Let’s start with the obvious, $200 is a pretty standard price for the Nintendo Switch Lite, but the real Tom Nook of this deal is that you’re getting Animal Crossing New Horizons for free. During the pandemic, I was sent home with no work and no facility to even work from home for weeks on end, and this game, and the community I met playing it, single-handedly saved my sanity during that time. The best part is that for $199.99 at Walmart you can get a Nintendo Switch Lite Animal Crossing: New Horizons Timmy & Tommy Aloha Edition, which includes the console and the game. This is a great deal, considering that the standard console alone costs $199.99 and this is a special edition. The game normally costs $59.99. Go fast though, as this has already gone out of stock once, and it’s temporarily back.
More great early Black Friday deals
Is Animal Crossing New Horizons worth the hype?
In short, yes. The long answer? It wasn’t my kind of game at all, and not one I would normally ever purchase for myself. I’m not a ‘cozy gamer’, I’m a blood, magic, monsters and swords kind of gamer. The pandemic happened though, and after being sent home from work because it was unsafe, and our office at the time not being set up for home working, I was in a difference headspace.
My partner who still got to go to work every day actually bought Animal Crossing New Horizons for himself, and I “gave it a try for an hour.” The game had a simple premise, move to an island, build a home, then build other homes for more inhabitants.
Needless to say that “try for an hour” turned into days, then weeks, then months of actual play time on the game. I went from playing on my own and laughing at my little collectable outfits (including the covid mask pictured above), to meet a whole group of other people on a parenting website who were playing the game. I joined a Whatsapp group, and over the course of the pandemic, our socializing was meeting up on eachother’s islands to help complete in-game events, and collect all the craftable furniture.
There’s a lot of ‘collecting’ in Animal Crossing New Horizons, and you can get as deep into it as you choose. Whether it’s collecting all the bugs for your museum, catching the biggest and rarest fish, or trying to find the elusive tarantula island (ok I know I said this wasn’t a horror game, but that particular area is questionable). If you’ve never picked it up before, and even if it’s not your usual kind of game, I guarantee you will be hooked within the first few hours by its charm, whimsy, and odd humor. Just check out this letter I received from one of my animal neighbors.
Getting Animal Crossing New Horizons with a Nintendo Switch Lite (and a special edition Aloha one no less) is an absolutely brilliant deal, it’s simply hours upon hours upon days upon months of entertainment, for $199. But go quick, this particular edition is limited to Walmart only and goes out of stock fast.
Even now, absolutely nothing on the ROG Ally or any other of the PC handhelds can beat Nintendo’s first-party bangers, but if you are looking for something a bit more mature, be sure to check out our guide to all of the handhelds including ROG Ally.
