The year was 2020.

We were all stuck inside, fearing for our lives and our families, hoarding toilet paper, and accepting that maybe, just maybe, this was the end of everything we loved. Some of us, including myself, were fortunate enough to live with people, but others weren’t. Home became our entire landscape: our movie theater, our shopping center, our restaurant, our workplace, our gym. Home became our safe place and our prison.

It was during this time that I bought a Nintendo Switch. I had never bought my own console before; it was always either gifted or handed down. But in 2020, I bought a Switch for one to play  Animal Crossing: New Horizons.

Maybe I couldn’t go outside in real life, but I could in the game. Suddenly, I could hang out with friends again, and I had a purpose for leaving the house. Hell, I could leave the house, even if it was just a digital one. I could pick apples, collect leaves, make things, and go fishing. I had friends who also had Animal Crossing, and we ran around together exploring the Animal Crossing world and helping each other collect bells. We even made Scavenger Hunts on our Islands, crafting mazes for us to explore. 

Later, we could go swimming in the ocean, and I swear to God, whenever I jumped in, I could feel the breeze on my face in real life. Animal Crossing was, weirdly, the closest thing to freedom I had between 2020 and 2022. Even now, I occasionally visit my island to check in on my neighbors, kill the roaches in my house, and partake in holiday festivities. 

Why the hell am I bringing up Animal Crossing?

Because it’s the first day of October. October is objectively the best month of the year (fight me) in real life, and it’s one of the two best times in the game (the other is winter). In October, you can collect candy to give out to people on your island on Halloween, and there’s a jack-o-lantern guy that hangs around. Plus, there are mushrooms, apples, and veggies to pick and the leaves to collect. The light changes in the game to match the way the light changes in real life. The developers really managed to capture October. It was something that I was highly grateful for at a time when the festivities of the month were off-limits to us. 

And that’s got me thinking about the landscapes we learn to love for various reasons through video games. In today’s digital age, we create our homes through screens just as easily and with as much enthusiasm as we do our physical landscape. Maybe more so, sometimes. We all know precisely where we’re at when we play Mario, any Mario, and can commiserate over Rainbow Road in MarioKart. If we’re talking Pokemon, we can discuss our favorite cities and spots in Kanto or Johto and beyond. For me, early Spyro games had a huge impact on my real-world aesthetic, and there were times I dropped into certain worlds just to frolic around in them. I was also a huge fan of the snowboarding game SSX3, and knew the slopes and trails like the back of my hand. 

Some of these games are obsolete or hard to play now if you don’t have a console and a TV that is amenable to said console. I made the mistake of buying Animal Crossing through my Nintendo Switch, which means that if anything happens to my Switch, the world I curated in the game goes away forever. Maybe Animal Crossing isn’t real, but it has a real effect on my emotions. It’s the same for Pokemon; I still have nearly every Pokemon game I own and consoles to play them on. I dare not delete the games because they’re gone forever if I do. 

Game Collection meets Preservation

I can’t speak for all gamers. I’m not sure I can even really call myself a gamer. Speaking for myself, I’m holding on to these games to hold on to specific memories. I’m holding on to places I can only see when I press play. It’s always been hard to identify buildings that I would be devastated to see torn down, but if I lost my Pokemon games, I would cry. That would devastate me. Losing these games would mean losing something intangible, something intrinsically attached to a time or feeling. By collecting these games, I preserve my memories. I look at the cartridges and remember the good ol’ times - perhaps the only “good ol’ times” that actually exists. 

So it’s October again, and Animal Crossing will be awash in golden light and brown hues. It’ll be time to collect candy and mushrooms, maybe redecorate my house. I’ll run around inside the light of nostalgia and remember how the game helped keep me sane during that not-so-distant time of isolation. And when I’m done, I’ll take my character home to sleep. 

A few snippets from my own personal Island “Amphipoulos” in October

some other digital goodies