Animal Crossing: New Horizons players will be able to import custom designs from older titles in the series. Creating unique clothing designs is a popular feature in the Animal Crossing series, and fans who’ve played previous iterations will now be able to carry their hard work over to its newest entry.
The ability to transfer designs from older games was just one of the exciting announcements from the latest Animal Crossing Nintendo Direct. The Direct gave fans their best look yet at how New Horizons will actually look in action, including plenty of footage of new and returning Animal Crossing characters, plus the new island that players will call home. A lot of what was shown off in the Direct should be familiar to Animal Crossing fans, but the presentation also revealed lots of new features. Perhaps the most exciting was the ability to terraform New Horizons’ island, which will let players reshape the terrain to their liking. Not everything that came out of the Direct was good news though, as the presentation also revealed that players will only be able to recover their save data once in the event that it gets lost or corrupted, and only if they have a Nintendo Switch Online account.
The Nintendo Switch Online app will also enable some entirely new features in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, thanks to the upcoming NookLink function. Along with letting players chat with each other in multiplayer, NookLink will allow them to import designs from Animal Crossing: New Leaf and Happy Home Designer. Creating a design in one of the Animal Crossing 3DS games, like the Tom Nook t-shirt shown in the Nintendo Direct, will generate a QR code that players can scan with NookLink to make that design available in New Horizons. NookLink is expected to be available shortly after New Horizons sets sail on March 20.
One thing that the Animal Crossing Direct didn’t touch on was microtransactions. Recently, the ESRB rating for the game was spotted with a note that New Horizons would include in-game purchases, which understandably set fans on edge. However, the rating was soon updated to remove the reference to in-game purchases, making it seem likely that New Horizons won’t include microtransactions after all.
If any Animal Crossing fans weren’t already excited about New Horizons, the latest Animal Crossing Direct likely changed that. With every tidbit of information that comes up about the adorable debt simulator, Animal Crossing: New Horizons is further securing its spot as one of the most anticipated games of 2020.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons will be available on Nintendo Switch on March 20, 2020.
Source: Nintendo