Skip to main content

Animal Crossing is the next Nintendo franchise to get the Lego treatment

Nintendo revealed that Animal Crossing will be its next franchise to get transformed into a Lego set, following sets based on Super Mario Bros. and Donkey Kong. This collaboration was teased Thursday morning in a video posted on X (formerly Twitter) by Nintendo.

Welcome to…LEGO Animal Crossing!#AnimalCrossing #LEGO #Nintendo pic.twitter.com/A0XRzwVikh

— Nintendo of America (@NintendoAmerica) October 5, 2023

The teaser features Lego versions of Tom Nook, Isabelle, Kapp’n, Rosie, Bunnie, Marshal, Julian, and Fauna standing in front of a bunch of Lego trees as they watch a balloon with a present float in the air. It’s only 11 seconds long, but it’s instantly recognizable and relatable to anyone who played Animal Crossing: New Horizons, the game that took Nintendo’s long-running life sim series mainstream in 2020.

Besides this teaser, we haven’t learned anything more about Lego Animal Crossing. That means we don’t know if it’ll be as comprehensive as Lego’s Super Mario Bros. collaboration, which lets players build entire courses, in addition to Mario and Donkey Kong characters, with Lego. This all comes from a partnership between the two companies that began in 2020, with Nintendo’s Takashi Tezuka saying at the time that he “always liked Lego products and how they help children use their imagination to play.”

We don’t know when any of these Lego Animal Crossing products will launch, so we’ll have to wait to hear more about this from Lego and Nintendo. Regardless of when it happens, the idea of building out your own Animal Crossing island with Lego and populating it with little figures is a fantastic idea, so it makes sense that this collaboration happened.

Tomas Franzese
Tomas Franzese is a Staff Writer at Digital Trends, where he reports on and reviews the latest releases and exciting…
Nintendo is shutting down online services for 3DS and Wii U next April
Mega Man and Mario fight in Super Smash Bros. for 3DS and Wii U,

Nintendo confirmed it will widely shut down online services for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U games in April 2024, which will be just over a year after it discontinued the Nintendo eShop on those systems.
This deactivation of most of the online services for those platforms was revealed on X (formerly Twitter) and Nintendo's support site early Wednesday. "In early April 2024, online play and other functionality that uses online communication will end for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U software. This also includes online co-operative play, internet rankings, and data distribution," the message says. "We will announce a specific end date and time at a later date. Please note that if an event occurs that would make it difficult to continue online services for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U software, we may have to discontinue services earlier than planned. We sincerely thank players for using the online services of Nintendo 3DS and Wii U software over a long period of time and apologize for any inconvenience."
Essentially, this means that after April 2024, you won't be able to use any online features in things like 3DS Pokémon games or Super Smash Bros. for 3DS and Wii U anymore. Nintendo does say in the Q&A section of its support article that people will still be able to play games offline and redownload updates and games from the Nintendo eShop for the foreseeable future. Pokémon Bank will remain unaffected, so it'll still be possible to transfer Pokémon from Ruby and Sapphire all of the way to Pokémon Home. However, SpotPass support and other online-focused applications like Nintendo Badge Arcade will stop working entirely.

Just like the Wii U and 3DS eShop closure that caused a ruckus earlier this year, this move is a blow to game preservation and will forever harm some games not available anywhere else. While it's understandable that Nintendo might want to move on from these systems' dated online infrastructure, it's still a disappointing move for those of us who spent a lot of time playing games offline and online on these systems.

Read more
Mario vs. Donkey Kong is getting a Nintendo Switch remake in February
Mario jumping towards Donkey Kong in Mario vs Donkey Kong for the Switch.

Mario vs. Donkey Kong was announced during today's Nintendo Direct. Launching on February 16, this new title is the first entry in the Mario vs. Donkey Kong series to hit the Nintendo Switch and the latest in the series since its last entry in 2016.

Mario vs. Donkey Kong - Nintendo Direct 9.14.2023

Read more
Nintendo’s next console may feature DLSS and ray-tracing support
Mario high-fives Nintendo Live guests.

New reports affirm the rumors that Nintendo has started to show its next-generation console -- referred to colloquially by fans as Nintendo Switch 2 -- behind closed doors at a recent video game industry expo. It reportedly featured tech demos highlighting features like Nvidia DLSS support and ray tracing.
Gamescom 2023 was held in Cologne, Germany, between August 23 and August 27. Nintendo attended the European game industry event, and shortly thereafter, rumors emerged that Nintendo had shown its next console behind closed doors. Now, new reports from Eurogamer and VGC are corroborating these claims.
Specifically, both sources say that Nintendo showed tech demos for its next game console in private during meetings with some other game developers at Gamescom. Both sources confirmed that an upgraded version of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild was shown off on this "Switch 2" hardware.
VGC also had a source who claimed that the impressive The Matrix Awakens Unreal Engine 5 tech demo -- used to promote Epic Games' new engine and the power of the PS5 and Xbox Series X back in 2021 -- was also shown to developers and seemed to confirm that the new Nintendo system will support Nvidia's upscaling DLSS tech as well as ray-tracing. Keep in mind that tech demos for systems often don't make the transition to full-game releases.

We don't know much else about what was shown, although VGC claims that this system will be usable in a portable mode like the Nintendo Switch is. Currently, the launch window for Nintendo's next new piece of hardware is expected to be sometime in fall 2024, although Eurogamer's source stated that "Nintendo is keen to launch the system sooner if possible."
Nintendo has not commented on these rumors, and is unlikely to ahead of an official console reveal. Still, the idea that the next Nintendo console is nearly upon us should be exciting for fans of one of the video game industry's most storied companies. 

Read more