A nostalgic Animal Crossing: New Horizons build recreates a number of locations from the massively multiplayer online game Club Penguin. 2005's penguin-based online game was specifically designed for children, and it provided a large variety of different activities and mini-games to keep its audience interested. While Club Penguin servers shut down in 2017, three years before the 2020 launch of Animal Crossing: New Horizons, the MMO still remains an important staple of early internet nostalgia.
As a social simulator title, Animal Crossing: New Horizons gives players the freedom to design and manage their own island community. Gamers are able to arrange and decorate their homes as they see fit, and the recently-released Happy Home Paradise expansion further increases the number of interior decoration options. Using the systems present in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, players are able to construct wildly original homes or pay homage to other properties by recreating other fictional locations within their village's design. For example, one Legend of Zelda fan built Breath of the Wild's Satori Mountain within Animal Crossing, constructing a creative crossover between two of Nintendo's most beloved franchises.
Bringing a classic online title back to life, Reddit user Shell-Less Egg remade multiple Club Penguin locations using Animal Crossing: New Horizons' customization tools. The three builds perfectly reflect specific areas on Club Penguin Island, no doubt jogging the memory of any viewer who is familiar with the classic title. An outdoor build harkens back to Club Penguin's Iceberg, with a tall structure that seems to reference the Lighthouse. Nearby hardhats and jackhammers also call to mind infamous emotes and cosmetic items from the game. Shell-Less Egg's second design turns a typical Animal Crossing: New Horizons home into a Club Penguin Igloo, with Nova lights standing in for adorable Puffles, and the final room recreates the old MMO's secretive HQ monitoring room.
Click here to see the original Reddit post and image gallery.
While custom Animal Crossing: New Horizons builds can reference other games, custom island music can also serve as a tribute to unrelated titles. The social simulator allows players to make their own Animal Crossing island music, with the custom 16-note jingle playing as gamers explore and manage their island. Using this system, clever gamers can recreate iconic songs from other video games such as the Super Mario Bros. theme song or the Pokémon Center Theme.
Shell-Less Egg's recreation of Club Penguin within Animal Crossing: New Horizons serves as a lovely blast of nostalgia from the late 2000's. The iconic MMO is sadly no longer online, but fans like Shell-Less Egg have kept the the game's memory alive since it was discontinued back in 2017. Using Animal Crossing: New Horizons' large variety of different tools and resources, the island designs flawlessly recapture the spirit of Club Penguin's own digital island.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons is available on Nintendo Switch.
Source: Shell-Less Egg/Reddit