Animal Crossing: New Horizons

Animal Crossing: New Horizons is a notable departure from previous games in the series, shifting the focus from running the town to establishing a town on a deserted island. It was just what we all needed to escape the horrors of a sudden pandemic, not to mention the wealth of added customization options.

Though, there is much to be said about its controversial "drip feed content" approach, where the relatively barebones base game would receive new features with incremental updates, culminating in a massive Version 2.0.0 update in late 2021 that added a wealth of features (many of which were standard in earlier entries) and a DLC-based successor to Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer. Four years of radio silence were abruptly shattered in late 2025, when Nintendo announced another massive update (including the reintroduction of unlockable retro Nintendo games, which have been MIA since the first game, albeit with the caveat that you can only access them with a Nintendo Switch Online subscription) alongside a Nintendo Switch 2 port.

Sub-Pages#

Prerelease Info Revisional DifferencesLOTS of updates.

Unused Rooms#

IdrMuseumArt_0
IdrMuseumArt_1
IdrMuseumCafe
IdrMuseumShop
IdrMuseumHaniwa

Unused room IDs exist for additional rooms for the Museum have existed since launch. Haniwa is the Japanese name for Gyroids.

Artwork and the art gallery were added in update 1.2, but the art gallery consists of only one room, not two like the IDs suggest. Gyroids and the café were added in the 2.0 update, but the museum shop still hasn't been added.

Unseen Content#

Room Skyboxes#

These are normally unseen in-game. Every room has a white skybox around the modeled area.

Player's Bras#

To do: Get a rip of the raw model showing the bra. Is the glitch described in the article still possible in newer versions? This texture appears to have been added to the male "style" as well as the female one at some point in the game's update history. See which build of the game this occurred in.

One aspect of New Horizons that stands out from earlier games is the rebranding of player genders to "styles," making the game more accessible to queer audiences. However, despite the name change, styles still have a hidden value assigned to them that corresponds to a gender binary. This affects the player character's model by adding a dark stripe across their chest, corresponding to a bra (albeit noticeably lower than where an actual bra would be worn), when the female style is selected. This element can't be seen in-game without the use of glitches, as removing a player character's shirt normally results in them wearing a plain white tank top regardless of style.

Unseen Model#

While in the island overworld, the model for the Dodo Airlines building contains an unseen low poly mesh for a desk on the inside. It is impossible to see this through normal gameplay.

Unused Text#

Hey, are you the one visiting 
from [Town name]? 
You're [Player], yeah?

I knew it! When I first saw you, 
I said, 'I...don't know that person.'

I thought maybe you were maybe a spy or 
something... But what would you be 
spying on? I didn't know! 

THEN I remembered hearing we have 
a visitor who is definitely NOT a spy! 

Anyway, I'm Wilbur! Welcome to [Town name]! Enjoy your non-spying stay!

Wilbur is always stored out of bounds in the Airport behind Orville. However, he cannot be interacted with, and can only be seen in the short cutscene when you go to someone else's island. Unusually, talking to the out-of-bounds Wilbur while on someone else's island brings up the above text. This dialogue is normally used as one of a few greetings lazy villagers will give to players who are visiting another player's island as a guest. Wilbur does not have any other dialogue for being talked to in this map in other scenarios, prompting an empty speech bubble in those cases.

Unused Menus#

Found within Animal Crossing: New Horizons exists several unused and unseen menus which were cut for one reason or another.

To do: Showcase more cut menus.

Unused Sounds#

Dummy Sounds#

DummySound

This is a .bfsar Dummy sound file with an unknown use.

Unused Debugging Modes#

The game features code for a variety of debugging elements and features.

Debug Camera Display#

Present in every update since launch, exists a debug display for the game’s camera. It displays information on the camera’s coordinates, angle, and more.
Setting the instruction at ram offset MAIN+0x27A2634 to 0x7100053F enables this. (2.0.8)

Unused Textures#

Dummy Textures#

Layout_FtrIcon_DummyWrappingNavy
Layout_FtrIcon_DummyWrappingOrange
Layout_FtrIcon_DummyWrappingPink
Layout_FtrIcon_DummyWrappingPurple
Layout_FtrIcon_DummyWrappingRed
Layout_FtrIcon_DummyWrappingWhite
Layout_FtrIcon_DummyWrappingYellow
Layout_FtrIcon_DummyWrappingGary
Layout_FtrIcon_DummyWrappingGold
Layout_FtrIcon_DummyWrappingGreen
Layout_FtrIcon_DummyWrappingLightBlue
Layout_FtrIcon_DummyWrappingLightGreen
Layout_FtrIcon_DummyWrappingMint
Layout_FtrIcon_DummyCraftingRecipe
Layout_FtrIcon_DummyWrappingBlack
Layout_FtrIcon_DummyWrappingBlue
Layout_FtrIcon_DummyWrappingBrown

These are .Nin_NX_NVN model files containing only .dds texture files. They have an unknown use but they seem to be placeholders. Also, the gray dummy texture is misspelled as "gary", which is likely a typo or a mistranslation.

K.K. Slider's Guitar#

While not unused, it is impossible to see the stickers on the back of K.K.'s guitar without requesting a song to be played. The texture reveals that they are "passes" with drawings of Brewster and Dr. Shrunk on each. These are references to past locations where K.K. has performed: The Roost (run by Brewster) in City Folk & Wild World, and Club LOL (run by Dr. Shrunk) in New Leaf.

DJ K.K. Icon#

1.0.0	2.0

At the initial release of the game (1.0.0, to be precise), an icon of DJ K.K. was present in the game data. Although DJ K.K. was added in the game in the 2.0 update, it was updated to give him headphones, with the headphone-less icon being left unused.

Unused Animations#

Dummy Animations#

CharactorAnimation10100\Animations\Skeletal Animations\Dummy

This is an unused dummy animation file. This file seems to be a placeholder.

Unused Reactions#

Throughout New Horizons, the player can obtain Reactions, which are small animations used to display certain emotions (like in previous games); however, some of these animations aren't actually being used. The majority of these unused reactions are exclusively used only by NPCs and villagers and sometimes the player in certain conversations between two villagers or in other situations, but some are just animations that have no use whatsoever. Oddly enough, the Shrunk Funk Shuffle from Animal Crossing: New Leaf is also here, despite Dr. Shrunk not being able to teach you exclusive reactions. Watch on YouTube

Regional Differences#

To do: Text differences between the American and European English, French and Spanish localizations.

Home Menu Icon#

Japanese	International	Chinese (Traditional)	Chinese (Simplified)	Korean

The Korean and Chinese logos are similar to the Japanese logo, featuring colorful blocks. The Key Art is identical across all regions, save for the logos.

Title Screen#

Japanese	International
Chinese (Traditional)	Chinese (Simplified)

Korean

The Japanese version uses the English text "Press A" like the English version, while every other version uses their respective translaton for "Press."

References#