Time Traveling in Animal Crossing

About

Time Traveling in Animal Crossing refers to the practice of manually changing the date in a player's console to a desired point in time in Animal Crossing, for one's own benefit. The act received further contention pertaining to newer installments due to it's increased player-base and disputed objective of gameplay.

Origin

On April 14th, 2001, Animal Forest, was released as a Japanese exclusive on the Nintendo 64. The game was setup to play with or without using the cartridge's internal battery^[1] and the date can be changed anytime through the main menu.^[2] On future releases such as Animal Crossing for the GameCube, the option to configure dates can be done through the console's startup menu or the game itself.

Online Presence

The morals of time-travelling have been up to debate, with some news articles and videos giving their opinion on the matter. For example, on April 1st, 2020, news site The Mercury News^[3] published an article titled "Impressions: Don’t use this cheat in Animal Crossing: New Horizons" exclaiming that the game "should be something to look forward to everyday" and "it further messes up our sense of time."

On April 5th, 2020, YouTuber Arlo uploaded a video titled "Is It Wrong to Cheat in Animal Crossing?" In the video, he discusses certain viewpoints of players and later pointing out that "none of this really matters when it doesn't affect anyone else," but those who duplicate items and show off their game on social media are crossing a line.

"Animal Crossing Fans When They Play X"

Animal Crossing Fans When They Play X refers to Image Macros and GIF Captions that humorously highlight a purist's reaction to a video game or movie with time travel elements. For example, Twitter user @SB2749^[4] posted a joke showing a broken DS joking it represented Animal Crossing players playing Mario and Luigi: Partners In Time, gaining over 4,200 retweets and 33,000 likes (shown below left). The tweet format was parodied by other users in his their replies.

Search Interest

External References