see deal Animal Crossing New Leaf - Nintendo 3DS $19.99 on Gamestop

It’s been countless months since I played Animal Crossing

He haunts me every night in my dreams.

New Leaf

Adorable slaps, surely?

More nightmare fuel.

Wild World

An artist's impression.

“ I am in the hole for $948k and Nook’s telling me that my house is at capacity.

Cold, dead eyes.

Shiny, happy people... and insane animals.

As has been documented , Animal Crossing exists in a strange world of magic, coercion and nascent violence. This is a place in which you’re a puppet mayor, axolotls open nightclubs (in between chewing off their own limbs, apparently) and trees will grow and fruit in two days. It’s weird and unpredictable - to a point.The fact is, like many games designed to keep you entertained in perpetuity, with randomly generated events and a seemingly unending array of new characters, the music does stop. We find new things to occupy our time, and we move on. The first time I played Animal Crossing was Wild World on the DS. I played it all summer, forsaking all else. I paid Nook back apple by fish, until he was sneering on the other side of his dumb face (I hate his face). I called my town Idlewild after the Outkast album of the same name. It seemed so clever. Idle. Wild. Wild World. Playing idly. Idling. In the wild.There was a life there, in Animal Crossing, and I lived it.But eventually I grew tired of it. There was a valiant attempt made by its creators to keep me ensnared with new hairdos and bugs I hadn’t caught, but ultimately there was a kind of easygoing grind to it that lost its game-y-ness. We gamers like a challenge, don’t we? The challenge ebbed away on the soft music and present-bearing puffs of wind.It didn’t stop me buying New Leaf, though. And I probably ran out of gas on that one even more quickly.So here we are, many months later. Animal Crossing hasn’t been a part of my daily life in a while. Let’s boot up the games and find out what’s been happening all this time. Because remember, the thing about Animal Crossing is - it plays you.I got mail.Lots of mail; some of the townsfolk are moving on and my mom is writing to me with inane rubbish about my dad not noticing her perm (I think their marriage is in trouble). But the letters that really stand out are the ones from the Post Office. I’m RICH! My bells have been accumulating interest in drifting piles like autumn leaves. $21k here. $48k there. I straight up own this town! I am like one of those “pimps” I have been hearing about.Or do I? Or am I?Isabelle doesn’t seem to notice that I’ve been gone. Slap in the face number one. She has a laundry list of complaints from the townsfolk, though. She heaps them on me. Slap in the face number two.I have a counter complaint: Apollo. I have been actively neglecting him since I moved into town and he’s still not gone. I try to give him a quiet nudge by telling Isabelle I find his clothing offensive. She tells me that she can make him change because she has the power to do that. She says it right to my face and in so doing delivers slap three.To add insult to injury (that’s four slaps) Leif is hanging around, and has the gall to come to me with a major weed problem. I spend thirty three minutes finding 139 of 140 weeds and eventually give up. Leif flicks me a trinket and I feel dirty.To be honest, not much had actually changed since I last picked this game up. I killed a couple of roaches and reacquainted myself with my furniture haul (rooms mostly decked out with Nintendo merch). I caught a fish. I caught another fish.I caught another fish.I caught another fish.I caught another fish.I caught another…Oh, that’s right. I remember now.Man, if Leif could see this place. It’s hard to get a decent run up because every time I try to sprint I bend down and pick up a weed.My character is very different: in New Leaf, I am a calmly put together sporty-type wearing a baseball jersey, camo shorts, and trainers. My one piece of flair is a bear hat, and I wear that sporadically. Here, in Wild World I am wearing tie-dye, and sport a mammoth ginger afro.I am arriving back in Idlewild after… years? The town is a wreck and there is no one around. It is literally a dark and stormy night.The first thing I do is check my mail and see if I have any letters telling me I have made a lot of money out of my abandonment. There aren’t any - but of course mom has been busy writing. Maybe my parents’ relationship would be better if she didn’t stop what she was doing to send me a letter every time a sunflower grew.I notice that my house here is much bigger than in New Leaf. I expect that first time around, it took me some time to figure Nook out. I feel so stupid. A quick trip to the ATM tells me that in fact the reason I am accumulating no interest is that I have no money. Zilch. I am carrying $1,510 bells on my person - that’s it. My home is a palace, though. I bet Nook knows what’s up.Sure enough, I am in the hole for $948k and he’s telling me that my house is at capacity. There is no more room for expansion. He makes a joke about the mortgage being only $9,000. Ha. Ha. Ha. *sob*So what did I learn from all of this?I am mortgage free in New Leaf, with a modest home containing very little in the way of furnishings. Like I said, there are trinkets, but most of that stuff was won or given. Maybe some day, someone is coming back to collect, but it hasn’t happened yet. Right down to the visual impact of my characters, these games are worlds apart for me: I played them differently, they played me differently.It only took a short visit back to each to see how well-crafted they are, however. The fact that the game world moves tirelessly on although you the gamer are so, so, so tired of it is sort of beautiful. It speaks to a kind of boundless optimism on the part of Nintendo. “Save your progress,” they seem to be saying, “you’ll be back.”For now, I am off to catch some fish.

Sam Prescott is a freelance gaming journalist based in New Zealand. Why not follow him on IGN