‘SNL’ Turned ‘Animal Crossing’ Into A Much Meaner Game In This Digital Exclusive

Saturday Night Live’s 45th season is finally in the books, finishing out with three episodes of the “At Home” variety while the rest of the world deals with the COVID-19 pandemic. Given the unprecedented nature of the season, the subject matter of the show often touched on what people are doing to fill time while in isolation, which led to a number of sketches about gaming.

The first was Mikey Day playing a frustrated streamer who kept getting nuked at Call of Duty: Warzone. And now, we have a somewhat belated look at the meanest Animal Crossing: New Horizons island in the game’s otherwise adorable history. In the sketch, which was released as a digital exclusive on Friday, Melissa Villaseñor and Day hop on a video call to play Animal Crossing together. But while Day is having a lovely time getting acclimated to the island wilderness, Villaseñor is encountering animals saying things like this to her.

Clearly, the editors enjoyed taking screengrabs from the game and putting new text over them, as basically everyone in the game is far too nice to say things like that. Even bullying animals off your island is done pretty gently, relatively speaking. As the sketch continues, Day tries to visit his friend’s island to see if he’s getting the same kind of hate. And while Tom Nook doesn’t hope he gets coronavirus, it’s clear that the animals don’t like living with Melissa very much.

What’s interesting about the sketch is that the islands they appear on are basically brand new. Day, in fact, is wearing the gingham shirt you can get as starting clothing. However, in the video it’s clear that Villaseñor has the hard-to-find Animal Crossing Switch bundle, as you can see from the controller in her hand.

It’s clear that she’s a fan of Animal Crossing, as she does a pretty spectacular Isabelle impression, complete with warbled words and all. But it’s very likely that she’s been playing since launch day in mid March, which begs the question: did she have to delete her launch day island just to play out the sketch? Or did someone else buy a copy of New Horizons to get the video needed for the very mean comments?

Given the timestamps on the game that pop up when you stop moving, we know they’ve been working on this for at least a few weeks now. The scene where her character is murdered, for example, was video captured on May 4. So perhaps they’re further along on this new island at this point, anyway. And if that’s a bit too much negativity in your island experience, please enjoy this video from the musicians who made New Horizons‘ soothing title track.

Ah, that’s better.