If the quarantine has allowed us anything, it is more time to play video games. How awesome is it that one of the easiest games to lose hours in and at the same time be transported to somewhere fantastical, or at the very least, nothing like your living room, should arrive at the start of all this? That game is Animal Crossing: New Horizons.

I have a long history with this series. My wife and I spent hours and hours in the Gamecube version followed up with handheld jaunts. Though to be honest I could not get as deeply into handheld Animal Crossing. I don’t think the games were not as good, well forgetting the Animal Crossing Camp one, they just didn’t wrap around me like a warm blanket.  Maybe it’s something about reclining on the couch with only a controller in your hand.

The Nintendo Switch is now blessed with a take on the series that is both refreshing and completely different. Chatting along in the village of furies is always a blast but it’s the fishing, bug hunting, fossil digging, indebtedness to Mr. Tom Nook that is the reason for the game. Now take all that and add a whole new level of crafting items and even terraforming your whole island and you have an Animal Crossing like no other. This is a reason to own a Switch. This would be a reason to call off work, if most of us weren’t already doing that. This is one of those games that fulfills the promise of what this hobby is better at than any other. This is the reason we game, simply put. Now if you’ll excuse me I have some turnips to sell and a bunch of Bunny Day crap to sell.