Oh my god, it's happening! Animal Crossing: New Horizons is bringing back the Zelda and Splatoon villagers that we saw in Animal Crossing: New Leaf on the Nintendo 3DS. This is confirmed in a fresh trailer, posted by Nintendo on a seemingly random Thursday in October.
There's also a Nintendo Switch 2 update coming to improve the game's quality, releasing on January 15, 2026. It'll require a purchase for those who already own the game. I'm mostly excited about the 3.0 content update. It comes out on the same day as the Switch 2 edition, and it brings a lot of content for us fans who have all but run out of things to do in the 2020 game.
First up, a new hotel opens up on the pier, run by Kapp'n and his family. Here, you can decorate rooms based on a theme and invite guests to stay. Then, you can employ Resetti's services to clean up areas around your house, beach, or the entire island, if you can't be bothered to pick up every leaf pile and flower. Honestly, who can after we've decorated for so long?
Another NPC with a promotion is Luna. She'll welcome you to a new dream world, where you can visit Slumber Island and freely build and decorate what is essentially a secondary island.
The most exciting part of all this is the collaborations. Through work with the hotel, the shop will start selling Nintendo items from eras past, including consoles that actually have games on them. Ice Climbers in Animal Crossing? Heck yeah. There's even a LEGO collab coming with a roster of furniture and clothing.
Anyway, the biggest news is the Zelda items. Updated to include Tears of the Kingdom and Breath of the Wild bits and pieces, we can now properly turn our islands into Hyrule by placing decayed Guardians and Silent Princess flowers. And by having Tulin and Mineru living there! They're both adorable, and I will move them in immediately.
Cece and Viché are two other new villagers based on Splatoon's Deep Cut members, and they come with items, hairdos, and clothes featuring the multiplayer game's cool style.
Along with all of this, the megaphone item is finally coming back, so we can yell for Fang and Frita all day and actually find them on the island. While it's been a wait, we did have an even longer gap between New Leaf's release and the Welcome Amiibo update, so it's not a surprise that the team took its time.
As much as we love games like Animal Crossing, nothing quite compares to the real thing. If you're thinking of upgrading your system, we can help you out by highlighting what the best Nintendo Switch console is.