The original Animal Crossing is an interesting case study to me, considering that I've spent plenty of time playing the games after this (Wild World, New Leaf, and New Horizons) before coming back to the source. Right away, I can tell that the sauce is there but it's nowhere as polished as its successors. For example, you can't immediately submit fossils to the museum because Blathers isn't confident enough in his fossil certification; instead, you have to write up a letter, attach the fossil to the letter, and mail it off to the museum to get identified before it gets mailed back, and you also have to wait a day before finding your first fossil before you can mail it off to boot. There's other little things too, like Nook's Cranny being a bit "luck-based" in what tools they'll choose to sell to you first, so you might not get the chance to fish on the first day if it's not being sold, or how the Able Sisters aren't actually selling clothing in the original, just acting as a stand-in for custom designs that are more fully integrated in the sequels. Oh, and there are goddamn mosquitos everywhere that really love to bite me while I'm fishing for coelacanths and harvesting my daily money rock; I swear my budget Ico should have gotten West Nile virus by now considering how many times he's been bit over the past couple of weeks.

And yet, it's in these imperfections and its distinct vibe that the original carves out its niche. Unlike its successors, everyone in the village you move to is at best indifferent and at worst somewhat hostile and cynical of you, the newbie moving in. They don't make any attempts to hide it really; the villagers constantly joke about how they would never forget you when you load up your game again, and some even saw me as this kind of pestilence that existed and wanted nothing to do with whenever I tried chatting them up to see if I could do them any favors. The only guy in town who seems to give a damn about you is a raccoon who is more or less exploiting you for free labor. And yet, there's something oddly comforting about this and the "lack" of things to do in the original Animal Crossing when compared to the games that came after. I never felt like I was being rushed towards some light at the far end of the tunnel or felt disappointed that I didn't make enough progress to hit the next checkpoint, or even a need to make myself presentable and affable to those around me. If they didn't care, why should I? There's a million things to do in New Leaf and New Horizons that kept pushing me forward, and contrary to that, the lack of ambition in the original kept me rooted in the simple daily tasks; I was content just fishing to my heart's desire, having nothing to prove and no one to prove anything to. I may be done with Animal Crossing for now, but I can appreciate how it lets you forget about life for a while. It doesn't need to be something flashy or aspiring: it just is.