My life in Animal Crossing terms: An Ode to SunnyGo.
12 Aug 2025
Animal Crossing Wild World was the first "proper" video game I ever bought with my own money - and I bought it all by chance. I got it alongside the very first edition pink Nintendo DS back in March 2005. It was my 8th birthday. I saved up for ages and paid in mostly pound coins! I remember seeing the game in the shop and having no idea what it was, but the art on the game box was simply mesmerising. I vividly remember being transfixed by a rich dark green and brown globe dotted with little houses, animals and flowers. It had a pink and dark blue pixelated sky with little flashing stars in the distance. My little mind decided upon it, and I convinced my Dad to get the bundle that came with Wild World AND Nintendogs, even though it was way out of my price range. He wasn't happy, but it was worth it.
The second I booted up the game, there was just something about it that sucked me right in. The richness of the opening tune, the little pitpats of the players feet trundling along the grass. It was a place to get lost within the pixelated metaphor of it all. It felt magical and I became lost within it. I called my town SunnyGo. It grew pears and had a forked river with three seperate sections. I designed a little golden yellow flag for it. Just a giant "S" & "G". My favourite character became Puddles, a peppy pink frog with lovely style furniture.
I remember playing Nintendogs first and that had a save button in game - so I figured thats how ALL games must save. However, when I went to turn Animal Crossing off for the first time, it didn't have a save feature like Nintendogs did! I didn't realise you had to press "start" to save. I remember Resetti the mole coming to my town and being so scared!
During the summer of 2005, I played Animal Crossing multiplayer with my childhood friend Ellie at our family caravan site. I was 8 and she was 6. Our DS's still connected, even while we were under the covers in our prospective caravans - a few metres away from each other - with just a couple sheets of tin and a patch of grass to seperate us. That summer was filled with animal crossing, bicycle riding, pictochat, jumping over sanddunes on the beach, collecting shells (pixelated AND real), ice-cream, farm animal petting and getting stuck in quicksand.
When I showed the game to adults so excitedly, none of them seemed understand it. They always asked me what the "point" of the game was. They were expecting me to relay some rules back to them like you would for a more traditional game. When you're 8 and you try and explain that "you run around, plant things, decorate your house and make friends with the animals", it was confusing as to why the adults around me still viewed this as "not having a point". I didn't get why they didn't get it. But I got it. When you're a child, you don't question point or purpose, you just follow joy. Animal Crossing was a safe wild world for me.
Christmas 2008, I was 11. I got Animal Crossing: City Folk on the Wii! I was so excited to play it, that after Christmas Dinner, I had set up the console in my Grandma's conservatory on her giant cube shaped TV. I called my town SunnyGo again, but this time I had peach trees. I was incredibly excited, as I hated having pears. I remember thinking they were an ugly fruit.
When I got Animal Crossing: New Leaf for the 3DS in 2012, I was 15. I got the Limited Edition Animal Crossing 3DS to go alongside it. It was white, with pretty little Nook Leaves and apples embossed on the lid. By that point I was a teenager and somewhat rejecting my childhood, so I didn't call my Town SunnyGo. Instead, I named it "Peachy". You guessed it, I had peach trees again.
When Animal Crossing New Horizons came out in March 2020, I was 22. I was insanely excited and preordered it to come with a tote bag and a badge. I was planning to go to the midnight release at the GAME shop...but then COVID hit. Instead, I downloaded it onto my switch at midnight and played it on the floor of my shared accommodation that I was soon due to move out of. It once again became my idyllic childhood escape from the pain of everything. And my pear tree'd town, once again, was named Sunny Go.
To the Orchard I haven't grown yet
5 July 2025
So I'm lying here in tears over Disney's Melody Time short: Johnny Appleseed. I'm not American, nor familiar with American folklore, so if you haven't seen it, it's about a run of the mill man who plants apples trees. With only his courage, a pot to cook out of and a humble bag of seeds, he traverses the land with dedication and simplicity - planting his trees wherever he goes. Over the many years, the fruits of his labour bring prosperity and unity in the form of a humble apple pie.
Something as small as steadily planting apple seeds over time, with fear-bounded courage, without the surety of success - in time - casts a shadow. The importance of that shadow is something I have sat upon. I really have begun to ignore what I once hoped to cast. Yet, if I could slip my shadow off entirely like a coat - unhook its threads - it would still be there. In a pile - on the floor next to, but not in my wardrobe - a familial reminder of my core. The spriteliness of me has faded, but it's a hope I cannot shake off. I submerge my dreams in distance, so the lip of me feels safe.
But the lip of me is lapping. In between the depths of distance, I'm choking on the blips and flips of the waters I created to soften the blow. As I look up, the apple tree orchards which cloud the sky have become clasped in the waves I so desperately tread to stay afloat. As the apple bobs, I have begun to sink.
Yet something so small, possibly as inconsequential as a pip, brings me back up momentarily to the surface. In these few gracious seconds, no longer shackled by the waters of distance, I am now drowned by fear. In this fleeting breath, a short bit with the sun, this is where I can see that my seed has promise. A seed is only as inconsequential as the means it has to grow. A seed I have not watered, but flooded with distance.
Yet what anchor to reality does this seed represent? Of my own fruition, what can I begin to grow? Have I sown any seeds at all? I have become so swept up with the dreams I have drowned in, that I have conveniently misplaced what my pursuit was, or even what I want it to be. In reality, I just don't want to face it. It is lost in a pile of rotting apples, and I am in the ocean.
To face the seed as a meagre seed. To turn it over in my hands. To plant it softly, in the cold, tumultuous earth. To spend a lifetime watering it, pruning it, coaxing it, without the assurance it will grow. To start at the beginning — without the security of success or ego — is what makes the sea of distance so alluring. Yet, the anchor I seek, is out on the shore. It's heavy, but glistens like the peel of a juicy plucked apple. The anchor that can drown me, is at the bottom of the ocean. A place where the sun can't reach. Where I cannot cast my shadow. A place where I cannot plant my seed.
I love learning: geekatron 5000
12 May 2025
A joy of life is the realisation or reminder of the amount I still don't know, seek to know, never know, or may ever know in the application of my learnt knowledge across a lifetime.
Yesterday, a doctor prescribed me using a medicalised term: supersede.
I didn't know the word, but once understanding its definition, I've proceeded to now see it used in a multitude of places.
Over the course of a few short days:
- A doctor friend stated it during a murder mystery dinner.
- It came up in the dialogue of a video game.
- I caught it uttered by the passing of a stranger in the middle of the street.
Each application stuck out like the pain of a sore thumb. Without another’s empathy - only I can feel it.
While the example is only a word, it sticks out with the illuminated bias of my own recent learning.
I'm simply noticing the world around me with the lens of knowledge I hold — and only hold.
That which is unknown, while physically present, is invisible to the beholder of knowing.
We are blinded by that which we are unable to see.
Being aware of potential that expands further than what is shown to be your version of truth brings a joyful human questioning of another’s experience.
What is my purpose / what is the point:
- To seek to eternally know more is a joy that’s enough.
- Every other has something known that I do not.
- It's my duty to learn more.
- They don't owe me their story.
- I can only seek it.