Animal Crossing: New Horizons
Credit: Nintendo
It’s had an impressive run, Animal Crossing: New Horizons. It rocketed up to the top of the Nintendo Switch eShop’s best seller list immediately after releasing, where it’s remained stubbornly stuck for months now. It dropped briefly when Minecraft Dungeons came out, and I believe Clubhouse Games may have taken #1 for a moment, but if it did I missed it. Now, however, there’s a new game sitting at the top of the charts.
The game, as you might expect, is Paper Mario: The Origami King, the newest installment in the somewhat checkered Paper Mario franchise, and somewhat checkered itself. It’s a beautiful game, with mesmerizing origami enemies and truly lovely little scenes, my favorite of which has been a theme park inside of a Japanese Castle where Bowser’s minions go to hang out on their off-days. Unfortunately, the whole thing is tied to a frustrating battle system that really gets in the way of itself just a few hours into the game, and it makes it harder to enjoy all the stuff the game does so well.
Still, it’s a Nintendo game with a particularly well-known plumber in the title, and there’s no way that doesn’t take #1 at least for a moment.
I would expect Animal Crossing to retake its spot next week or so: it’s got an evergreen, broad appeal that’s just proven tough to beat after its remarkable ascendancy towards the beginning of the COVID-19 lockdowns. It’s impossible to separate its success from the important role that it served the world at that time, but its appeal is not limited to times of plague. It is, as it promises to be, a perfect little island getaway, a calm oasis in a world with problems beyond pandemics. It was a cultural moment, to be sure, but the game does stand on its own.
I’ll be curious to see how long Paper Mario stays up there. It’s a fine game, but doesn’t seem at this point to make the same impact even as a game like Luigi’s Mansion 3. We’re probably going to get a new big title in the fall sometime, but at this point we’re still waiting for Nintendo to let us know what’s going on.
