Well, wasn't it worth the wait?! The release date of Animal Crossing: New Horizons, which was originally predicted to be released in 2019, was pushed to 2020. Little did we know, AC:NH would be the game of the pandemic.
How did the forum look on December 2019?
Here's a snapshot of the front page of The Bell Tree Forumson 12/19/19!
The TBT 3.0 update in 2020 was a huge upgrade, don't you think?
How many members did TBT have?
At age 15, TBT had just over 105k members in Dec 2019.
In 2024, a short 5 years later, TBT had gained at least another 21k members!
The most recently released Animal Crossing game?
Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp. Initial release on October 25, 2017. Worldwide release on November 21, 2017.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons for the Nintendo Switch was released March 20, 2020. The Happy Home Paradise DLC for New Horizons was released on November 5, 2021.
What were the permanently available shops on The Bell Tree?
The Bell Tree Shop – Add-ons and collectibles sold for bells.
Kapp’n’s Seaside Shack – Starter add-ons sold for seashells.
Providing a festive mood or the perfect placement in your line-up, backdrops and sceneries have made a huge impact to the shop on how we can decorate our side profiles since then! Is there anything else we could add to the shop in the next 5 to 10 years?
How far could you get with your pocket change of TBT back then?
A common ratio from forum currency to AC:NL in game bells is 100 TBT to 20 million bells. Wow, 1 TBT for 200,000 AC:NL bells! Your favorite villager in New Leaf can be purchased for roughly 10 TBT or so, which can be achieved with one lengthy forum post in Brewster's Cafe.
1 TBT in 2024 can be exchanged for 1 million AC:NH bells.
Did you guess it?! No, it's not Kirby. That's right, it's Kracko! An iconic mirror from the 2017 TBT fair. 12 correct answers out of 96. Have any mirrors come close to the difficulty of this mirror?
Part 1: Dear Future Me
If you participated in our 2019 Birthday Week event, maybe you will find a surprise letter to yourself below!
We hope all of your goals are another step closer to being completed. If not, let's remind ourselves of our past aspirations to strive towards.
Part 2: Shoebox Memories
In 2019, we released a survey to collect data for our Time Capsule! How did our past selves answer it, and do you still feel the same way now?
I loved when nobody could solve the last clue of the 2019 egg hunt (about 7 of something) so the staff put dancing sevens all over the site. It was cruel but so so funny. All of the events on the sites are fun but what really makes them special to me are the funny moments and inside jokes, especially when the staff are involved. It really makes us all feel like a community.
People being overwhelming kind when my pet ferret passed away; it meant a lot to see people make little drawings of Meeko. When I showed them to my family, we all cried. I'll never forget how kind people can be. It was a really hard time but seeing him honored that way was heartwarming. :')
A few years ago - I opened up my first shop on the forums! I would either sell things or give them away if I saw that the items were on the user's moriDB wishlists! I was fifteen and I'd worked really hard on my game, so it was really rewarding to be able to give out some of my extra items.
Being introduced to mafia in the Cellar, and five years later bringing honor to TBT by placing in the finals -and- winning as a wolf in the Mafia Championships while representing the place where I first learned to play.
I love the Re-Tail forum! It's so easy for me to connect with people who have my dream items and vice versa - it's the main reason I signed up almost four years ago
The most wanted feature that I would want to see on TBT within five years would be a music feature. It would be cool if the site was able to play some animal crossing music while exploring the website.
Which is your favorite Bell Tree Fair? Participation in fairs not necessary. Feel free to check out each fair's respective closing ceremonies to place a judgement based on theme, winning entries, prizes, etc!
To determine the most desired collectible, please state one collectible you love the most!
The most popular collectibles with 10 votes each are the Crescent Moon Glow Wand
and the Love Ball
!
Second place tie goes to the Heart Glow Wand
and Pokéball
with 8 votes each!
And a close third tie with 7 votes each is the Star Glow Wand
and Fair Pinwheel
!
What was your favorite memory on Animal Crossing: New Leaf?
Honestly it's gotta be my first night having the game. Up late at night (past my bedtime!), catching moths outside Retail and hearing the nighttime music playing for the first time. So relaxing and atmospheric.
When I forgot it was my birthday and started to play the game, and my favourite villagers were hosting a surprise party for me! (I didn't know this would happen).
My favorite memory is when I earned my first Jacobs Ladder. When you put everything you have into this game: patience, love, care, elbow grease and seeing that whimsical plant in a random spot, surprising you? its such a wonderful feeling!
Once in 2015 during the winter solstice, I played with a friend I met online, and we took pictures looking off the cliff in main street, we spent hours doing this. She quit ACNL not long after, but I cherished that picture for a few years after and even printed it out at one point.
Decorating the landscape of my Island using the new path making feature (finally no laying out multiple path QR patterns) and the ability to place furniture outside!
I’d probably say the fact that there can be 8 people in your town, and that multiple people can play at once. It’s so useful for people like me who have big families (especially ones that love AC haha) and it’d be a blast playing together all at once in the same town. I know it’s going to be super fun, so I’m stoked.
This thread is to hold all the love letters to our future selves, and to the future inhabitants of TBT!
Rules
Please only post once. You may edit your letter as many times as you want before submissions close.
Any posts that are not letters will be removed. Keep all other event related questions and concerns in our Community Time Capsule: Blueprints thread.
All topics and language must be appropriate following the forum's rules and guidelines.
This thread will be repurposed to hold all the neat facts and community answers when it resurfaces in 2024! We will bury our capsule deep into the ground on Saturday, December 21 at 4:00 PM EST.
Prizes
Participation in Part 1: Dear Future Me: 1 Balloon Token and 5 Birthday Tickets
Just remember, please don't do drugs. They're bad for your health, so don't do it. Have you passed high school yet? I seriously would like to know please. Have you been to New York city or Japan yet? Other places work too though. Have you gotten a dreamy egg yet? Or is there another new collectible that's your new favorite collectible? Has TBT added gingerbread collectibles yet? TBT is great at making collectibles. Have you gotten your own pet kitten? If you did what's it's name? Hope you'll answer my question's soon! Also, every week you must watch this:
How are things going! I hope you have still remained active on the forums! 2019 has been quite a year and I wonder where you will be 5 years from now.
This year you saw your mother pass away, you adopted a new dog, started new relationships and sadly lost some. You achieved the peak in your career, so its really strange to think what the next 5 years may hold. Hopefully you can continue to grow your work and get towards that truly happy life you've been working towards.
For the forums, this was the year you won your golden egg and managed to trade for a weird doll. Mafia has been on hiatus, but hopefully your new game of Real Housewives of Mafia Part 2 will bring some more interest back. Collectibles has its own channel and is probably a little too popular lol. Your collectibles took a hit from losing your multicolored feathers, but you have big plans for the future. Hopefully you can continue to make more impressive line-ups and get back to your former glory.
New Horizons will be out soon. I really hope it re-inspires you to be more social and hang out with all the great people of tbt. I hope it brings life back to the forum!
Here's to another great 5 years! See you in the future!
Remember this letter for the TBT Time Capsule your wrote before? Well, you do now. I hope you take it to heart and keep on being you. I hope you found a job you're happy with and had a chance to go back to Japan for another visit. If you have a new family, I hope it's a great one! I imagine by now you'll have played plenty of New Horizons and are anxiously awaiting the next installment in the franchise, even if the wait is as long as one for New Horizons was. Will you be posting on a new TBT board for a new game if so? We'll find out in 5 years.
Instead of listing the things I want you to have done, here a few things I hope you aren't still doing:
Please don't be living in Pa anymore,
Please spend so much less time online,
Please don't be working 24/7,
Please don't be spending your time in bed,
Please don't be into collectibles anymore,
Why hello there! You're all grown up now!!!
I really hope by the time you read this you finally moved your butt and got known in the Voice Acting world.
I also hope that you have a boyfriend and your very own place and pets and that your life is great!
Please tell me that you still go to the forum, and that you still play New Horizons! I don't know what to expect, so I guess you'll be happy reading this!
At the moment I'm listening to a lot of K-pop still (still waiting for IZ*ONE's comeback, I hope it's good, go take a listen for me will you!), and some Breath of the Wild music. Maybe you could ask the game to your friend and start it over again.
I hope that your eventual youtube channel is going great! Wether it be the ASMR one or the gaming one!
At this time, life is going great and I like my job! Do you still have the same job? If the answer is no, I hope it's because YOU left, and not because you got fired, somehow.
Take care, you know you have some talent, don't waste it!
This year, you graduated from college, got married, and got your first salaried job. You're planning on moving to the east coast over the summer to take care of a family member. Are you still living there? If so, be patient. Things will work out the way they need to. Focus on loving your job, practicing your art, and try not to worry so much.
How are you doing now? Do you have a stable job in the city? Have you been able to open up and make friends? I hope you've finally found fulfillment in your life and who you are. I hope you're talking to your parents more often and finding comfort in things you haven't before.
I like your blog entries about your experience in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, game ideas, helpful guides, and other weird stuff. It may have taken a long time to work on your island and blogging, but it was worth it. I never even got to play ACNH. What was it like? Is it better than ACNL? I also wonder if you ever became a staff member, which I hope happens one day.
hi. it's you, five years ago. by the time you read this, you'll be (hopefully) in college/uni. pretty fun, huh? hopefully you're still active on this. i also hope you can get over most, if not all your fears, and do something me five years ago wouldn't believe. maybe you can handle big changes? maybe you're truly happy with yourself? maybe you're finally able to get out there and become your best person? who knows really. i'll be excited for what the future holds!
if you still do hang around, have you finally fixed your 3ds and started your shop? hopefully you did. hopefully you got a switch and got a copy of acnh and still play it and open a shop for that aswell! you have your dream line-up with everything pink and all cute, right? it's okay if you don't though, maybe just a nice looking line-up is enough. by the way, what cute new collectibles came out? i really hope you got them aswell.
welp, enough of me. you probably have better things to do. i just hope the future is good. for me and for you. bye bye now!
love,
you from the past. ♡
PS. i hope on every night of september 21st, you listen to "September".. i'll be disappointed if you don't.
How've you been? Change your name again? You seemed to do that about 5 years ago, you did it this year, I wouldn't be surprised if you did it again. I hope everything's going alright. What are you now, 22? Yeesh, someone's gotten old. Meet up with Lizzy yet? Considering how much you love them, I really hope you have. I don't know if you're still gonna be on Bell Tree anymore, but I hope you are so you can see this. We all know you're not gonna remember this time capsule.
I just hope the world hasn't been too hard on you, but mostly that you haven't been too hard on yourself. I'm you, I know how you can get, and we both know that neither of us want that.
Vet school going well, or did you finally decide to change to Marine Bio? You'd better write back in letter form. If I don't get one in a few days, guess that'll prove that time travel hasn't come along yet! Oh! And how differently do I type? That's also something I wanna find out. Will you look back and cringe at this? As long as it's not T****, we're fine. You know exactly what I mean by that.
Don't mean to be cliche, but this letter is getting too long. I'll end it here. Hopefully I answer my own remaining questions myself. After all, it's only a matter of time before we meet up!
Hello! What's it like in 2024? Hopefully you just graduated college with a BA in pre-veterinary medicine and you're about to start vet school, or maybe you've chosen a different path and are studying law or art or something. Whatever it is, I hope you're enjoying it.
Where do you live now? Did you move back home? In New York? Japan? Are you homesick? I'm currently stressing about exams and college applications. I have a huge paper due on monday morning that I've barely started. Winter break is in a week and i'm about to collapse. Are you stressed out too? Hopefully not as much as I am right now.
This week has been a hard year for us. I'm often tired and feel like there's no point to my hard work. It's difficult to get out of bed some days, but we do it anyway. For what? I don't know, but I try.
I hope you have a steady job and a girlfriend, and that you've lost some weight and are eating healthy. I hope you're happier and have found a purpose. Remember to keep your head up and keep moving forward even though it seems like everything is against you.
Love, 2019 Kate
P.s. some political things i worry about a lot
-was donald trump impeached?
-did north korea bomb the us?
-has the earth flooded due to global warming?
-is there still a giant garbage pile in the ocean?
Please you have graduated from college and done from that volunteering program. You should have started a job in something about biology and technology. Hopefully you kept all of your Animal Crossing passions. If you can, hopefully you're fluent in Korean and Japanese already. Keep being innocent in TBT and enjoy all the events.
Also, find love. I need to find someone to keep me happy all my life. Lastly, please be active enough to be on here to read this letter.
How are you? Have you managed to pull through medicine? Have you gotten that medical degree, or are you in the process of studying for your boards? In any case I hope you're doing fine, and if you're having a rough day at the hospital right now, you're going to get through this like you have the past 5 years. If you got delayed for whatever reason, it's alright too. Take your time, you don't need to be rushing your whole career. Take care of yourself too. Right now I'm waiting for the results of my neurosurgery exam, so don't tell me what my scores are. I'm not ready to know I failed jkdfsdf jk please tell me I passed.
This is a little optimistic, but maybeee you're in the middle of planning a wedding. Or have you already wed? I hope you've walked down the aisle with the love of your life to the tune of Canon in D (rock) lol. Please tell me carnations were the flowers of choice, and tell me neither my mom or his mom butted in with your wedding design decisions. Who played AC: HHD in your household? Definitely not them. They don't know your style like you do, so I hope you made those big decisions for you, girl!
Anyway, that's it from old me now. I hope you have a great day ahead. <3
Love, 2019 self.
P.S.: Please please please tell me Sinnoh remakes have been released. Don't tell me what it's like, I just want to know it's coming soon. I hope it is omg I can't wait.
If you are reading this, you have accomplished staying alive and being active in this website, which is epic. Also, I really don't know what would happen in five years. Anything could happen, but as long as you're still playing new Horizons, everything will be fine.
Wow, 2024. You're graduating high school this year! Has it been rough? How are Mitzi and the future cat you've been promised doing? Do you still play Animal Crossing? Surely there must be another one after New Horizons out already. Are you still visiting TBT frequently? Have you gotten any collectibles of your favorite villagers yet? I hope you have. Do you still have fun doing math? I sure hope so. Good luck with college, I heard that it's pretty hard. You'd better be succeeding at whatever you're doing the most of right now. Please don't mess up your life too badly, it's mine too!
i write this letter to you a week before my 18th birthday, in my last year of sixth form. there was a general election this week; tories won. i just finished work at the cinema, and sent off my university application on election day (no offers yet).
what are you doing now? did you do well in a-levels? how was university - was it as fun as you envisioned? what about you has changed? have you ever fallen in love? have you travelled anywhere cool? have your values changed? what is your style like? does what happened this october still weigh on your mind, or is family life good? what's joseph doing with his life? is baxter still alive? what are your friendships like? where do you work?
right now i am hopeful about the future and happy to be who i am - i hope that still rings true in 2024. i hope the world is still afloat. i hope you are happy, surrounded by good people, comforted by your family, and feel like university has prepared you to thrive in the real world.
We ain't about getting personal in front of a bunch of strangers but hopefully you're all good and healthy. Let's see how many of these little goal things you can tick off:
Did you get the tattoo you planned on getting on your 25th birthday? Did you get any more?
Did you get any piercings?
How close are we to getting a hairless cat? Do we have one already? Do we have TWO???
Did we get another heart glow wand or white feather yet? Did jugdralts happen yet?
Anyway have fun, hopefully the world moved back to the left by then,
- 2019 u
Part 1: Dear Future Me
Part 2: Shoebox Memories
