One Massive Animal Crossing: New Horizons Omission Must Make Its Way Into The Sequel (2024)

Animal Crossing: New Horizons is a paradise for anybody who enjoys a game where collecting items plays a large role in the gameplay. However, those who have only started playing the games with New Horizons might not realize how many items that didn't make it into the game but were featured in previous titles. If the fruits from past games were included, the islands in New Horizons could've been even more colorful and varied.

Animal Crossing: New Leaf features items that never ended up being added to its successor: New Horizons. While it's not uncommon for items to be featured in one game from a series, but not another game from the same series, these items would be fitting to keep including in Animal Crossing games. As a result, it seems strange that New Horizons didn't have the items at launch, and then never added them in later either.

The Missing Fruit Trees From Animal Crossing: New Leaf

Perfect For Island Life

There are quite a few fruits that didn't appear in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, but were in New Leaf. These absent fruits include banana, durian, lemon, lychee, mango, and persimmon. Even the perfect fruit from New Leaf ended up being absent from New Horizons tree orchard options. However, all the missing fruits would've been perfect for New Horizons and its island setup, so it seems unusual that so many options ended up being excluded.

In a thread by The_Kyojuro_Rengoku on Reddit that points out the missing fruit trees from New Leaf, other players lament that these fruits weren't included and mention that they would be great for their individual islands. Additionally, players also mention a desire to have berry bushes in future games, such as blueberry, raspberry, and blackberry. Considering that growing crops, collecting items, and decorating locations are a big part of the series, adding more fruit trees and berry bushes makes sense.

Of course, these fruits are far from the only items that appeared in previous games, only to be absent in New Horizons. Instead, it looks like a lot of past content got cut in favor of making the game easier or more approachable for players. There's no official answer as to why these cuts were made, but it makes the game feel off to players who experienced older titles in the series, especially since a lot of the cut content could add aesthetic value to the islands.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons Made A Lot Of Cuts

Items And Features That Weren't Added

Since the release of Animal Crossing: New Horizons, there have been updates that add more content and fix bugs and issues. However, quite a bit of content that was in previous games continues to be missing, and it doesn't seem like there's any intention to add those items, including the fruit trees. There are also features that are missing, and their absence makes the villagers feel cold, like the lack of spontaneous house visits and the removal of some villagers in the game, like Shampoodle or Dr. Shrunk.

Now, New Horizonsdoesn't have villagers visiting the player's house at random, and they never even ask to come over. There's also no fortune-telling, which used to be done by Katrina, and that would decide if the player would have good luck and have the chance to find valuable items or if they had bad luck and would come across junk or trip while walking. Other locations that ended up cut include the police station and post office, which put multiple characters out of work, and the café is now part of the museum instead of its own building, where players could work part-time in the past.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons gave players a way to interact with each other and escape from reality when it was needed the most, and lockdowns kept people isolated. However, when compared to past games from the series, there's still a chunk of content — including items, locations, features, and villagers — that was never added, and no reasons as to why were given. Since items like the missing fruit trees could add color to a player's residence and be used for new crafting recipes, the most that players can ask for now is that these items will appear in the game that ends up following Animal Crossing: New Horizons.

Source: The_Kyojuro_Rengoku/Reddit

Animal Crossing: New Horizons

Franchise

Animal Crossing

Platform(s)

Switch

Released

March 20, 2020

Developer(s)

Nintendo EPD

Publisher(s)

Nintendo

Genre(s)

Simulation