What is your first memory playing AC?

[TheRevienne]

My first memory of AC is of Wild World. I'd been nagging my dad for months for a DS Lite, and he got himself one from Gamestation (doesn't exist anymore, anyone else from the UK remember it though?) I was super jealous. Anyway, it was at Christmas and we were at my aunts, and I infamously can never sleep on Christmas Eve, so on the insomniac night, I snuck downstairs to the living room and started nosing at my present pile, and one was a small square box, so I opened it, and it was MySims for DS, I was confused, I didn't have a DS? I went back upstairs, but I couldn't stop thinking about it, so I snuck down again, and peeked at the larger box, and it was a pink DS Lite, I was so excited. So, the night consisted of me sneaking back down a couple more times, to check it was real and I wasn't dreaming, but I also had a nosey at another small box I had, and it was Wild World. Christmas morning, I should have gotten an oscar, as I'd already opened the DS box, and booted it up on my nightly sneaking, so I tried to make my reaction as genuine as possible.

 

[Fraxxo]

I remember very well when I started Wild World as a little kid.
I was at my cousins' house, I used to sleep there during most of my weekends after school.
Back then, they were the ones I could ask to play their videogames, and my favourite cousin had a Nintendo DS and really lots of games. I remember one day he showed me Wild World and told me something like: "It's fantastic, you can do whatever you want.".
I clearly remember it was autumn because of the colors, and he was visiting K.K. or something like that.
I wanted to try the game, so after some weeks he bought me a copy of it, and I started the game in his house, on my DS, during a stormy night. It was reeeeally late for a child, around 12pm, I remember being very sleepy at the time I started the game and Remo asked for my name.
I probably gave my character and town stupid names because I didn't read dialogues, but I remember being scared of Tom Nook and not knowing what to do. I probably finished all of the Nook quest in that only night by doing time travel (wich I didn't even know was a thing back then), then I just walked in the city without knowing what to do.

 

[Masenkochick]

I got introduced to animal crossing a few years ago. I was sick and waiting in an urgent care feeling very ill and anxious and my friend came with me. He had brought his nintendo DS with him to help pass the time when I was getting seen by the doctor and he saw I was scared and gave me his game (New Leaf) to play. I fell in love with animal crossing as soon as I saw Rover on the train. Animal crossing back then, and even now, has become completely associated with helping me relax even at the most anxious times and that’s why I love this cute game!

 

[Cowplant]

My first Animal Crossing was Population Growing. I remember that we had some difficulty getting it set up (we didn't have enough space on the memory card for it) so I played through that first day over and over again, each one a different town and each one named after my hometown. I must've went through that process at least 15 times before my parents finally relented and either (a) deleted some of our games from the console or (b) bought a new memory card all together.

I didn't have many friends growing up, so Animal Crossing became an extremely special game to me. I adored all of my little villagers dearly and loved when a new one was moving in. I still vividly remember that original town map and where my villagers lived, that's how much I played that town!

Sue E was a snooty, purple pig that lived by the ramp connecting the human homes to the rest of the town. She was always telling me to scram, but it just made me fonder of her because it reminded me of my aunts and grandparents. Chief lived near the beach and after pestering him for days on end, he finally started opening up to me. As a little kid, I felt SO PROUD of that.

Nosegay was the only villager to respond to my letters and I remember her being my one and only writing buddy after that. (The other villagers insulted the legibility of my handwriting and as a little kid that didn't understand how games worked...I wasn't happy, let's just go with that. ) My favorite villager though was Bessie. She lived right behind my house, making her my closest neighbor and bestest friend. I wrote her letters asking her why I couldn't take my hat off, what debt was (and why Tom Nook needed me out of it), and all the gossip I had heard in town. I planted an orchard by both of our houses so we could share. And I refused to do any work for villagers that upset her. Again, as a kid that didn't have a lot of friends growing up, Bessie was my partner in crime.

Besides forming unhealthy attachments to my villagers as a small child, I also didn't understand that paying off my debt would grant me a larger house, so I lived in squalor the entire time I played that game. (It wouldn't be until Wild World when I figured out how to make my house bigger.) I remember being envious of my villagers who had much better decorated houses than me and furiously trying to obtain the Classic furniture set.

 

[Corndoggy]

i started wild world, a copy we bought from video easy (if your australian, remember when those were a thing??) and we were on a mini road trip. so here i am in the back of the car trying to get the fruit to grow back so i can make as much money as possible in one hit. i think i tried to sell them to my villagers, not realising the game didn't work like that. i made a bunch of posts on the bulletin board announcing my apple sales and had them all over the ground. i also just roamed the beach a lot for shells.

 

[Neb]

I vaguely remember being weirded out by how many questions Rover was asking in New Leaf. That deadpan smile still gets me.

 

[Toska]

One of my earlier memories was when Coach wanted to move out. I really disliked Coach, and he was the first villager I told to leave. I ended up feeling really bad about it, so I talked to him again and again till he changed his mind. Coach ended up being in that town until I stopped playing; I grew quite fond of him.

 

[bleached]

I was over at my cousin's house, (who I haven't seen since lmao) when I was around 4 years old?? and he had a copy of City Folk for the wii; so we played it and loved it :] I don't remember much about that specific time playing it with him, but I bought myself a copy of it. I remember naming my town after the town I lived in, and I remember I got Twiggy and Lolly. I loved Lolly, but hated Twiggy. I didn't progress in the game much at all because I was so focused in becoming best friends with Lolly.

 

[EerieCreatures]

Gosh, I think I was like, 9?? When I first got Wild World. I remember when I got my first ds, and I think my mom let me pick one or two games in addition to the one that came in a bundle with the system, and I got ww right away because for like two whole months I had been watching my cousin play it when we hung out together (which was practically ever weekend, I miss that so much sometimes) and I wanted my own sooo bad. I don't remember a lot from when I started playing it, but me and my cousin would play together all the time and it was great. I remember I had Jay as one of my villagers and I loved him a lot for some reason? I remember sending him a letter where I copied one of my favorite quotes from this fridge magnet we'd had my whole life (still have it, I'm pretty sure) because I thought it would be motivational for him??

But those are the oldest memories I have of playing animal crossing. Well, those and all the times I'd visit brewster and k.k. in the museum basement. That was my favorite place to hang out in the whole game, and nothing in any of the games since has felt quite like that experience. Those memories are really precious to me honestly, even if that might be a bit silly. It's why I still kind of consider Wild World to be my favorite game from the series, if only for the strong feelings I had with it at the time and the nostalgia I have for it now. I just wish I'd never reset my town, because I never could get anyone to visit again so I could upgrade the shop all the way. xc
(also am I the only one who misses the two guard dogs at your town gate in wild world?? because I do, a lot)

 

[Alessio]

The first that came in my mind is watching fireworks with Peanut in New Years Eve on Wild World as a kid on the couch with my mom.

 

[dragonpisces69]

It started when I was about 9¾, I was still learning English back then, yet I still managed to name my character and town in Wild World on my R4.
The most memorable thing I remember from first playing that is how I walked inside of a random house, and then suddenly saw this evil-and-scary-looking villager with red eyes who shocked me big time. Ever since, I've always been very reluctant about Rodeo due to that exact appearance.
I also remember how I booted the game up after many a week, and then suddenly saw "spiders" (that were really cockroaches) in my house that were very hard to get rid of.
Slowly but surely, I started playing it every day, up to the point where I was forced to quit forever after almost a year due to me being paranoid of Resetti lecturing me in his very unnerving way after being forced to reset after the game suddenly froze beforehand.

Nowadays, I'm still playing New Leaf for over 6 years, and I still managed to have never resetted that save file since Resetti is seriously my least favourite fictional character ever since that fateful day in 2010.

 

[JemAC]

I'm not quite sure on what my first memory of playing AC is but some of the earliest ones are spending hours at a time playing Wild World; visiting friends or having friends over and playing a game of hide-and-seek around each others town, the excitement of getting a pear from a friends island to have a non-native fruit (my island had apples) and the joy of Peanut moving to my town - she's a little too pink in New Horizons but I loved her back in Wild World. Trying really hard to save up bells to be able to expand my house is also something I remember from very early on - it always took me forever to save up during my time playing WW, for me its been so much easier earning bells quickly in NH.

The worst earliest memories I've got of the game are my run-ins with Resetti, I often got too distracted playing the game to check what the battery was like on the ds and it quite often died on me, leading to many lectures. Another bad memory is Truffles moving to my town, I wasn't a fan off her design and she'd replaced Peanut which made it even worse and to make the nightmare of her never-ending she never left the town for the rest of the time I played the game - she's probably still there now, all these years later.

 

[Feraligator]

Paying off my 19,800 bell loan for the first time in ACWW and being really proud of it
Also, getting K.K. Dirge as my first song from K.K. and absolutely crapping myself when I heard it

 

[chocopug]

I remember starting Wild World for the first time when I got my then brand new DS as a Christmas present. I was showing my mum, "look there's a frog driving me to my new home, cute right?" and running around figuring out how to earn bells. I called my town Starville. I also remember watching the fireworks on New Years while my family watched the London fireworks on TV.
I told my friend all about the game and next time we went to town together, we pulled out our consoles and visited each other whilst joking about how we must've looked like total nerds to all the passerbys.

 

[BunburyBrianna]

I remember my friend first introducing me to Animal Crossing (Gamecube days). We were at her house and she showed us the game and I was like "oh my gosh I need this game it is the best thing ever". I didn't own any video game systems at the time so I had to convince my parents, but we ended up getting a Gamecube so I could play Animal Crossing and from them on I was hooked, haha. It is funny to look back on the game since I thought the graphics were SO good (and they probably were for the time) but now it looks very very out of date.

 

[Cristaaaaal]

I never played video games, I would just watch my brother and friends play. We got Animal Crossing on the Gamecube when it came out and I decided to try it. I was obsessed and ended up playing more than my brother. He got bored with it pretty quickly. It was simple and I didn't have to fight bosses or be super dexterous. I TT'd like crazy to get all the new furniture I could which I would never do now. I loved all of my villagers and remember running around like crazy, enjoying the music. I've been playing ever since and I love it.

 

[Rowbowkid800]

My first memory Of ac is nh and how freaking long it took to set up Timmy and tommy talked for so long but I finally got to the island and met Rory and rocket I didn’t like rocket but I had him I set up the fire and I went to bed

 

[lemoncrossing]

I have a lot of old memories with Animal Crossing (not nearly as old as a lot of people here-- I was 11 when New Leaf came out, so that's the game I started with). Some that come to mind:

I found out about Animal Crossing back when it was uber popular in 2013. It was July and all my friends were buying it to play together. I remember thinking it was "so dumb" and that the animals were all creepy. I don't know what swayed me, but one day in July, my grandma took my brother & me shopping. They had one physical copy of New Leaf; it was a used copy at some GameStop in the middle of nowhere, haha. I decided to get it and try it. I remember getting into it so fast. My brother eventually got the game too, and we were so clueless at the beginning... we didn't know that there were 300+ villagers in the game and I got mad at him when he didn't know who Fang and Amelia were.

I was raised in a religious family and so every Saturday after church, all of my church friends & I would meet up in Animal Crossing. That's one of my earliest and fondest memories with the game: playing with my friends from church, doing tours on Tortimer Island, chasing each other around with axes. It was a ritual for us. I was never really allowed to go out and be with friends IRL, so I used New Leaf as a means to connect with new people as well as connect with people from my real life. Another thing I would do was play with my best friend & her sister; they ended up switching schools when we were young, so we never got to hang out IRL, but we would have little in-game sleepovers and it's just a memory I cherish so much.

 

[Felix Felicis]

The taxi where the strange kappa introduced you to your new favorite video game haha. The rain on the window, his questions... quite weird and creepy to consider today

 

[ForgottenT]

Hm must have been around 14 years ago when I got Wild World for my birthday, I played it a lot, although I had just started learning English at the time.
Mr Resetti showed up one time, and I had no idea that I were supposed to type out something specific, so I just trialed and errored it for probably an hour or two until I finally got it right.