Animal Crossing: New Horizons helped many people around the world during the Covid-19 pandemic of 2020 and the ensuing lockdowns and shelter-in-place orders, providing a distraction from the boredom and ennui that ensued. But now that most of those restrictions have been lifted (or at least loosened) and life is getting back to order, people are abandoning the game in droves. After all, how many fishing tournaments can one accomplish?
To combat this, Nintendo is pushing a new update to the game in the hopes of holding on to their player base. This update, available on Wednesday, April 28th, will add data for upcoming real-world based events, like May Day and International Museum Day.
Though most of these events are repeats (after all, the game has been available for thirteen months), Nintendo did say that these events will be slightly different from what players experienced last year. We’ve already seen one of these changes with Easter and the toned-down frequency in which payers caught eggs while fishing.
Despite these “twists” promised by Nintendo, most of the events sound exactly the same as last year, however one part of the announcement definitely caught my attention:
Cheese rolling.
The event comes from the town of Brockworth in Gloucestershire, England where participants chase a giant wheel of cheese down Cooper’s Hill. The cheese weighs approximately 8 pounds and can reach a speed of 80 miles an hour, requiring a team of medical personnel on hand for the many injuries that are sustained by both participants and spectators. A very localized event, it’s likely that not many people even know that it exists in areas outside of the UK, but an episode of the Netflix series We Are The Champions is dedicated to cheese rolling, so at least it’s getting the recognition it deserves.
In addition to the cheese rolling, Wedding Season also returns to Animal Crossing: New Horizons. Players will be able to visit Harv’s island and take photos of Reese and Cyrus, showing off their extravagant wedding plans for a chance to collect unique wedding-themed items. It looks like there are some new items for players to collect this year, like the nuptial bell and nuptial ring pillow, as well as a few others.
It’s unlikely that cheese rolling will be any sort of interactive event in New Horizons and instead will just be a series of items for players to collect, similar to the New Year’s items from around the world that were released in late December. However, it is cool of Nintendo to immortalize a small, community-based event like this. And since I have no true way of how to end an article like this, I’ll just crib a phrase that was shouted over and over again during the episode of We Are The Champions about cheese rolling:
For the cheese!
