title "Dōbutsu no Mori," or in English, "Animal Forest." There were two releases of this game eight months apart in 2001, one for the Nintendo 64 and an updated version for the Nintendo Gamecube. An English version of the game was finished just nine months later in 2002, finally allowing us to have the first Animal Crossing experience in The States. This first installment was similar to the latest, though several notable things are missing from the game, like the ability to customize things with patterns, and iconic characters like Brewster the barman and Harriet the hairstylist. Despite this, the game retains most of the core aspects of the Animal Crossing series — fishing, catching insects, planting trees, gardening, home decorating, making friends with villagers, and most importantly, paying off your mortgage.

    The next game in the series isn't too dissimilar; in fact, it happens to be one of my favorites in the franchise in terms of its music. Animal Crossing: Wild World, as it's known in the US, was released for the Nintendo DS in 2005, giving us even more content that we hadn't seen prior. For starters, wireless Wi-Fi connection to other DSs allowed for players to go into one another's towns worldwide, making this the first Animal Crossing game where you could use multiplayer. Even more exciting, the new game added things like an expanded museum featuring a cafe, increased character customization, more interactive villagers, and the iconic Able Sisters that now run the tailor shop. All of this gave the game much more character, giving way for the next installment to be even more iconic.

    City Folk was my first Animal Crossing game and the one I remember the most fondly. Released in 2008, it adds an entirely new experience to it in the form of a city you can visit, and a perfect atmosphere that works to combine all the games that came before it. Characters previously considered special visitors now have permanent spaces in the city, allowing you to visit them any time during the day before their shops close, and new characters that walk around the city plaza for you to interact with. The music is comparable to the prior games, giving it an ambiance that makes it a truly relaxing pastime.

    The final full game we had for a while was New Leaf, released in 2012 for the Nintendo 3Ds, along with the updated version of it in 2016 called "Welcome Amiibo" which introduced the use of Nintendo's amiibo figures and cards in the game. The city is gone in this game, replaced with the "main street," and a new role as mayor is given to the player that allows even more customizability in the town. You can build bridges, paths, and as you advance, even new buildings like the tailor's or the cafe. The game also introduces the iconic character "Isabel," who appears in all future games and serves as almost a mascot alongside Tom Nook. Another nice feature of this new game is a tree as the town centerpiece that grows each year, aging with the player as you continue to play the game, day by day. There's even more content in this game that encourages daily play so that hopefully you'll be able to build your town into something beautiful.

    From there, before New Horizons, we were given a multitude of spin-off games. From Happy Home Designer, which focused on the decorating aspect of New Leaf, to Pocket Camp, which is essentially a mobile app version of Animal Crossing. There was also Amiibo Festival and Animal Crossing Plaza, though those were among the least popular games in the franchise due to one being an Animal Crossing Mario Party, and the other being more of a social platform than a game. Despite this, in the next 4 years, the series continued to grow in popularity, especially with the announcement of New Horizons in late 2018, the anticipation for the next big game festered excitement among new and old fans.

    Finally, in 2020, the most popular Animal Crossing game yet was released. New Horizons was, of all the games, one that gave the most freedom when it came to decorating. Things were also released differently than in the previous games, with new major updates coming periodically that introduced new things, such as memorable characters and new gameplay features. In this game, you can customize almost everything about your town, from the placement of buildings to the rivers and mountains. This has allowed people to build extremely detailed and complicated islands, which is a worthy sacrifice for what this game is missing from the prior games. There was also an expansion to the game, paying homage to Happy Home Designer for New Leaf. Happy Home Paradise is like the new and updated version of the prior home-design spin-off of Animal Crossing, allowing for even more possibilities for the fun of decorating in the game.

    Whether you or somebody you know was introduced to Animal Crossing through New Horizons, or if you've never heard of this game series at all, I would encourage you to check it out on any console you might have. From the newest game to the oldest, I believe they're all worth playing at least once so you get to experience the relaxing atmosphere of the older games, and the creative endeavors in the newer ones. It doesn't matter where or when you start either, because Animal Crossing is a game you're allowed to play on your own time, and you'll be able to pick it up and put it down whenever you please. Your choice should depend on what you want to experience because there's plenty of variety across the versions while keeping the core the same. No matter what you want to do, Animal Crossing will be there as a game you can play to relax.

Entry #9: The Controversy of Animal Welfare

     Animal welfare has always been a highly debated topic, with people arguing whether or not it's inhumane to confine livestock to small lots and give them unnutritious feed made specifically to make them as large as possible before slaughter. Many don't care how the food gets to their plate; the one thing that matters is the cost and efficiency. They find it easy to turn a blind eye to what goes on before the convenient pre-packaged meat they pick out from the grocery store because of the modern-day disconnect we have from the animals we eat.

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    The debate over the humane treatment of animals in agriculture has always interested me. It's a discussion of morals and ethics, with opinions ranging from keeping things the way they are so we can sustain the consumer ease of mass production, to the idea that we should completely demolish the animal agriculture industry as a whole for the sake of the creatures being eaten. I believe there’s an equilibrium that can be reached between the desire for convenience and the concern for animals.

    The main culprit lies in the system we use to harvest meat. The Humane Society has a webpage dedicated to informing about the negatives of animal farming, showcasing the harm it causes to not just the animals in the system but the consumers who eat the things they produce. It sheds light on the methods used to mass produce meat and brings up a lot of things that most consumers don’t think about or know when it comes to the choices they make at the grocery store.

    However, the question still lingers; would people care if It was just the animals suffering? One of the biggest reasons people push for better living conditions for the animals we eat is because the way it is now makes it rife with diseases and unhealthy for us, but what if those things didn't affect us? Would people still be alright with the treatment of animals in industrial agriculture?

    I find these questions important to dig into the ethics of mass-raising livestock for slaughter, as well as the large disconnect consumers have from agriculture as a whole and the way it connects to capitalism. There's a good, however dark, book that I think works as a strange but decent commentary towards capitalism and factory farming called Tender Is the Flesh. It takes place in a world where cannibalism has been legalized after all the animal meat was contaminated. It replaces the animals in factory farms with people who are described as being 'specifically bred for consumption.' The novel gives reason to question the ethics of our current system, and I think it may change people's point of view when it comes to how we farm our animals.

    I believe it would be good for everyone to give this subject more thought. With more antibiotic-resistant diseases on the rise and the waste from these farms piling up, it's not something that can be ignored forever. I urge you to question things and look deep into yourself. The sooner you figure out where you stand, the sooner action can be taken.

Entry #8: Mouthwashing: Things Are Not as They Seem

 

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    Nowadays, the video game horror genre is saturated with a mountain of indie titles — some with interesting stories and captivating visuals, others following common cliches and using cheap jumpscares for some easy entertainment. This large influx of games means that it takes a lot for a single one to stand out or be noticed by a greater amount of people, which is why I'd like to bring attention to a game that's grown in popularity lately due to its unique story and uncommon way of narrating it.

    Mouthwashing is a first-person indie psychological horror game developed by Wrong Organ and published by Critical Reflex on September 26th, 2024. The game features a nonlinear storytelling style, and its visual horror is almost surreal, like the developer's only other game, How Fish Is Made. It follows the five crew members stuck aboard the freighter spaceship "Tulpar" after a crash on what was meant to be a routine delivery, leaving them stranded against an asteroid out in space. Their resources are dwindling, and things look bleak as the months drag on. The crew, in the beginning, blames their Captain Curly for the accident, spending their days trying to figure out what to do with the time they have left.

    In the present, you play as the honorary Captain of the Tulpar, Jimmy, interacting with the others on the ship while you struggle to figure out how to run the crew. Giving Curly his medicine when the ship's nurse, Anya, can't stomach the noises he makes, trying to manage the mechanic, Swansea, and his underling, Daisuke, as they drink the mouthwash the ship was transporting to cope with the situation. Between scenes and time skips, you are shown glimpses into the past, allowing you to play as Captain Curly before the crash takes place and leaves him almost limbless. This is done to slowly give you an idea of what really happened that day on the Tulpar, up to the day it happened, and what the consequences were. The nonlinear style of the story may be confusing to some, but if you pay close attention to the times stated before each scene and the hints given in the dialogue, you should be able to piece things together. It gives the game an air of mystery up until the climax, where it shows what really happened, and makes the horrifying scenes that come after you learn so much more intense.

    The visuals are inspired by early games for the original PlayStation, being pixelated and low-poly, which compliments the glitchy transitions between scenes and the retro style of the environment. It also makes the much more graphic scenes that appear later on in the game a bit easier to swallow, although the simple nature of what's going on may still make some feel queasy when playing. This style has grown in popularity recently for indie games, but the way Mouthwashing utilizes it is something special and shows a great sense of art direction.

    If you are a lover of horror games or just love a good psychological horror story, I would highly encourage you to check out Mouthwashing — as long as you can handle a few eye-straining visuals, the low-graphic gore, and the disturbing nature of the later part of the game. Whether you buy it from Steam (only $12.99!) or watch a playthrough of it on YouTube, I would incentivize you to pay close attention, to really soak up all of the details this game has to offer and come up with your own theories and ideas about things. That's half the fun of psychological horror games, where you just have to sit and think to understand, and another reason why this game stands out among many.