Wolf O’Donnell, as seen in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate — Image: Nintendo
Veteran radio broadcaster and voice actor Jock Blaney passed away last month at the age of 76.
Nintendo fans will likely know him best as the original voice of Star Fox 64 antagonist Wolf O’Donnell, and he also portrayed Fox’s ally Bill Grey and Granga, the mech pilot who you may remember as the game’s first boss.
As noted on Reddit by ArmoredSarge via a March article on Wyoming station K2 Radio’s website, Blaney died on 19th March 2026. An obituary states that he passed away “peacefully in his home in Las Vegas, Nevada.”
The K2 tribute highlights that a voice-over clinic with Looney Tunes legend Mel Blanc helped steer his approach to voice work. In addition to his award-winning work on radio and in his wider career, Blaney’s résumé featured numerous video game credits, including No One Lives Forever, Aliens vs. Predator, and F.E.A.R. plus the Professor Layton and Forza series.
In later Star Fox games, other voice actors portrayed the characters he originated in English (although Blaney did reprise the roles of Wolf and Bill in the yet-to-be-released fan game Star Fox Event Horizon), but his lines and delivery remain iconic for many fans — us included — who first heard them on N64 back in 1997, and again in the 2011 3DS version.
Xbox’s co-creator, Seamus Blackley, has been known to be pretty blunt with his opinions in the past, especially in relation to the direction that Microsoft has taken its gaming division in recent years.
In a new interview with The Expansion Pass (thanks, Go Nintendo), Blackley touched on the idea that Microsoft is now “entirely AI-focused” and how a new game console would potentially fit within the company’s new mission. As such, he states that his interest in Project Helix, Xbox’s upcoming new hardware, is pretty low. Instead, he’s far more invested in Steam and whatever Nintendo has up its sleeve next – a hypothetical ‘Switch 3’, if you will.
“I don’t know what I’m excited about. I don’t know as a developer what I’m excited about and I don’t know as a gamer what I’m excited about. I am vastly more excited about Steam than about Helix. As a gamer, from a content standpoint, as I think everybody would be. Or, y’know, what’s Switch 3 going to be? That’s really interesting to me.”
When pushed to elaborate on why he’s specifically more excited about Steam and a ‘Switch 3’, Blackley responded with a pretty blunt statement:
“Are you high? Is there a gas leak over there? Well Switch 3, I just… Everything that comes out of Nintendo’s design department is at least really interesting and cool, even when it fails, right? Even Wii U was interesting and cool. I mean, it was a mess, but it was interesting and cool.”
We can’t argue with his points, even if it’s way, way too soon to even comprehend the possibility of a Switch 3. Like, let’s chill out a bit, hm?
Regardless, he is right. Nintendo’s ability to make interesting games and hardware is unmatched. Even the Switch 2, which is largely considered to be an iterative upgrade over the previous model, boasts some sweet magnetic Joy-Con controllers with built-in mouse compatibility. If you’d asked us a few years back what new feature we’d like to see in the Switch 2, I don’t think we would have even considered mouse support.
Good going, Nintendo.
What do you make of Blackley’s comments regarding Project Helix and Nintendo? Share your own thoughts with a comment in the usual place.
Following last month’s release of Pokémon XD: Gale of Darkness for the Switch Online GameCube library, Nintendo has now updated this app again.
This bumps it up to Version 1.6.1 and apparently comes with a helpful bug fix for the same title after reports of game crashes, resulting in players losing save data (thanks for the heads up, Nintendo Everything).
This fix for Pokémon XD is the only notable change discovered so far in Version 1.6.1, but if there are any other significant updates, we’ll let you know. If your app doesn’t automatically download this update, you can manually download it by pressing the + button on the Switch 2 controller and selecting “Software Update”.
If you haven’t already tried out Pokémon XD: Gale of Darkness on Nintendo’s paid subscription service, here’s a bit about it and another look:
“Using Shadow Pokémon, an evil organization has unleashed a sinister plot of world domination. With Eevee as your companion, and with the help of numerous friends along the way, you must fight against terrible foes and race against time to snag and purify the Shadow Pokémon and save the world!”
Blizzard today launched Overwatch (formerly known as Overwatch 2) for the Switch 2 and it’s got off to a bit of a rough start.
Players of the free-to-play title have reported frame rate issues, limiting the game’s performance. Blizzard has shared a notice, confirming it’s aware of these issues and is already working on a patch to resolve the problem. So, if you have encountered this issue, don’t worry!
Blizzard: “We are aware of an issue with the FPS limit on the Nintendo Switch 2 being lower than intended. We are working on a patch to resolve this issue.”
As mentioned in the announcement post, the free Switch 2 upgrade is meant to include “improved visuals” and “up to 60fps” in both “handheld and docked modes”, which is a huge step up on the Switch version of the title.
This update also rolls out alongside the new season and hero, Sierra, who you can see in action in the trailer above.
When a fix is released, we’ll provide an update. Have you tried out the Switch 2 version of Overwatch yet? How are you finding it so far? Tell us in the comments.
We are mere days away from the release of Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream on 16th April, so, just like clockwork, Nintendo has published another entry in its ‘Ask the Developer‘ series, all about the upcoming life sim.
Expectedly, the discussion contains a whole lot of strangeness — with a game like Tomodachi Life, how couldn’t it? — as the development team breaks down the importance of user-generated content (USG), and how it makes up the backbone of the play experience.
While touching on how each member of the team brought their own experiences and memories of the series to the table over the game’s nine-year development (yes, really), director Ryutaro Takahashi confesses there was “a big debate among the team about whether Mii should be able to… break wind.” And thus, we get a small amount of fart discussion in an official Nintendo interview, of all places!
According to Takahashi, “Some people found it hilarious, while others thought it was a bit vulgar,” leading the studio to add it as an optional ‘Little Quirk’ in the end — minor personality traits that you can prescribe to each of your Miis.
“We really obsessed over getting the sound just right,” sound director Toru Minegishi added, revealing that some of his attempts were accused of being “a bit too realistic for my liking.” While he didn’t put a precise number on it, programming director Takaomi Ueno admitted that the team “did so many retakes” to get the sound effect in that Goldilocks spot — juuuust right.
Adding to the toot talk (yes, there’s more), art director Daisuke Kageyama chimed in to note that his department tried all sorts of visual effects to sell the wind breaking, too. “For a while, the fart effect looked like an explosion going off,” he said.
Of course, it’s not all toilet humour across the interview’s three parts. The devs also touch on playtesting the game with their families, innovating the Mii design, and how the music came to be. Be sure to head over to the Nintendo website to read all three parts in full.
Are you excited for Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream? Let us know in the comments.
Today, 14th April 2026, marks the 25th anniversary of the Animal Crossing series. Dōbutsu no Mori, the Japanese-exclusive N64 game, kicked off what is now an iconic series for Nintendo, and while we’d have to wait until the GameCube to see what all the fuss is about, it’s a hugely important part of our lives.
In celebration of the series, we’ve reworked this list to be a reader-ranked one, so now you hold all the power in decided what the best Animal Crossing game of all time is.
Which Animal Crossing game is the best? Over a quarter of a century, the adorable life sim has wormed its cosy way into the hearts of many, and because each game embed themselves in your life, it makes picking the best a very tough question indeed.
But, we’ve compiled a list anyway, with the help of you lovely people. Every mainline Animal Crossing game, plus spin-offs, released in English, scored and voted for by you. We’ve excluded apps like Wii U’s Animal Crossing Plaza or DSi’s clock and calculator, and the Europe-exclusive Photo app on 3DS. Obviously, we also haven’t included the delightful Animal Crossing content in games like Nintendo Land, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate or Mario Kart 8 Deluxe.
So, no need to save up your bells to see this list; just scroll on down to see what you lot think is the very best…
We begin with a spin-off experience built around using the adorable Animal Crossing amiibo in a board game. This was also the first series entry to benefit from high definition, but the disappointment of Animal Crossing fans was palpable when they realised that Animal Crossing: Amiibo Festival was to be the series’ only entry on Wii U. We described it as ‘slow and plodding’ in our review, which for a series that isn’t exactly famous for its fast-paced gameplay is a pretty damning criticism.
Nearly all of the minigames quickly became repetitive and probably the best thing to merit Amiibo Festival’s existence is the accompanying series of amiibo. For that we are thankful and if you see the Amiibo Festival pack for under a tenner, it may be worth picking up for the Isabelle and Digby figures that came bundled. Otherwise, even die-hard fans should probably concentrate their time and effort elsewhere. A shame.
In terms of presentation, Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp translates the AC experience to mobile phones very well, and even if you don’t spend any bells there’s still plenty to investigate and enjoy here.
The game had a paid membership service and the various monetisation mechanics might have rubbed series veterans the wrong way, but as f2p mobile experiences, Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp wasn’t a bad one, even if the ‘pay-to-accelerate’ mechanics leave an unsavoury taste in the mouth compared to the mainline games.
There’s a reason we Animal Crossing fans were busting to get our hands on the ‘proper’ Switch game, but as a free experience on a non-console platform, Pocket Camp transplanted the look and feel of the series well enough.
The free version has been retired as of November 2024, but it’s now available in ‘Complete‘ form for a one-off payment, with the microtransactions stripped out.
A 2015 3DS spin-off that followed the incredibly popular New Leaf, Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer Designer drilled down on the collecting and organising aspects of the series and casts you as interior designer for your village. For series fans it’s a charming, if basic, little game that introduced some decent UI additions that found their way into New Leaf via the Welcome Amiibo update.
As we said in our review, Happy Home Designer is “likeable but largely forgettable”; a pleasant spin-off for anybody who really liked going to town with their furniture and interior decorating, but certainly no substitute for the proper full-fat experience. Thankfully, the New Horizons DLC expands on this formula to delightful effect.
Subtitled Let’s Go to the City! outside North America, 2008’s Animal Crossing: City Folk enabled up to four players to take their own house in a single village and introduced a city for players to visit. It might not have been the bustling MMO metropolis some fans wished it was but it was a fun addition in a game which arguably played things a bit too safe to be top-tier.
City Folks’ compatibility with the Wii’s ill-fated microphone peripheral Wii Speak demonstrated that Nintendo really wanted you to be playing City Folk as a family. There’s nothing wrong with that, but solo players obviously couldn’t enjoy the novel interactions of sharing a town and leaving each other messages, and the game ended up feeling like an upscaled version of Wild World except lacking any serious innovation, not to mention the convenience of portability.
Not bad — far from it — but it added little to the base formula and it was hard to be locked to your TV after the joys of a handheld village.
Taking the base foundation and adding sweet, sweet portability, Animal Crossing: Wild World was the perfect game on the perfect platform. Having your village with you on the go made all the difference to many players and enabled you to check turnip prices in bed, water your plants on your way to work, or make sure your favourite animal friend wasn’t packing their bags on your lunch break. Portability made the world accessible in a whole new way and opened up its joys to the masses who embraced the Nintendo DS.
With intuitive use of the touchscreen and the day-night cycle reflected in the sky permanently visible on the top screen, this is where many people began their love affair with the series. Subsequent entries might have polished its systems and sanded off Wild World’s rough edges, but the magic of the series shone brightly on DS and when someone mentions Animal Crossing, it’s the title theme of this game which pops into our mind. Shocking, then, that there’s another entry (two, in fact) we’d rather play.
The original game debuted on Nintendo 64 in Japan after beginning life as a 64DD title. When that console died on its derrière, Nintendo shifted the game to a standard N64 cartridge and launched it in Japan in April 2001 under the title Dōbutsu no Mori. Before the year was out a GameCube port hit shelves with extra features and following a mammoth localisation effort it hit US store shelves in September 2002. We Europeans had to wait another two years for the game to arrive – we don’t miss those days!
This first game set the template for the series so wonderfully that although the GameCube original is basic by the series’ modern standards, the fundamentals are still utterly charming nearly two decades on. Throw in GBA connectivity and unlockable NES games and you can understand when aficionados who have been there from the start claim it never got better than the original Animal Crossing.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons offers such a bounty of goodness, such a wealth of nostalgia and refinement and subtle advancement — and came at a time when many people in the world really needed a little good cheer and comfort — that it’s quite easy to see why it ranks so highly. Giving us a whole island, the power to terraform and decorate, and a handful of big free upgrades (and DLC) over the years, and you can see why it’s one of the best-selling Nintendo games ever.
Whether you’re a series veteran or a total newbie, Animal Crossing: New Horizons is an absolute treat: the best Animal Crossing game in the series. Enjoy it.
As for the minor Nintendo Switch 2 Edition upgrades? They’re underwhelming. It does load a little faster and look a little better — the Switch 2 version is measurably the ‘best’ one — but if you’re happy with your Switch 1, it’s absolutely not worth buying the newer console to experience ACNH’s improvements alone.
Animal Crossing: New Leaf took everything from its handheld predecessor and polished it to the Nth degree. Rather than start you off under the yoke of Tom Nook, New Leaf made you mayor of the town and gave you municipal power to mould the place to your liking like never before.
These changes were facilitated by your delightful doggy assistant Isabelle, a tireless public servant on hand to take care of the day-to-day office tasks while you go about your important mayoral duties like beach-combing, fishing, shaking trees and bothering bees.
Taking advantage of 3DS’ SpotPass feature, you could nose around the houses of players you passed on the street and order their furniture if a piece took your fancy. It’s also easy to forget the system’s patented 3D effect which made the world more enticing than ever. It might not have been HD, but New Leaf was a fine-looking game and with the 3D slider set to max, it had never been easier to get lost in your little town.
So, that’s all eight Animal Crossing games, ranked by you! Good job. Now it’s back to paying off all those debts to Tom Nook…
Best Animal Crossing FAQ
Animal Crossing’s popularity has grown exponentially over the years, meaning some of you might have never heard of the earlier games. We’ve got a set of commonly asked questions about the series which should serve as a nice little guide to the history of the series…
What was the first Animal Crossing game?
The very first Animal Crossing game is a little N64 gem called Dōbutsu no Mori, which came out in Japan on 14th April 2001.
We’d never see that version of the game in the west, but with an enhanced GameCube port called Dōbutsu no Mori+ following shortly after, we would see a localised version of that in Animal Crossing worldwide.
Though they’re considered the same game by Nintendo, there are actually a fair number of differences between the Japanese and English versions, including new holidays, new items, and lots of new dialogue.
How many Animal Crossing games are there?
There are five mainline Animal Crossing games, spanning multiple console generations. Usually, there’s one Animal Crossing game per console, occasionally accompanied by a spin-off.
The main five we’re referring to are:
Animal Crossing
Animal Crossing: Wild World
Animal Crossing: City Folk
Animal Crossing: New Leaf
Animal Crossing: New Horizons
The GameCube game is technically an enhanced port of the N64 title, which we never got in the West. Hence why there’s only five listed here.
Pocket Camp isn’t considered a mainline entry, and the two spin-offs are pretty different from the rest of the games.
What’s the latest Animal Crossing game?
Incredibly, the latest Animal Crossing game is still Animal Crossing: New Horizons, at least in terms of console releases. It launched on 20th March 2020, and goodness, don’t we all remember those days?
There’s a Switch 2 version available now, and that technically is the most-recent release in the series, but it merely has a few Switch 2 features like Mouse Mode and extra multiplayer features.
In terms of other releases, Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp Complete on mobile is actually the “newest” game, having launched on 2nd December 2024. Though again, that’s just a paid version of the once free-to-play Pocket Camp.
What Animal Crossing games can you play on Switch 2?
At the moment, only one — Animal Crossing: New Horizons, either via backwards compatibility or with the Nintendo Switch 2 Edition upgrade.
None of the games are available on Nintendo Online (yet!), and there isn’t a Switch 2-exclusive Animal Crossing to speak of yet. One day, perhaps…
Which Animal Crossing game should I start with?
Honestly, it really doesn’t matter! Every Animal Crossing game brings its own vibe to the table with a few little wrinkles to make each one unique.
Our advice, though, is to start with either of the latest ones — Animal Crossing: New Leaf on 3DS is closer to the original formula, with a little shopping area and smaller village vibe. New Horizons, however, is the biggest and most-popular, allowing for tons of island customisation.
So, it’s whether you want a more-humble life or one where you can literally design your entire town.
Wait, aren’t all Animal Crossing games the same?
Well… yes and no? Every game is a life sim with the only objective being to live your ideal life (and maybe pay off some loans), but every game has a unique little wrinkle.
Animal Crossing on GameCube and Wild World on DS are perhaps more similar now than they were, with the latter being handheld only (though online features no longer work). City Folk has an entire city area you can focus on. New Leaf sees you as the mayor of a village, and features a town and shopping area you can expand. And New Horizons sees you living on an island which you can eventually design at wil.
What’s the best-selling Animal Crossing game?
Animal Crossing: New Horizons is the best selling game in the series, and it isn’t really close. The game has sold 49.32 million copies as of December 2025. A staggering number, making it the second best-selling game on the Switch ever, behind only Mario Kart 8 Deluxe.
Before that, New Leaf was the best-selling game, and has shifted 13.06 million units as of March 2025, making it the sixth best-selling 3DS game every. This series has legs.
Why isn’t [insert Animal Crossing game here] on the list?
We outlined most of this in the intro, but we’ve decided to stick to the main games, main spin-offs, and English worldwide releases for this series. Which is why you won’t find the N64 original here — it’s a Japan exclusive!
The series has seen so many little apps since its arrival in 2001, and we haven’t included any of those either. Do you really need an Animal Crossing calculator?
How can I change the ranking in this article?
Very easily! You’re the ones behind the ranking here, and you can change it, as each game’s placement is determined by its User Rating in our database.
That means you can influence things easily by simply clicking on the star next to a game and rating it out of 10. Or you can search for your favourite Animal Crossing game in the box below and score them there. This list will grow over time, too, if we do get a new game eventually…
Do you disagree with the best Animal Crossing game right now? Think we’re missing something? Let us know in the comments below, but remember, the ranking of this listis subject to change even now. If you haven’t rated the ones you’ve played, then you can do that right now.
The word on the street is that Nintendo has an Arwing in the hangar and it’s ready for takeoff.
Of course, rumours are nothing more than, uhh, rumours, until the Big N confirms, but there’s something about the rumblings of a new Star Fox game that feels faintly plausible to me. Mainstream appeal for McCloud and co. was effectively dead in the water (or a similar space-themed image), and there’s been a decade-long gap since the last entry in the series, which got a pretty lukewarm reception.
Sure, we hardcore Nintendo fans want to see furry fighter pilot return, but, until this month, would your average shelf browser have any idea who the anthropomorphic squad adorning the box art are? I don’t think so. But now we have The Super Mario Galaxy Movie.
All of a sudden, ol’ Foxy is in a big screen blockbuster, with enough of a role to warrant a character poster of his own. A series reboot on the gaming side of things suddenly has a slice of credibility to it. It’s the perfect opportunity to sweep up all those parents who, in their post-cinema nap daze, might be swayed into buying their child a Switch 2 because “it’s the only one with that cool pilot game on it” (just nobody tell them about Starlink).
The marketing strategy adds up, and if it happens, I will be very excited for it — I’ve only gone and put ‘New Star Fox game’ on my New Year’s bingo card for the past three years running. But what doesn’t slide is that this means the Mario Movie character who most deserves another game of his own might be snubbed for a second time.
As a brief reminder, Toad has received a good amount of screen time in both Illumination Mario movies (perhaps slightly less in Galaxy, but again, character poster-worthy). His ‘characterisation’ is about as shallow as they come, but this is the Mario Movie we’re talking about here, it ain’t Shakespeare.
The Keegan-Michael Key casting has perhaps pushed the character a little more in the spotlight than he might have been otherwise, but whichever way you look at it, this is another big player in two of the biggest animated movies of all time, and after the first theatrical debut, Nintendo handed out tie-in games like candy.
A similar approach is clearly already underway for the sequel. We got the appetite-whetting Super Mario Galaxy + Galaxy 2 pack last year, Mario Wonder arrived on Switch 2 just before the film opened with added movie star Rosalina, and Yoshi and the Mysterious Book is already prepped for May to cash in on the new wave of Donald Glover-adoring Yoshi fans.
If a new Star Fox is in the tank, too, where does that leave poor old Toad? Snubbed. Twice. And it’s a snubbage that I take very personally because Treasure Tracker rules.
Image: Nintendo
It’s been eight long years since this delightful little puzzler launched on Switch (and 3DS, weirdly), and a whopping 12 since its Wii U debut before that. Sure, the ‘Special Episode’ DLC gave us a little bump in 2019, but it’s been radio silence in the years since.
The DLC demonstrated how the puzzle box dioramas are the perfect size for a ‘bonus pack’ or two, and part of me that thought Nintendo might release more updates down the line — much like we did with Mario Odyssey and Maker 2, *crickets chirping*. No additional waves came, so Nintendo must have been saving up all the extra ideas for a sequel, right? Right?
And just imagine what a sequel could be! Sure, ‘just more of the first game’ would suit me nicely, but Mario’s come a long way since the OG Treasure Tracker launch, and there are plenty of new mechanics to choose from.
Perhaps Toad could stumble across a Wonder Flower in each stage, one that turns the diorama on its head and forces you to figure it all out again. Maybe Nintendo goes all-in on the Galaxy connection and has Toad freely exploring the levels from all angles (think Monument Valley, but Toad-ier). What if the puzzle box is one massive open world, and Toad has to uncover its secrets before a supernova threatens to destr—wait, that’s just Outer Wilds.
Heck, I wouldn’t even turn my nose up at ‘Captain Toad Treasure Tracker – Nintendo Switch 2 Edition + Goomba’s Adventure‘ at this point. Throw in a couple more ‘Episodes’ and some Mouse Mode controls, and you’re onto an Upgrade Pack winner.
Not releasing one in the wake of the first Mario Movie felt like a mistake, but one that I’m willing to forgive on account of the sheer number of other games we got, but this time around, it feels personal. You can’t finally give the little guy his own amiibo only to deny him another game.
And yet, the House of Mario remains silent on Cap. I’m choosing to believe that the Treasure Tracker sequel / NS2E is real, kept in a pile with the new Star Fox and the Ocarina of Time remake. Any day now, we’ll be hearing about it for real, and we’ll rejoice as one of the movies’ biggest stars is back in the limelight once more. Any day now…
Would you like to see a Captain Toad revival? If so, which form should it take? You can let us know in the following poll.
How would you like to see Captain Toad return? (396 votes)
