National Videogame Museum
Image: National Videogame Museum

The National Videogame Museum, located in Sheffield, England, is a magical wonderland of retro and vintage gaming stuff saved from the basements of former children across the world. Unlike most museums, however, it lets you touch the stuff, as they explain in their mission statement:

Videogames are meant to be played, and that is the underlying thought behind each and every exhibit in the museum. This means that we will do everything in our power to allow museum patrons the opportunity to actually PLAY as many games as possible during their visit to the National Videogame Museum.

Sounds like our kind of museum. But now we've all got the chance to be a part of it forever, by submitting our Animal Crossing: New Horizons islands to the NVM's "Animal Crossing Diaries", where they hope to document the response to COVID-19 as it happened within Tom Nook's little slice of heaven.

It's no surprise that the cultural moment that was Animal Crossing during a pandemic is museum-worthy: we've had celebrities going mad for the game (they're just like us!), companies from IKEA to LEGO recreating their products in the AC:NH world, and creative innovators designing in-game wrinkles, vitiligo, and stretchmarks to better represent the diversity of its players.

You can submit your island and/or answer a few questions to the National Videogame Museum on their special Animal Crossing website, and although there's no guarantee it'll make it into the final exhibition, it's your chance to be part of history (and show off your lush landscaping)!

[source animalcrossing.thenvm.org]