Animal Crossing: New Horizons Tom Nook Money
Image: Nintendo Life

You might have heard of Animal Crossing: New Horizons. That cute little life sim which came out at the prime time of the global pandemic had us all picking weeds, catching fish and paying bills (extortionately priced, we might add) when we weren't able to be outside picking weeds, catching fish or payi- wait, we still had to do that one.

Well, it's that very game which has today overtaken Pokémon Red and Blue in Japan to become the country's best-selling game of all time.

Shared on Twitter by @GameDataLibrary - the largest database of Japanese game sales on the internet - New Horizons hit the impressive mark of 10,450,000 units sold, putting it above the 1996 Kanto-set classic which finds itself on a measly 10,230,000 (just kidding, Pokémon, your number is very impressive too). This means that Tom Nook and co. now officially hold the title of Japan's best-selling game - a feat that we imagined could happen when we were all playing back in 2020, but never thought would come about this quickly.

Almost more impressive still is the fact that of the country's top 20 best-selling games, 19 of them belong to Nintendo consoles. Bar Capcom's Monster Hunter Freedom 3 on the PSP (which never saw a European or American release), the chart is a straight sweep for Nintendo, with studio classics like Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and Super Smash Bros. finding themselves amongst Square Enix's Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies on the DS (a title that we still can't quite believe is Japan's best-selling game in the Dragon Quest series).

The list also reveals that Splatoon 3 has managed to ink its way to 17th in the ranking of Japan's best-selling games of all time, just two places below its predecessor. After becoming the country's best-selling game of 2022 we knew that it was on a roll, but to break into the all-time list after only a few months of being out?? Now that's quite something!

Of course, nothing comes close to New Horizons - our new supreme leader. Whether something like Splatoon 3 can continue its popularity over the next few years and take the throne remains to be seen (somehow, we doubt that it will), but until then New Horizons sets a pretty insurmountable sales record.

What do you make of this list of Japan's all-time best-sellers? Let us know in the comments below!

[source twitter.com]