One of the most fun and enduring features of the Animal Crossing series is the ability to create your own little town (or island) tune. In just 16 notes, you can create your own motif that you can hear all across your island in Animal Crossing: New Horizons.
You might want to go full Nintendo and have the Pokémon Center music or the Song of Time from Zelda: Ocarina of Time as your jingle. Or perhaps hear your favourite TV show title theme or song echo throughout your island. The only thing that limits you is your creativity. Or you can just head to Island Tune Creator and marvel at how amazing everyone else is.
Even though your options are pretty basic - you can select notes from a c-major scale that goes down a fourth, up a third, a hold, a rest, and a "random" note - a lot of work has gone into just how your island tune is used.
Parker from Re:Direct has done a deep dive into how the simplicity of the island tune editor works in its favour. The places the tune is used affects how the tune plays, such as changing the instrumentation, pitch, timbre, and the rhythm, and all of this allows these simple 16 note bops to have endless possibilities.
The tune plays in some obvious places, such as the clock chime once an hour on the hour where the tempo slows down, but you can also hear the tune as you walk through people's doors and storefronts.
But the video's main focus looks at how each villager's rendition of your town theme perfectly reflects their personality, background, or even the type of animal they are.
In the video, Parker talks to a number of villagers across his island to see how his island tune (appropriately and excellently Smash Mouth's 'All-Stars') changes depending on the villager.
Normal villager Molly, a duck, recites the tune in a triplet swing - a jazzier, upbeat style of music - and the song sounds much like a duck quacking. The triplet swing motif is shared by all of the normal villagers that Parker talks to. While interestingly, Pango the 'anteater' changes depending on the mood of your original rendition. She might be able to hum your tune in a major key that's similar to a musical scale used in South Indian classical music.
You might also recognise a lovely person in the video, as our very own Zion and his island make an appearance! Parker compares four different bear villagers' themes and looks at the similarities and differences between them, and examines how rabbit villagers like Dotty use glockenspiels instead of trying to mimic animal sounds.
It's a fascinating watch and shows just how there are thousands of possibilities, with Kick's cockney whistle sometimes changing the song's mood from peppy to sombre, or grouchy villagers making the music sound like something a little more sarcastic.
We don't want to give any more fantastic analysis away, so go and watch the video at the top and let us (and Re:Direct) know if you've spotted any patterns in your villagers in the comments!
[source youtu.be]
Comments 13
My island tune is perfect for everyone:
Careless Whisper
I haven't gotten ACNH yet but I have tinkered with Island Tune Maker and made my (potential) tune Examination Moderato from the original Ace Attorney. I just love the idea of everywhere you go turning extremely suspenseful the minute you walk in. I'll see how well it works in practice once I do get ACNH but that's what I'm thinking of going with right now.
I don’t have the game yet, but if I did, it would probably be my favorite music, not Nintendo music.
As that’s what I did with my old town back on 3ds, I need to check that because I don’t really remember, the only thing i do remember is that it was a anime OP.
Mine is Black’s Wonderful Life. (“It’s a wonderful, wonderful life.”)
My village back in Wild World was called “The O.C.” (go on, laugh it up) and the town jingle was Phantom Planet’s California (ironically, I can’t even recall if oranges were the native fruit). It was also my ringtone in The Sims 2 on DS.
My island tune is CHAOS from DDR SuperNOVA since I love DDR songs.
Here is the tunes configuration.
And here is sample of CHAOS from DDR SuperNOVA. (Play from minute 1:04)
My town tune has been the Mario theme in every game, with the exception of The Simpsons theme for a brief while in the GameCube instalment.
I’d picked up long ago that each of the animal types had different sounds associated to them for their tune, but I hadn’t really thought about the possibility that their personality influences it too, which seems so obvious now in hindsight.
Well I changed mine...but I don't know where you actually hear it play, what have I done wrong?
@CarSickKitty : You hear it when the town hall’s bell tolls every hour as well as when you speak to any animal on the island.
It was a pleasant surprise when I realized my island tune plays whenever I talked to my residents. I'd thought that the tune was for the town hall bell chime only. And till today I never noticed it's used for island doorbells too!
I liked this little appreciation of the amazing amount of forethought and detail that Nintendo poured into ACNH.
Thank you for the link, Alana and Zion! <3
I definitely have to recommend "Potatoes and Molasses" from Over the Garden Wall as a tune for my kids' islands. We all loved that cartoon.
Thank you for this article Alana! And thank you for watching, anyone who did! This video took a ton of work, but it was totally worth every minute of it for all of the people who have said they learned something new from it.
Have a great day, folks!
@parkerdeal Its a great video! Learned a lot!
My island tune is the nah nah nah's from Hey Jude.
Mines a basic rendition of Smash Mouth All Star to go alongside my Shrek flag
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