Since the beginning of the Animal Crossing franchise, players have been able to decorate their homes with Nintendo-themed items, ranging from Fox McCloud’s Arwing to functioning NES consoles. Animal Crossing: New Horizons lacks most of these, aside from the Super Mario items added earlier this year. With New Horizons now open to new and returning Nintendo content, the developer should bring back the rest of its past crossovers, along with some new additions.
For those interested in dressing up like Mario, Link, Samus, and even oddballs like Midna, games like Animal Crossing: New Leaf had outfits to make such dreams a reality. New Leaf‘s Welcome amiibo update went so far as to add and Splatoon characters, accessible by tapping the corresponding amiibo into the game. New Horizons includes none of these features – though fans have at least been able to replace some of the clothing items with the game’s custom design tools.
In fact, many features were missing from New Horizons at launch, such as New Leaf’s swimming and dream island mechanics. These were eventually added via updates, but the non-Mario Nintendo items are still nowhere to be found. Animal Crossing: New Horizons should not only bring back the crossover content from previous games but also introduce new items for franchises not previously represented.
New Leaf‘s Zelda villagers remain some of the , partially because the chosen characters – like Wolf Link and the pig-like Ganon – fit so well into Animal Crossing‘s world. But Zelda isn’t the only Nintendo series with lots of animal-inspired characters. Donkey Kong and Diddy Kong would fit perfectly as a gorilla and monkey, respectively, and Yoshi could show up as a lazy, food-loving frog, alligator, or even hippo. There might not be a Star Fox title on Switch, but would be a great way to advertise a potential new installment. There are also many, many fitting Pokémon to choose from, and Nintendo could even branch out from directly animal-like characters, adding a Pikmin villager obsessed with gardening, for example.
Along with the villagers, there should also be more Nintendo-themed items in New Horizons. Lost trinkets from 0lder Animal Crossing games, like Link’s Master Sword, the Blue Falcon, and the Varia Suit, would be appreciated by many. To spice things up, Nintendo could also add new pieces from franchises without prior representation, such as Earthbound or Kid Icarus. Dressing up as Ness or mounting Pit’s bow on a wall would make for loads of fun. Either way, Nintendo has lots of crossover ground to cover in Animal Crossing: New Horizons before it’s on par with previous entries’ Nintendo reference catalogs.
Next: Animal Crossing: How Zelda’s Wolf Link Became A Villager
