Animal Crossing: New Leaf completionists race against time to help each other finish their towns before Nintendo turns off 3DS and Wii U servers in 3 days
Apr. 5, 2024Now’s the time to get those final achievement badges
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Animal Crossing: New Leaf players are working together to do everything they need to before Nintendo shuts down the life sim’s online servers.
Last year, Nintendo announced that it would beshutting down the online service for its 3DS and Wii U games- meaning games like Mario Kart 7, Splatoon, and Animal Crossing: New Leaf will no longer be able to connect online. The decision is heartbreaking for anyone who’s still regularly playing these games with friends, but even more so for New Leaf players who have started preparing to close their town’s gates for good.
Now that we’re just three days away from Nintendo’s deadline, I’ve seen several posts in theNew Leafsubreddit where players are asking for help obtaining a specific item or ticking off certain achievements, as onceApril 8rolls around, they’ll no longer have the ability to visit other towns or trade items.
For example, a lot of players are now rushing to collect the dream and visitor-related achievement badges, which require players to have guests or venture to other towns at least 50 (Bronze), 200 (Silver), and 500 (Gold) times - with many attempting to cross off all of the medals within the next few days.
Others have started asking for last-minutefruit and flower tradesso they can have all 10 types of fruit in their town or rare hybrid flowers growing before they can’t head out to other towns to pick them up anymore. It’s so heartwarming to see players asking for a specific item in the community and then someone volunteering to come over to their town to drop it off before it’s too late.
I’ve also spotted a lot of players desperatelytryingto find someone to take NPC Katie off their hands. In New Leaf, the friendly feline can be found traveling around different towns and asking the player to help them find somewhere new to visit. Here, they’ll need to send Katie to one of their friends' towns and will receive a thank-you gift in return. Without online functionality, it will be impossible to get Katie’s special edition item - plus, she might not ever get back home.
It’s hard not to see this as the end of an era for Animal Crossing: New Leaf. Although you’ll still be able to maintain your town, you won’t be able to share it with friends or easily pick up hard-to-find items. The 3DS game did release over 10 years ago now, and we’ve since hadAnimal Crossing: New Horizonsto keep us busy, but it’s still sad to see the connectivity aspect of this game come to a close.
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After studying Film Studies and Creative Writing at university, I was lucky enough to land a job as an intern at Player Two PR where I helped to release a number of indie titles. I then got even luckier when I became a Trainee News Writer at GamesRadar+ before being promoted to a fully-fledged News Writer after a year and a half of training. My expertise lies in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, cozy indies, and The Last of Us, but especially in the Kingdom Hearts series. I’m also known to write about the odd Korean drama for the Entertainment team every now and then.
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