Animal Crossing

Animal Crossing is a social simulation video-game series developed and published by Nintendo. It was created by Katsuya Eguchi and Hisashi Nogami. The player character is a human who lives in a village inhabited by various anthropomorphic animals and can engage in various activities such as fishing, insect catching, and fossil hunting. The series is known for its open-ended gameplay, humorous dialogue, hourly music, and use of the console's internal clock and calendar to simulate real passage of time.

Since its initial release in 2001, five Animal Crossing games have been released worldwide, one each for the Nintendo 64/iQue Player (enhanced and reissued for the GameCube), Nintendo DS, Wii, Nintendo 3DS and Nintendo Switch. The series has been both critically and commercially successful; its best-selling entry, Animal Crossing: New Horizons, had sold 49.91 million copies worldwide as of March 31, 2026. Three spin-off games have also been released: Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer for Nintendo 3DS, Animal Crossing: Amiibo Festival for Wii U and Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp for mobile devices. Paid DLC for the Nintendo Switch game Animal Crossing: New Horizons was also released, named Happy Home Paradise.